Manuscript processing

Archival processing is the act of arranging and describing the papers of an individual or family or the records of an organization. A person who is engaged in this is known as an archival processor or archivist.

Ideally, when an archives receives a collection of papers or a group of records, they will have been arranged by the originator (the original person, persons, or organization that created or assembled the collection or records) and boxed up for the move to the archives in such a way that this order has been preserved. However, collections and record groups are often only semi-organized, and sometimes they lack any organization at all. Observing this organization, or imposing one where it is lacking, and then describing the organized material, are the tasks which archivists refer to as "archival processing", "arrangement and description", "archival listing", or "cataloguing".

The first steps in archival processing are to gain an understanding of the originator, to observe the material's overall size and scope, and to discover any underlying organizational scheme in the collection or record group. The first of these is needed in order to understand the context in which the papers or records were created. These last two are called "surveying" the material.

Both of these activities should be carried out with two archival principles in mind: respect des fonds and respect for original order.

In regard to the first, which may be translated as "taking into consideration the entirety of the collection", the survey must include activity to ascertain whether the materials in hand are all, or only a portion, of the entire fonds. If the archivist is in a repository that holds other parts of the fonds, he or she should assemble a plan of work that encompasses, or at least acknowledges, the entire set of materials from the same originator.

In regards to the second, the archivist must attempt to maintain the original order of the materials if the very act of record-keeping or if the record-keeping practices of the originator are in themselves evidence of the originator's activities or processes.

More detailed descriptions than that which results from a mere survey of the material are generally attempted. Beyond the survey, there may weeding of material that does not meet a repository's collecting guidelines, listing of box contents (also called box-level description), folder lists (folder-level description), or even complete inventories that include administrative histories or biographical notes, scope notes, acquisition information, information as to the archival processing treatment the material has received, and organization of the entire collection or record group into categories, known as "series" and "sub-series". Some repositories will even do document-level processing of selected documents within a collection or group of records. While there are certain series and subseries that are commonly encountered, such as Correspondence, or Writings, each collection or record group has its own categories of material, and these must be respected.

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