Introduction

This page outlines basic concepts in archival description.

Terminology

Staff working on archival description projects should understand the following terms:

• Access point

• Archival appraisal

• Archival arrangement

• Archival authority record

• Arrangement

• Chief source of information

• Collection ID

• Description

• Level of arrangement

• Finding aid

• Office ID

• Office of Primary Responsibility

• Office of Secondary Responsibility

• Original order

• Producer

• Provenance

• Reference code

Basic concepts

• Archival description is a core archival function guided by a set of guiding principles.

• Archival appraisal and archival arrangement are core archival functions that always precedes archival description.

• Archival description results in the publication of online finding aids that describe archival fonds and collections, and archival authority records that describe the creators of archival material. This information is published in the Archives Catalogue.

• Information provided in each archival description should come from the appropriate chief source of information for the archival material.

• Archival descriptions should align with our metadata guidelines for archival descriptions.

• Archival descriptions include access points selected from controlled vocabularies managed by the University Archives.

• Archival descriptions should align with our writing style guidelines for archival descriptions.