Definition

A package or housing used to hold materials; a receptacle.

Source: A Glossary of Archives and Records Terminology.

Introduction

The term container is used in a general sense to refer to any kind of box, carton, oversize folder, or other housing used to hold material. It also has specific meanings in the Archives Catalogue and in the ArchivesSpace accessioning database.

ArchivesSpace

ArchivesSpace has robust features for managing containers and physical storage locations. Each accession record or "resource" record (i.e., finding aid) can have one or more instances. Instances are physical or digital instantiations of archival material. Instances link an accession record or resource record to one or more "top containers." Each top container is linked to a physical location record.

ArchivesSpace also supports container profiles that store basic information about each type of container:

Users can select from a list of container profiles when they are creating a new top container record.

ArchivesSpace also supports location profiles that store basic information each type of physical location:

Users can select from a list of location profiles when they are creating a new location record.

Archives Catalogue

The Archives Catalogue has a fairly simplistic approach to managing physical storage information. Each physical storage location is a combination of physical location information and container information:

Name (i.e., container name)
Location (single text box to record all pertinent physical location information)
Type (drop-down list of container types)

See the instructions on linking archival descriptions to physical storage locations.

Related terms

Accessioning

Acquisition

Container profile

Dalhousie Libraries documentation

See Section 2 - Accessioning of the University Archives Manual for detailed information on accessioning.

Also see Section 5 - Housing and Physical Storage.