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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
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| Archival science | 1/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_science | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:07:40.340034+00:00 | kb-cron |
Archival science, or archival studies, is the study and theory of building and curating archives, which are collections of documents, recordings, photographs and various other materials in physical or digital formats. To build and curate an archive, one must acquire and evaluate the materials, and be able to access them later. To this end, archival science seeks to improve methods for appraising, storing, preserving, and processing (arranging and describing) collections of materials. An archival record preserves data that is not intended to change. In order to be of value to society, archives must be trustworthy. Therefore, an archivist has a responsibility to authenticate archival materials, such as historical documents, and to ensure their reliability, integrity, and usability. Archival records must be what they claim to be; accurately represent the activity they were created for; present a coherent picture through an array of content; and be in usable condition in an accessible location. An archive curator is called an archivist; the curation of an archive is called archive administration.
== History ==
Archival science emerged from diplomatics, the critical analysis of documents. Archival science is also closely related to historical archaeography, an interdisciplinary field that analyses various, mutually correlated aspects and properties of ancient manuscripts and early printed materials, and thus prepares and produces scholarly descriptions and editions. In 1540, Jacob von Rammingen (1510–1582) wrote the manuscript of the earliest known archival manual. He was an expert on registries (Registraturen), the German word for what later became known as archives. Rammingen elaborated a registry for the Augsburg city council. However, since he could not attend the council meeting, he described the structure and management of the archives in writing. Although this is not the first work about archival science (Rammingen himself refers to earlier literature about record-keeping), earlier manuals were usually not published. Archival science had no formal beginning. Jacob von Rammingen's manual was printed in Heidelberg in 1571. Traditionally, archival science has involved the study of methods for preserving items in climate-controlled storage facilities. It is also the study of cataloguing and accession, of retrieval and safe handling. The advent of digital documents along with the development of electronic databases has caused the field to re-evaluate its means and ends. While generally associated with museums and libraries, the field also can pertain to individuals who maintain private collections or business archives. Archival Science is taught in colleges and universities, usually under the umbrella of Information Science or paired with a History program. A list of foundational thinkers in archival studies could include: American archivist Theodore Schellenberg and British archivist Sir Hilary Jenkinson. Some important archival thinkers of the past century include: Canadian archivist and scholar Terry Cook, South African archivist Verne Harris, Australian archival scholar Sue McKemmish, UCLA faculty and archival scholar Anne Gilliland, University of Michigan faculty and archival scholar Margaret Hedstrom, American archival scholar and University of Pittsburgh faculty member Richard Cox, Italian archival scholar and faculty at University of British Columbia Luciana Duranti, and American museum and archival scholar David Bearman.
== Standards == There is no universal set of laws or standards that governs the form or mission of archival institutions. The forms, functions, and mandates of archival programs and institutions tend to differ based on geographical location and language, the nature of the society in which they exist and the objectives of those in control of the archives. Instead, the current standards that have been provided and are most widely followed, such as the ICA standard, ISO standard, and DIRKS standard, act as working guidelines for archives to follow and adapt in ways that would best suit their respective needs. Following the introduction of computer technology in archival repositories, beginning in the 1970s, archivists increasingly recognized the need to develop common standards for descriptive practice, in order to facilitate the dissemination of archival descriptive information. The standard developed by archivists in Canada, Rules for Archival Description, also known as RAD, was first published in 1990. As a standard, RAD aims to provide archivists with a consistent and common foundation for the description of archival material within a fonds, based on traditional archival principles. A comparable standard used in the United States is Describing Archives: A Content Standard, also known as DACS. These standards are in place to provide archivists with the tools for describing and making accessible archival material to the public. Metadata comprises contextual data pertaining to a record or aggregate of records. In order to compile metadata consistently, so as to enhance the discoverability of archival materials for users, as well as support the care and preservation of the materials by the archival institution, archivists look to standards appropriate to various kinds of metadata for different purposes, including administration, description, preservation, and digital storage and retrieval. For example, common standards used by archivists for structuring descriptive metadata, which conveys information such as the form, extent, and content of archival materials, include Machine-Readable Cataloguing (MARC format), Encoded Archival Description (EAD), and Dublin core.
== Provenance in archival science ==
Provenance in archival science refers to the "origin or source of something; information regarding the origins, custody, and ownership of an item or collection". As a fundamental principle of archives, provenance refers to the individual, family, or organization that created or received the items in a collection. In practice, provenance dictates that records of different origins should be kept separate to preserve their context. As a methodology, provenance becomes a means of describing records at the series level.