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Glossary
This glossary brings together essential archival terminology that may be useful for landscape architecture archives. Definitions are drawn from the ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology (MAT) or the SAA Dictionary of Archives Terminology. Where available, entries include contextual explanations for landscape architecture archives, based on Hanna Sorsa-Sautet’s mini-lectures at NELA meetings.
The ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology (MAT) gives access to definitions and equivalents in up to 16 languages.
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Access point
Definition: A name, term, etc. by which a descriptive record may be searched and identified.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology (MAT) https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/28
Acquisition
Definition: An addition to the holdings of a repository.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology (MAT) https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/37
Appraisal
Definition: The process of identifying materials offered to an archives that have sufficient value to be accessioned.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology (MAT) https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/47
Arrangement
Definition: The process of organising materials with respect to their provenance and original order, to protect their context and to achieve physical or intellectual control over the materials.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology (MAT) https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/48
Context:
Archival arrangement is based on the philosophy that each document is created for a purpose as part of a process which gives the document its meaning. By placing each document within this context and ensuring that it is assigned to its proper place in an organisational framework, archival arrangement is designed to protect all of the evidence that is associated with the historical circumstances of its creation, and to ensure that it can be interpreted and reinterpreted. Although initially the process of arranging voluminous and fragile landscape architectural records may appear complex, inevitably the very order and discipline required by the design process ensures that landscape architectural records have an inherent, self-evident order. This inherent order is the basis for archival arrangement of landscape architectural records.
Source: Hanna Sorsa-Sautet’s mini-lectures at NELA meetings. Educational guidance for non-archivists; not an official ICA definition.
Archival description
Definition: The process of capturing, analysing, organising, and recording information that serves to identify, manage, locate, and explain the holdings of archives and manuscript repositories and the contexts and records systems which produced them.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology (MAT): https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/51
Context:
The principal objective of archival description is the creation of access tools that assist users in discovering desired records. Archival description is the process of capturing, collating, analysing, controlling, exchanging, and providing access to information about:
● The origin, context, and provenance of different sets of records
● Their filing structure
● Their form and content
● Their relationships with other records
● How they can be found and used
The description of records serves three essential purposes: management of records; preservation of records; ongoing use and reuse of records.
Source: Hanna Sorsa-Sautet’s mini-lectures at NELA meetings. Educational guidance for non-archivists; not an official ICA definition.
Archival repository
Definition: Agency or programme responsible for selecting, acquiring, and preserving archives, making them available, and approving destruction of other records.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology (MAT): https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/58
Context:
A repository is: (1) a space used to store items of continuing value, particularly records; and (2) an institution focused on the care and storage of items of continuing value. The term covers any type of organisation that holds documents, including business, institutional, and government archives, manuscript collections, libraries, museums, and historical societies, in any form, including manuscripts, photographs, moving image and sound materials, and their electronic equivalents.
Source: Hanna Sorsa-Sautet’s mini-lectures at NELA meetings. Educational guidance for non-archivists; not an official ICA definition.
Classification
Definition: The systematic organization of records in groups or categories according to methods, procedures, or conventions represented in a plan or scheme.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/98
Context
Definition: The framework in which a record is created, used, and maintained.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/6
Digital preservation
Definition: An essential and necessary component of digital archiving ensuring longevity of an electronic object. Digital preservation covers the processes and operations involved in ensuring the technical and intellectual survival of authentic electronic records over time (such as the ongoing monitoring, migration and storage of records and managing the metadata which describes the origin and successive treatment of the record).
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/145
Donor
Definition: an individual, family, or organization that voluntarily transfers ownership of archival resources to a repository without monetary recompense
Source: SAA Dictionary of Archives Terminology: https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/donor.html
Donor agreement
Definition: a legal agreement that serves as the formal expression of the terms of a gift to a repository, including the terms of the transfer of ownership of records and/or intellectual property rights
Source: SAA Dictionary of Archives Terminology: https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/donor-agreement.html
Finding Aid
Definition: Descriptive tools containing information that establishes control over records and facilitates their retrieval.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/186
Context:
A finding aid typically consists of contextual and structural information about an archival resource, including information about the collection’s acquisition and processing, provenance, scope, and an inventory of the series and folders.
Key elements include:
● Title page
● Summary information
● Access and use
● Related materials
● Subject terms and access points
● Background information
● Scope and content
● Arrangement
● Contents listing
Source: Hanna Sorsa-Sautet’s mini-lectures at NELA meetings. Educational guidance for non-archivists; not an official ICA definition.
Fonds
Definition: The organic body of records accumulated in a natural process and created or received by a public or private individual or corporation (the ‘record creator’) in the exercise of their corresponding activities and functions.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/189
Context
A variety of government offices and other public or private institutions have landscape architectural functions or hold landscape architectural records. As for other archival materials, all acquisition activities for landscape architectural records must be in keeping with the archival principles of provenance and respect des fonds to ensure the integrity of the group of records. Complete fonds or groups should be acquired, not simply the finest drawings of the fonds. Long-term physical conservation is directly related to the quantity, size, overall volume, and resistance of records to handling, environmental conditions, reproduction, folding, and successive use.
Source: Hanna Sorsa-Sautet’s mini-lectures at NELA meetings. Educational guidance for non-archivists; not an official ICA definition.
Interoperability
Definition: The ability of one application/system to communicate or work with another.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/211
Levels of description
Definition: The level OF arrangement of the unit being described, e.g., fonds, series, collection, file, item.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/221
Metadata
Definition: Information that characterizes another information resource, especially for purposes of documenting, describing, preserving or managing that resource.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/233
Provenance
Definition: A fundamental principle of archives, referring to the individual, family, or organization that created or received the items in a collection. Dictates that records of different origins (provenance) be kept separate to preserve their context.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/275
Context:
Respecting the provenance means that documents from the same producer should be grouped together, without being mixed with others. Documents from different sources with similar subject matter should never be merged. Provenance is part of the fundamental principle of archives: respect des fonds (the principle maintaining records according to their origin and in the units in which they were originally accumulated).
Source: Hanna Sorsa-Sautet’s mini-lectures at NELA meetings. Educational guidance for non-archivists; not an official ICA definition.
Record
Definition: Information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/60
Record creator
Definition: A public or private individual or corporation that has created or received / preserved records in the exercise of their corresponding activities and functions.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/129
Context:
More specific terms may be used for creators of some works in certain formats, such as author, photographer, landscape architect, or sculptor. For people, the birth and death dates should be mentioned; for organisations, the establishment and abolition dates. People and organisations that contributed to the authorship of a series or its smaller parts are called contributors.
Source: Hanna Sorsa-Sautet’s mini-lectures at NELA meetings. Educational guidance for non-archivists; not an official ICA definition.
Respect des fonds
Definition: The principle that a body of records originating from the same record creator must be preserved as a group.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/310
Context:
Respect des fonds is a fundamental principle according to which archives of the same provenance must not be intermingled with those of another provenance, and must be preserved in their original order if it exists. It is essential to the proper use of the record because the place of an archival document in a collection helps define its nature and importance.
Three related concepts:
● Respect for provenance
● Respect for the integrity of the collection
● Respect for the original order
Source: Hanna Sorsa-Sautet’s mini-lectures at NELA meetings. Educational guidance for non-archivists; not an official ICA definition.
Unit of description
Definition: A document or set of documents in any physical form, treated as an entity, and, as such, forming the basis for a single description, e.g. fonds, record group, archive group, collection, subgroup, series, item.
Source: ICA Multilingual Archival Terminology: https://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/343