Archival science
To this end, archival science seeks to improve methods for appraising, storing, preserving, and processing (arranging and describing) collections of materials.
Therefore, an archivist has a responsibility to authenticate archival materials, such as historical documents, and to ensure their reliability, integrity, and usability.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.
[5] Traditionally, archival science has involved the study of methods for preserving items in climate-controlled storage facilities.
The advent of digital documents along with the development of electronic databases has caused the field to re-evaluate its means and ends.
[6] While generally associated with museums and libraries, the field also can pertain to individuals who maintain private collections or business archives.
[10] These standards are in place to provide archivists with the tools for describing and making accessible archival material to the public.
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.
[13] As a fundamental principle of archives, provenance refers to the individual, family, or organization that created or received the items in a collection.
Records began to "acquir[e] the dignity of national monuments",[17] and their care was entrusted to scholars who were trained in libraries.
[16] The emphasis was on historical research, and it seemed obvious at the time that records should be arranged and catalogued in a manner that would "facilitate every kind of scholarly use".
[17][16] To support research, artificial systematic collections, often arranged by topic, were established and records were catalogued into these schemes.
[15] With archival documents approached from a librarianship perspective, records were organized according to classification schemes and their original context of creation were frequently lost or obscured.
The principle of "respect des fonds" and of "original order" was adopted in Belgium and France about 1840 and spread throughout Europe during the following decades.
For its advocates, provenance provided an objective alternative to the generally subjective classification schemes borrowed from librarianship.
[16] However, some archivists insist that personal records are created and maintained for much the same reason as organizational archives and should follow the same principles.
[16] Preservation, as defined by the Society of American Archivists (SAA), is the act of protecting materials from physical deterioration or loss of information, ideally in a noninvasive way.
This trend gained popularity and soon other countries began establishing national archives for the same reasons, to maintain and preserve their records as they were created and received.
Archivists are primarily concerned with maintaining the record, along with the context in which it was produced, and making this information accessible to the user.
This definition relates to the principle of provenance and respect des fonds as it similarly emphasizes the idea of the original record.
Archival collections expanded to include new media such as microfilm, audiofiles, visualfiles, moving images, and digital documents.
[25] Since 2016, the concept of "symbolic annihilation" has been used to describe the disappearance of communities through systematic or implicit lack of representation or under-representation in archives.
A master's degree is typically a two-year professional program focusing on acquiring a knowledge base of archival skills (including digital records and access systems)[30] whereas a doctorate is more broad in scope and includes critical inquiry of its archival practices, with graduates typically preparing for careers in research and teaching.
