Understand How Archives Take Shape
Practice reading record context, separating series and files, writing clear descriptions, and keeping archival material traceable through consistent arrangement.
Not Sure Where A Record Belongs?
Ask about provenance, original order, description practice, finding aids, or the best starting point for your first archive exercises.
Core Archive Skills
Work with the basic decisions that make records easier to understand, describe, organize, and retrieve without losing their original context.
Provenance
Arrangement
Description
Retrieval
What Learners Notice
Sorting sample records became much easier once I stopped treating every document separately and started checking the creator and surrounding folders first.
Nanami Kurosawa
The hierarchy exercises helped me finally separate series, files, and items without guessing, and my inventory entries became much more consistent.
Reo Murayama
Writing short descriptions from sample folders showed me how much useful context can be recorded without adding assumptions or unnecessary interpretation.
Ikumi Kawaguchi
ARCHIVE READING
Practical Notes For Working With Records
How to Write a Clear Archival Folder Title
Creating a meaningful title for an archival folder is a critical skill for any archivist or records manager. The purpose of the title is to allow users to quickly identify the content of the folder without having to look at…
Original Order: When to Maintain Existing Folder Sequence
Before transferring any folders, take a closer look at the current filing arrangement. Folders in an archive box might be organized by date, project code, division, sender, or some other method that isn’t clear at first glance. Filing sequences may…
Fonds, Series, File, and Item: Understanding Archival Levels
Fonds, series, file, and item. What do they mean? Let’s talk about these four archival levels that help organize collections. A bunch of papers in a box might seem to be one single block of records, but you soon learn…
Understanding Provenance: Why We Ask Who Created a Record
When you open a box and find various records, such as meeting notes, invoices, photos, letters and reports, it might be tempting to organize them by topic or date. Instead, the first question usually asked by archivists is “Who created…