Questions surrounding the principles of archives emerge when looking through practices and guidelines of records. The American Archivist, an SAA journal published from the 1930s to the 2020s, speaks to a key term one learns early in their archival studies expedition: respect des fonds. Defined in a 1974 SAA article titled “A Basic Glossary for Archivists,” the term is elucidated as a usage of provenance. As the “principle of sanctity of the original order,” the objective is to maintain the integrity of the creation, the reception, and the accumulation of the records.
Respect des fonds was discussed in the “First Conference of Archivists” in 1909, an early instance of documented archival principles. Waldo Gifford Leland, an archivist who worked for Carnegie Institutions and the Library of Congress, wrote an SAA article in 1950 discussing his support for the “classification of archives” as observed at the conference. Though Leland stated that his underpinning of the terminology was “to show that [his] two years in the French archives had not been wasted.”
But what does respect des fonds look like for the Irving Wallace Papers? Processing the records book by book, draft by draft, and page by page, the collection is pieced together in an arrangement parallel to when and how Wallace initially wrote or compiled the records. Therefore, the collection is accessible for researchers as if you entered Wallace’s office and uncovered his inspirations, methods, and unfinished drafts still resting on his typewriter.
Stay tuned, Chelsea
Citations
Evans, Frank B., Donald F. Harrison, Edwin A. Thompson, and William L. Rofes. “A Basic Glossary for Archivists, Manuscript Curators, and Records Managers.” The American Archivist 37, no. 3 (1974): 415–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40291669.
Leland, Waldo Gifford. “The First Conference of Archivists, December 1909: The Beginnings of a Profession.” The American Archivist 13, no. 2 (1950): 109–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40283836.