Glossary

A cardboard container in which loose records or records gathered into files are stored upright.

See Archival box or bundle

The discipline concerned with archives, studying their origin, formation, arrangement, use and legal regulation.

A sheet of paper or card used to contain archival records.

1) The body of records produced or otherwise acquired by an organisation, family or person in the course of their activities.

A document attached to another document or file in order to supplement its information.

A collection, usually bound, of predominantly complete transcriptions of original documents, compiled to preserve evidence of legal rights or for historical record.

A division of a classification scheme (see), identified by a Roman or Arabic numeral, a letter of the alphabet or an alphanumeric symbol.

A solemn, formal instrument issued by an imperial, royal, manorial or ecclesiastical chancery.

A code assigned to a record or archival unit, usually a file, indicating its logical position within a classification system, generally expressed through a classification scheme (see).

A group of records removed from their series of origin and brought together because of a shared subject or another unifying feature.

A reproduction of an original document made by hand, typewriter or photocopier; it has no legal validity.

Correspondence exchanged between two or more parties.

The discipline that studies the external form of historical documents in order to establish their authenticity and date and, more generally, to assess the historical processes underlying their production.

1) Written evidence of a fact of a legal nature, drawn up in prescribed forms intended to confer authenticity and evidential value.

A land register, ledger of accounts or systematic inventory of property belonging to ecclesiastical or manorial administrations.

An organic group of records assembled by their creator for current business or during archival arrangement because they relate to the same subject, activity or legal transaction.

See Archival box or bundle

The whole body of records, regardless of type or medium, organically produced and/or accumulated and used by a particular person, family or organisation in carrying out their activities and functions.

A finding aid that systematically describes, in greater or lesser detail, the fonds held in one or more archival institutions.

In the Middle Ages, a notebook, book or register in which notaries entered their instruments, generally in abbreviated form, before drawing them up as final originals signed by the parties and witnesses.

The physical position of an archival unit (see) within its container and repository, expressed by its archival reference code.

1) Premises in which an organisation keeps records no longer required for current business.

An archival unit consisting of a usually large group of loose records, files, notebooks or registers fastened together by sewing one edge with string and binding the resulting unit in parchment or card.