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Glossary
This glossary brings together essential terminology used in landscape architecture archives, offering clear definitions to support research, preservation, and practice. It is designed as a shared reference point for archivists, researchers, and practitioners working to unlock the cultural, environmental, and historical value embedded in archival collections.
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Archival repository
Definition: Agency or programme responsible for selecting, acquiring and preserving archives, making them available, and approving destruction of other records.
A repository is
- a space used to store items of continuing value, particularly records; a storehouse
- an institution focused on the care and storage of items of continuing value, particularly records
Notes: term is employed to cover whatever cultural materials held by an archives. To
sum up: we can use the term archival repository when speaking about a place where
things can be stored and maintained.
[including] any type of organization that holds documents, including business,
institutional, and government archives, manuscript collections, libraries, museums, and
historical societies, and in any form, including manuscripts, photographs, moving image
and sound materials, and their electronic equivalents.
Public records
Definition: A record made by a public officer or a government agency in the course of the performance of a duty, which may or may not be open to public inspection
Public records can be:
- Legal and court records
- Health records
- Education, employment and social records (ex. landscape architecture school’s records)
- Transport records
- Heritage and cultural records: records of national museums and galleries appointed to hold their own records
- Records of public heritage and cultural organisations
- Official papers of political figures, ministers
What’s not a public record:
Non-public organisations including businesses, charities, religious bodies and private individuals.
Examples:
- Family records
- Landscape architects fonds
Private records
Definition: Records in the private sector as opposed to records in the public (governmental) sector.
Private records can be:
- private individuals and family archives
- private structures (companies, unions)
- charities, religious bodies
- banking institutions
- professional bodies
- landscape architects fonds
- researchers work outside of the institution
- oral testimonies
Certain private fonds presents a particular historical interest and may be subject to a classification procedure. The public archival repositories can take private fonds by acquisition. The owners of private fonds are free to do as they want with their archival records (opposed to records in the public (governmental) sector).
Before the donation of archives (material for which legal title is transferred from one party to another without compensation), please make sur that the donation corresponds to your acquisition policy (you’ve defined scope of collecting archives) and you’ve made:
- Letter of intent (written statement confirming your intent to donate)
- Donation Agreement (the form transferring records from a private collection to the archival repository)
- Assignment of photo/image/audio/video rights
Repositories assemble the materials, preserve them and make them available for research.
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.
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 their quantity, their size and their overall volume and their resistance to handling, environmental conditions, reproduction, folding and successive use.
Users: landscape architects, students, sociologists, historians; exhibition visitors and others who may learn and benefit from the materials
Artificial Collection
Definition: An artificial body of records accumulated according to common criteria defining their content or medium, without consideration for their provenance (as opposed to a fonds, which is created in an organic process)
A collection of materials with different provenance assembled and organized to facilitate its management or use. Once items are removed from their original location, their provenance and original order is lost. The records then become an ‘artificial collection’ drawn together from diverse (and often unknown) sources.
Example: a collection may be either a body of records having a common source, usually an author or collector; or an artificial accumulation devoted to a common theme.
Archival record
Definition: Any expression in oral or written language, in images or sounds, either natural or codified, recorded in any medium, recording the existence, activities or functions of any individual or organization, with the exception of published works forming part of bibliographic resources.
Use as evidence or for consultation purposes. Archival records may be in any format, including text on paper or in electronic formats, photographs, motion pictures, videos, sound recordings. A group of records is a fonds.
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.
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 date should be mentioned – for organizations, the Establish Date and Abolish Date. People and organizations that contributed to the authorship of the series or its smaller parts, such as individual documents or reports, are called Contributors.
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.
Respecting the provenance means that documents from the same producer should be grouped together, without being mixed with others. Thus, 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).
Respect des fonds
Definition: The principle that a body of records originating from the same record creator must be preserved as a group.
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 to respect des fonds:
- respect for provenance
- respect for the integrity of the collection
- respect for the original order.
Arrangement
Definition: The principle that a body of records originating from the same record creator must be preserved as a group.
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 organizational 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.
Disposal
Definition: The actions taken with regard to noncurrent records following their appraisal and the expiration if their retention periods as provided for by legislation, regulation, or administrative procedure.
In landscape architectural archives as elsewhere, selection and disposal are necessary. In landscape architects offices as in archives repositories, uncontrolled accumulation creates clutter that hinders access to important records and useful information and endanger the preservation of essential documents and those of historical or permanent value.
Disposal is not synonymous with destruction. The manner and timing of disposal is typically described on a retention schedule (The length of time records should be kept in a certain location or form for administrative, legal, fiscal, historical, or other purposes).
It is a final state in a record’s life cycle, involving either:
- destruction
- transfer to inactive storage with destruction at a specified later date
- transfer to the archives for permanent preservation
Series Class
Definition: A group of similar records that are arranged according to a filing system and that are related as the result of being created, received, or used in the same activity. Generally used as a subordinate level of description within a fonds.
Series or class is a group of items: each with its own title, also bearing a collective title for the group as a whole.
In organizing any group of landscape architectural records, the conceptual stage is to identify the smaller groups or series of related documents into which the larger body of documents naturally is divided. Usually these smaller groups or series are recognizable because they share a single coherent organizational scheme. They can be also arranged according to the existing project/drawing type/chronological-numerical scheme. For example: series of images of the realizations, correspondence, …
File
Definition: A group of related documents treated as a single item for purposes of classification, storage, and retrieval. Generally used as a subordinate level of description within a fonds.
File in the singular generally refers to related documents that are kept together in one or a few folders. In the plural, it typically indicates a larger collection of all or part of an
organization’s records.
Examples: The administrative files of landscape architects’ offices, project files, computer files, electronic files, personnel files, files of developers and financiers
(Verbe): To store documents in an organized collection for safekeeping and future reference
Archival description
Definition: The process of capturing, analyzing, organizing, 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.
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, analyzing, 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, and
- the ways in which 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
Finding Aid
Definition: Descriptive tools containing information that establishes control over records and facilitates their retrieval.
Typically consists of contextual and structural information about an archival resource. Contains information about the collection, such as acquisition and processing, provenance, including administrative history or biographical note, scope of the collection, including size, subjects, media, organization and arrangement and an inventory of the series and the folders.
Finding aids could also describe a single level or a single item.
Elements of a finding aid:
- Title Page
- Summary Information
- Access and Use
- Related Materials
- Subject Terms/Access Points
- Background Information
- Scope and Content
- Arrangement
- Contents Listing
Acquisition policy
Definitions:
Acquisition: an addition to the holdings of a repository.
Acquisition policy: the defined scope of collecting archives.
Policy established by an archival institution to define the types of historical records that it will seek to acquire. For landscape architectural archives, this includes determining which projects or landscape architects or categories of work will be documented, and which types of record materials will be collected.
Main points:
- Public and Private Records and Institutions
- Acquisition Goals
- Acquisition principles
- Defining an Acquisition Policy
- Acquisition Methodology
Deposit
Definition: The documents covered by the action of being placed in the custody of an archives without legal transfer of title.
The deposit of archival documents implies the establishment of a contractual commitment between the depositing owner and the depositary archive: the deposit contract takes the form of a simple private deed. The deposit contract stipulates in particular the conditions of communication and reproduction. In the event that the documents are taken back by their owner, it may stipulate that the collection is to be repackaged after classification. All clauses are negotiable between the depositing owner and the depositary archive; the contract is revocable by either party.
- Deposit
- Duration: Temporary
- Cost: Free
- Formality: Revocable deposit agreement
- Legal protection regime: Depending on the depositor
- Donation
- Duration: Definitive
- Cost: Free
- Formality: Donation letter and agreement
- Legal protection regime: Inalienable, imprescriptible, and unseizable
Donation
Definition: Material for which legal title is transferred from one party to another without compensation.
Donation is 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. The donation is irrevocable.
Donor agreements may specify use restrictions, relevant policies and procedures to be used in the management of the records, or other terms on which the donor and the repository agree. It is recommended that the donation be governed by:
- Letter of intent to donate, in which the owner indicates his or her wish to pass on an
archive document or set of documents for preservation - Letter of acceptance of the donation, in which the beneficiary accepts the proposed
donation and indicates any terms and conditions for taking charge of the donation - Acceptance form signed by both the donor and the beneficiary, specifying the
purpose of the donation and includes description and material importance of the
documents - Thanks letter concluding the procedure and certifying that the archival document or
set of documents has been included in the collections held by the archive, with an
accession number
Disclosure
Definition: The permission to locate and retrieve information for use (consultation or reference) within legally established restrictions of privacy, confidentiality, and security clearance; access.
Any public archival record is destined to be communicated. However, some documents are subject to access restrictions under the Publicity or Data Protection Act, and their use requires granted access rights.
Private archives may also have access restrictions, either under the handover agreement or under legislation.
There are exceptions to this principle for certain categories of documents. They can be consulted with a special procedure known as “a derogation”.
Access policy
Definition: A policy established by an archival repository governing which historical materials will be available for research, who will be authorized to examine them, and under what conditions.
Access policy sets out how access to the archives is provided; identifies internal and external stakeholders of the archive; and highlights relevant legislation which the archival institution needs to comply with when providing access.
The archive access policy also ensures that access to the archive is consistent and fair for all users and accords to professional best practice and relevant legislation.
An original archive document can only be consulted in a controlled environment, i.e. either in a reading room or on a dedicated consultation site.
The regulations applicable in reading rooms define the human and material aspects of document access. These rules also cover the procedures for consulting and reproducing documents (reminder of the time limits of disclosure, research aids and tools, handling and copying, use of copied documents etc.).
Conservation
Definition: Professional care / treatment of items in a collection in order to ensure their long term preservation.
Conservation can be used in two means, either to explain the action of repair or stabilization of materials through chemical or physical treatment to ensure that they survive in their original form as long as possible, or
to explain the profession devoted to the preservation of cultural property for the future through examination, documentation, treatment, and preventive care, supported by research and education. These meticulous tasks ensure the conservation, readability and digitization of the documents.
Video: Newspaper Conservation at the Bibliothèque nationale France (BnF)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4gXnUWOfIj/
Source: Bibliothèque nationale France (BnF), Instagram
Custody
Definition: Care, and control, especially for security and preservation
Legal custody can be described as the ownership and the responsibility for creating policy governing access to materials, regardless of their physical location.
Physical custody adds a term possession of records, and may be coupled with legal custody.
Custodial history can be used to describe both physical possession and intellectual ownership and to provide details of changes of ownership or custody that are significant in terms of authority, integrity, and interpretation.