(4744,3,'2013-06-18 01:25:54','2013-06-18 01:25:54','<b>Introduction</b>\r\n\r\nIn her article, “Disciplinarity and Disorder,” in Issue 1 of this journal, Gabrielle Dean opens her essay with a detailed and expressive “fantasy” describing the “primal scene of archival research [that] takes place in a dreary reading room,” featuring an archivist, a researcher, a cart, dusty gray boxes, and a “numbered file folder.” As her fantasy takes flight, with the researcher scribbling away and papers swirling and new collections sprouting up organically, she crafts an evocative metaphor for the life cycle of preservation and regeneration that archivists aim to enable through access to primary sources. Dean cogently deconstructs the origins and implications of this “primal scene” over the course of her essay. But what also merits highlighting in her opening metaphor are the accoutrements that populate it—the cart, the box, the file folder—familiar players on the stage of the archival encounter. These objects and symbols are evocative of that idealized moment of archaeological discovery that characterizes the use of the archive. They are objects and symbols of history, certainly, but relics, alas, of an analog age.\r\n\r\nA similar fantasy, one potentially more fraught with anxiety and dread, must darken the reveries of archivists as they attempt to provide access to more contemporary materials. A daydream involving the researcher of tomorrow may instead feature dreadful moments of “file cannot be opened” error messages, of FTP transfers gone awry, of decaying media orphaned from long-lost playback devices. Our imaginary researcher will not be awaiting archival discovery sitting in a dreary reading room, but instead exist in some networked who-knows-where, furiously emailing an endless stream of access and transfer request and constantly griping about obsolete formats and buggy interfaces. At the same time, our imaginary archivist will not be pushing carts or shelving boxes, but creating user accounts for virtual reading rooms, running pattern-recognition text-mining queries, uploading disk images, or helping users with emulation software. Like the content of our archives themselves, the props and symbols of our archival fantasies increasingly will be associated with born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nHow will traditional principles of archival arrangement and description be challenged or modified to account for born-digital materials? Arrangement and description have long been the primary method of facilitating the use of archives, and their methodologies have been dependent upon the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. The articulation of this theory in 1841 has been held as the “starting point” or beginning of the modern era of archival theory, a “watershed” event establishing the “basic principle” and “very core” of the archival endeavor. Superlatives abound. <i>Respect des fonds</i>, “more than any other principle, has come to provide the archival profession with a unique identity.” ((Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” in <i>Bibliographical Foundations of French Historical Studies</i> (New York: Haworth Press, 1992), 108.))\r\n\r\nBut <i>respect des fonds</i> was born of a particular historic moment, for a particular type of archival document, and was conceived to address the practical needs of specific social circumstances. Even as <i>respect des fonds</i> has mutated and evolved over the decades, subject to revisions, contestations, and reaffirmations, its methodologies have largely been a product of the nature of the archival record as a physical document to be sorted, grouped, and described after receipt from a single donating entity. In an era defined by digital materials and their affordances and limitations, one in which narrative linearity often seems replaced by data-driven relationalism, the meaning of <i>respect des fonds</i> is ever more slippery.\r\n\r\nBroadly stated, <i>respect des fonds</i> is the principle of grouping records by the administration, organization, individual, or creating body in which they originated. <i>Respect des fonds</i> mandates that the records of the creating entity not be mixed with those of a different entity. It prioritizes the “organic” nature of archival records, identifying the locus of their generation, and the evidence their consolidation provides about that originating body, as essential to preserving and maintaining context. Comprised of the related “principle of original order” and “the principle of provenance,” <i>respect des fonds</i> displaced prior methods of archival arrangement that were predicated upon classifications by subject, function, topic, legal utility, chronology, and other categories. Though often referenced as a core component of archival identity, as a theoretical concept, <i>respect des fonds</i> is, as one writer says, “elusive and oft-misunderstood.” ((Dan Zelenyj, “Linchpin Imperilled: The Functional Interpretation of Series and the Principle of Respect des Fonds,” <i>Archivaria</i> 42 (1996): 126.))\r\n\r\nThe introduction of born-digital records into the archives offers an opportunity to examine how the practical methodologies of arrangement and description are shifting and how those changing practices lead to a reconsideration of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Much as digital records’ technological dependencies, ease of duplication, and subordination to features of systems and storage have led to a reassessment of the existing precepts of archival appraisal and selection, they also prompt a similar analysis of arrangement and description. One of those axioms due reassessment is the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i>.\r\n\r\nThis essay details the social and material conditions of the emergence of <i>respect des fonds</i>, the theory’s complex practical implementations and contested assumption, the emergence of alternate models, and how born-digital materials illuminate the theory’s analog origins and limitations. I will also explain the specific qualities of digital objects, including the nature of inscription and its impact on notions of original order and authenticity, as well as how nonlinear retrieval supplants the narrative logic of <i>respect des fonds</i> with a broader notion of context and discoverability. I will then consider recent interpretive methods, such as data visualization and text mining, as potential harbingers of new modes of representing and creating interfaces to digital collections—representations that better capitalize on the possibilities of digital materials. Finally, I will argue that the affordances of born-digital archives—such as their potential for parallel representation, machine-enabled interpretation, and expansive contextual and intellectual availability—provoke a reconsideration of the place of privilege of <i>respect des fonds </i>in archival arrangement and description.\r\n\r\n<b>The Old Regime</b>\r\n\r\nBefore <i>respect des</i> <i>fonds</i> can be respected, disrespected, or neglected, a better understanding of its origins is warranted, along with an examination of how the principle has (or has not) been applied and its periodic contestation. The seductive purity of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> often overshadows the concept’s decidedly complex origins. <i>Respect des fonds</i> as a guiding method of archival control was never as ennobled an idea as its contemporary evocation often implies. Its original articulation was mired in professional infighting, reductive practicalities, and the tumult and disorganization of political change.\r\n\r\nWhile we can find records grouped according to creator in some earlier instances, ((Luciana Duranti, “Origin and Development of Archival Description,” <i>Archivaria</i> 35 (1993): 50.)) the formal articulation of the concept of <i>respect des fonds</i> was, like much of modernity, a by-product of the French Revolution. The Revolution featured a simultaneous destruction and reconstruction of the archive, an attempt to both erase and recast the historical record. Most famously, when revolutionaries stormed the Bastille they destroyed its documentary contents—records that instantiated the subjugation and exploitation of the despised monarchy. [IMAGE1]\r\n\r\nYet the revolutionaries’ also scrupulously preserved the record of their own activities. The <i>Archives Nationales</i> was established in 1790, with a head archivist, hours designated for the general public, and a centralized administration tasked both with preserving the legacy of the new government and managing select records of the Old Regime. Those tasks, however, were segregated in ways that impacted how each class of documents was handled. Records of the National Assembly were to be scrupulously maintained, while feudal titles were widely destroyed. As one Minster put it, “all the old documents with gothic script are … only legal titles of feudalism, of the subjection of the feeble to the strong.” ((As cited in Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development since the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 3, no. 3 (1940): 162.))\r\n\r\nThe management of archives during this time was chaotic. Property records were sent to one administrative body within the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, legal records to another, and documents of historical interest went to the <i>Bibliotheque Nationales</i>. At the same time, archivists were tasked with maintaining a distinction between records documenting pre- and post-Revolutionary activities. In addition, the first two administrative heads of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, Armand-Gaston Camus and Pierre Daunou, were both trained as librarians and had, by the early 1800s, established twenty-four “groupings” of records into which future accessions were to be integrated. Within these groups, additional classifications and intellectual methods of ordering existed. The archives, then, were “arranged in accordance with an arbitrarily devised ‘methodical’ scheme that was derived from library experience.” ((T. R Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archive : Principles and Techniques</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 169.)) As well, political tumult and instability of governance continued to have an impact on the arrangement of the archives, and “decisions about preservation, classification, inventory, and access were therefore the result not just of practical considerations or the opinions of individual archivists and librarians, but also of key shifts in national politics.” ((Lara Moore, <i>Restoring Order: The Ecole Des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870</i> (Duluth, Minnesota: Litwin Books, 2008), 17.))\r\n\r\n<b>The Origins of <i>Respect des Fonds</i></b>\r\n\r\nWhile the true extent of records destruction during the post-Revolutionary years is disputed, ((Carl Lokke, “Archives and the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 31, no. 1 (January 1968): 30-31.)) as Judith Panitch notes, “this chaotic episode of archival history reveals much about archives themselves, suggesting specifically their fundamental fragility and malleability.” ((Judith Panitch, “Liberty, equality, posterity? Some Archival Lessons from the Case of the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 59, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 33.)) That malleability is evident in the conflicting approaches to archival arrangement and description that characterized this era, practices that lead up to the declaration of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Records of the time were arranged primarily by sometimes-quixotic methods of classification, by schema idiosyncratic in origin and inconsistent in application. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 167.))\r\n\r\nA number of developments in the next few decades pushed this lack of uniformity to its breaking point and helped impel the conceptualization of <i>respect des fonds</i> as an archival principle, if, as I will show, less of an actual practice. The establishment of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> in 1821 created a formal institution to train archivists to staff both the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and the over 2500 provincial archives across France. Laws passed in the 1830s also drastically expanded the number of archivists mandated to work both in the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and in the provincial archives. Formal training and new positions, however, when combined with lax oversight and inconsistent guidance on practices, led, predictably, to a near-comic proliferation of methods of classification and arrangement. [IMAGE2] Due to the proliferation of classification systems and schema, change was inevitable.\r\n\r\nThat change came in the form of the infamous “Circular no. 14,” released in 1841 by Natalis de Wailly, Administrative Head of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>. This document is recognized as the first articulation of the fonds as the fundamental method of archival arrangement, the purpose of which was “to form a collection of all the documents which originate from a body, an organization, a family or an individual, and to arrange the different fonds according to a certain order.” ((As quoted in Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 107.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> made creatorship the organizing principle of archival records and espoused the formation of collections according to the organization, entity, family, or individual responsible for their creation. Such an arrangement would ensure, as one writer later put it, the essential need “to know where it [the archival document] was created, in the framework of what process, to what end, for whom, when and how it was received by the addressee, and how it came into our hands.” ((Michael Duchein, “Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des fonds in Archival Science,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 67.))\r\n\r\nHowever, as Nancy Bartlett has explicated, this “watershed” moment was less momentous than contemporary evocations suggest. For one, de Wailly’s circular dictated “that <i>respect des fonds</i> was prescribed only for archival records created prior to 1789.” More contemporary fonds were to continue to be arranged categorically. In addition, minutes from subsequent meetings of the commission overseeing the work of archivists—a commission on which de Wailly served—reveal that “<i>respect des fonds</i> was if nothing more a preliminary standard for archival arrangement and description in departmental archives, a means of insuring that beginning archivists without the benefit of direct supervision might not cause too much intellectual damage to vulnerable records in their care.” ((Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 111.))\r\n\r\nThe principle was, in fact, a practical exigency, a method to simplify archival arrangement seen as more easily implemented by novice archivists than the more rigorous arrangement by classification. Bartlett also notes that <i>respect des fonds</i> remained absent from both the curriculum of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> as well as the publications of the professional society of its graduates. Lastly, the principle was, at the time, not applied to accessions into the <i>Archive Nationales</i> itself, as it operated under a different administrative department than de Wailly’s Interior Ministry.\r\n\r\n<i>Respect des fonds</i>, then, was never a perfectly realized theory. Its formation was a contingency of a unique historical moment; its conception depended upon practical necessities and its implementation was inconsistent and disputed. What today seems near dogma—that archives be arranged by fonds—was at the time novel and simplistic, more the product of utility and political manipulation than a grand inspiration regarding the functional authenticity of fonds or evidential purity towards their arrangement.\r\n\r\n<b>The Original Original Order</b>\r\n\r\nThough implemented inconsistently in its home country, the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained a wide acceptance across Europe. In Prussia, the theory (known as <i>Provenienzprinzip,</i> the principle of provenance) mandated that “official papers are to be maintained in the order and with the designations which they received in the course of the official activity of the agency concerned.” ((Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archives</i>, 175.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> received its most elaborate and sustained justification, and expansion, however, in the Netherlands, where the Dutch archivists Muller, Feith, and Fruin produced their famous <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> in 1898. Often referred to colloquially as the “Dutch Manual” and seen as the “starting point of archival theory and methodology,” ((Peter Horsman, Eric Ketelaar, and Theo Thomassen, “New Respect for the Old Order: The Context of the Dutch Manual,” <i>The American Archivist </i>66, no. 2 (2003): 249.)) the work provided a detailed set of guidelines for the arrangement of records. The principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained even wider acceptance and popularity after its ratification at the First International Congress of Archivists meeting in Brussels in 1910. ((Lawrence D. Geller, “Joseph Cuvelier, Belgian Archival Education, and the First International Congress of Archivists, Brussels, 1910,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 16. Proceedings from the 1910 meeting can be found online at <a href=\"http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/\">http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/</a>.)) [IMAGE3]\r\n\r\nThe Dutch Manual, and the methodologies implemented in its wake, not only forbid the intermingling of the fonds of one agency with those of another—in keeping with the French conception of <i>respect des fonds</i>—but also expanded the theory to apply to the records within each fond—the internal arrangement of the archival collection. Or as the Dutch Manual put it, “the system of arrangement must be based on the original organization of the archival collection.” ((Samuel Muller, Johan Adriaan Feith, and Robert Fruin, <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> (H.W. Wilson Co., 1968), 52.)) This concept has come to be known as the “principle of original order,” an intra-fonds corollary to the external means of arrangement associated with the principle of provenance; <i>respect des fonds</i> encompasses both principles.\r\n\r\nA closer examination of the Dutch Manual, however, reveals certain methodological impracticalities that even its authors admit. First, they claim that the original order within a fonds may be modified or “restored” to account for multiple transfers from an agency, not all of which may truly represent the idealized “original order.” As well, records may be reorganized to account for “inconsequential irregularities attributable to record-keeping officials.” The authors also note that reconstituting the original order may be avoided when “the trouble which would have to be taken in order to reconstruct the old organization is out of proportion to the result to be obtained.” ((Muller et al., <i>Manual</i>, 83.)) Needless to say, the simple idea of “restoring original order” seems itself problematic, fraught with subjective decision-making likely far removed from whatever idealized “organic” origin archivists may discover within fonds. The complicated approach to “restoration” and “reconstruction” that the Dutch Manual advises often borders on, as one writer put it, “abandoning entirely their carefully developed ethic of conservation.” ((Frank Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” <i>The American Archivist </i>45, no. 1 (1982): 28.))\r\n\r\n<b>Critique des Fonds</b>\r\n\r\nThe widespread adoption <i>of respect des fonds</i> did not proceed unquestioned, however. As early as the 1930s, some archivists were taking issue with the methodology of arranging collections according to original order. In his survey of the development of archival theory, Ernst Posner points to the German Max Bar and two Swedish archivists who demonstrated “that slavish preservation of the original arrangement of a fonds is often insufficient,” the principle of provenance “is subject to certain restrictions” that make blanket adoption impractical, and adherence to <i>respect des fonds</i> often impedes use of archival materials. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 169.))\r\n\r\nSome Australian and American archivists in the 1960s, primarily Peter Scott and Mario Fenyo, challenged the definition of fonds even further. The problems with the traditional concept of the fonds were manifold. Defining fonds as the records of a “transferring or controlling agency” was problematic since the agent of transfer was not always the creating agency. Fonds could also be mixed or “broken” into multiple transfers to an archive, making reconstitution difficult. Fonds could also be the result of “a succession of agencies,” blurring true creatorship. Ordering series within fonds was difficult since future accessions may need to be inserted at different places in the existing organizational system, leading to physical disorder or the constant revision of finding aids or inventories. After reviewing minutes of early NARA meetings in an attempt to define what, exactly, constitutes a fonds, Fenyo succinctly pointed out, “no one knows what the word fonds means, not even the French who invented it.” ((Mario D. Fenyo, “The Record Group Concept: A Critique,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 2 (April 1966): 230.)) For Scott, his belief that “the very arbitrariness of the concept [of the fonds] is sufficient to make one question its usefulness,” ((Peter Scott, “The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 4 (October 1966): 497.)) led him to develop the “series system” [IMAGE4] which sought to orient arrangement and description according to function and use instead of agent or material type—a theory that, Terry Cook noted, “shifted the entire archival description enterprise from a static cataloging mode to a dynamic system of multiple interrelationships.” ((Terry Cook, “What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift,” <i>Archivaria</i> 43 (1999): 38.))\r\n\r\nThe principle of original order underwent a similar critique. A lack of clarity on the custodianship of records prior to their delivery to an archive, the problem of multiple and ongoing accessions, and the potential for incoherent or unknown methods of ordering or classification by creating bodies all led Fenyo to proclaim, “archivists generally believe that the arrangement of series within a record group reflects to some extent the organization and even history of the agency that created those records.… But the records in the National Archives reflect no such thing.” ((Fenyo, \"The Record Group Concept,\" 236.)) For archives consisting of personal papers, original order is seen as particularly problematic, since a chronological arrangement seemingly provides the greatest meaning and value to the records of an individual, but is unlikely to be the order of records upon accession. Restoration of original order also risks destroying the contextual information accrued by collections that have passed through multiple states of custodianship prior to their acceptance into the archive. ((Debra Barr, “Protecting Provenance: Response to the Report of the Working Group on Description at the Fonds Level,” <i>Archivaria</i> 28 (Summer 1989): 141-145. See also Robert Edwards, “‘With Respect to Original Order’: Changing Values in Archival Arrangement,” <i>Archives Association of British Columbia</i> 11, no. 1 (Winter 2001).)) Lastly, the principle of original order prioritizes filing systems of unknown or dubious legitimacy over the principle of use or accessibility. As Frank Boles states, “usability acknowledges the evidential superiority of documents over filing systems by placing primary emphasis on access to documents.” ((Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” 31.)) In this critique, usability and original order are often in conflict.\r\n\r\n<b>Of Bonds and Parallels</b>\r\n\r\nOther conceptual models besides the series system have attempted to address these critiques by forming new ideas about how order or grouping can evidence archival authenticity, identity, and meaning. One theory to articulate the interrelations of individual records can be found in Luciana Duranti’s notion of the archival bond, which she defines as the “network of relations that each record has with the records belonging in the same aggregation.” ((Luciana Duranti, “The Archival Bond,” <i>Archives and Museum Informatics</i> 11 (1997): 213-18.)) Not to be confused with context, which exists outside the record, the archival bond, for Duranti, is core to the identity of the record. As she states, “documents that are expressions of a transaction are not records until they are put into relation with other records.” ((Ibid., 216.)) Emerging from research into the authenticity of electronic records (including the InterPARES project), the archival bond identifies a web of documentary co-dependencies that presumes an inheritance and relationship between records based on functional proximity. ((“The InterPARES Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://www.interpares.org\">www.interpares.org</a>.))\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most exhaustive attempt to deal with many difficulties that exist within the gulf between <i>respect des fonds</i> as principle and practice was undertaken by Michel Duchein in 1983. ((Duchein, \"Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems,\" 64–82.)) While Duchein proposes solutions to the many problems of the fonds concept, the reader cannot help but be overwhelmed by the fact that his cataloging of the “theoretical problems” and “practical difficulties” far outnumber, and begin to drown out, his proposed solutions. For Duchein, within fonds there can be all sorts of nebulous, arbitrary, and forgotten methods of classification “from which all imaginable disorders flow.” He calls these, in a poetic moment, “brutal manipulations.” ((Ibid., 77.)) But after this disquisition, on the last page of his article Duchein mentions one idea that seems if not prescient, then at least transitive in the way it conceives of context: the <i>parallelismus membrorum</i>, “the similarity of parallel files.” <i>Parallelismus membrorum</i> is a rhetorical term referring to the patterns within a text formed by the utilization of repeated grammatical structures. (“I came. I saw. I conquered,” is a brief example). Duchein here employs the motif to refer to the contextual relations that exist between records of different fonds, the network of meanings that stretch across the archive.\r\n\r\nChris Hurley explored an idea similar to <i>parallelismus membrorum</i> in his delineation of “parallel provenance” a concept built around “composing different things from the same particles—combining things in different ways to produce a variety of views of what they look like in the aggregate … not so much about identifying a different creator as recognizing manifold context.” ((Chris Hurley, “Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?,” <i>Archives and Manuscripts</i> 33, no. 1 (2005): 126.)) [IMAGE5] Other contemporary writers, such as Laura Millar and Geoffrey Yeo, have sought to stretch the meaning of the fonds even further, arguing it exists purely at the conceptual level. ((Geoffrey Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds and the Physical Collection,” <i>Archivaria</i> 73 (Spring 2012): 43-91; Laura Millar, “The Death of the Fonds and the Resurrection of Provenance: Archival Context in Space and Time,” <i>Archivaria</i> 53 (Spring 2002): 1-15.)) But as the definition of the fonds becomes more distant, more abstract, its privileging as a form of aggregation seems less certain, especially in a digital environment in which creatorship is but one of many means of grouping records.\r\n\r\nThe archival bond, the series system, <i>parallelismus membrorum, </i>and parallel provenance all mark attempts to theorize relationships between records and collections in ways that can elide the practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Equally, these ideas represent a continued expansion of context beyond the limitations of grouping by creatorship or creator-derived order. In each case, similarities and dependencies emerge out of cross-collection networks or semantically derived principles. As the models gain distance from the vagaries of the individual records, one starts to recognize a familiar pattern of removal—not a disjunction, exactly, but a subtle passage from the material trace to the abstract representation. The familiarity is borne of the similar movement from item to representation that characterizes electronic records and their attendant phenomenological tension between the physical inscription on a drive and the symbolic interface on a screen.\r\n\r\n<b>Bit Level Processing</b>\r\n\r\nBut enough of models. Consider instead the bit, the binary, the magnetic flux reversal of the spinning disk that is the origin of the digital object. Material inscription offers a good point to segue into an examination of digital records and how they both complicate or even circumvent historical notions of <i>respect des fonds </i> while at the same time enabling realization of a more expansive notion of context and interrelation.\r\n\r\nStarting at the bit level, the characteristics of inscription (how digital information is written onto storage media) call into question the idea of original order. When data is written to a storage device, it has a material, physical trace, but that trace is far from the legibility or interpretability we associate with analog documents. As Matt Kirschenbaum has noted in his study of new media and digital forensics, “we write <i>on</i> paper, but we write <i>to</i> a magnetic disk (or tape)”; the semantic difference signifies that the act of inscription is “logically distinct” from the act of creation and intellectual manipulation. ((Matt Kirschenbaum, <i>Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination</i> (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 87. Emphasis in original.)) [IMAGE 6] In addition, a key component of storage media is that it is random access; that means the bits composing a record are inscribed to available clusters across the platter of a drive depending on which tracks and sectors are available for inscription. That is, the component bits of a digital object are non-sequential in their material physical arrangement. Aggregated, they can create an interpretable object, but their component location is nonlinear. Here, even at the bit level of a single item, there is no original order. Furthermore, each time these bits are reconstructed, each time the file is accessed and translated into an interpretable, editable representation, the file will be altered in minute ways (for instance, a file’s “last opened” date) and thus be composed of a new order as new bits are assigned to other available areas of the disk. As Kirschenbaum notes, quoting a dictum of forensic science, “every contact leaves a trace.” The act of interpreting a digital object, thus, continually alters its material order.\r\n\r\nMoving beyond the non-sequential arrangement of bits of individual records, but remaining at the forensic level, other features of the digital environment challenge long-standing presumptions of authenticity and uniqueness that are dependent upon physical arrangement or description. Temporary files, such as those stored by auto-save or recovery programs, mean that a drive can contain multiple versions of identical files, many of them beyond the management (or even awareness) of their creator. This “ambient data” is matched by other features of data dispersal throughout a storage system, such as “swap space” (disk space sometimes allocated for use by RAM) and “disk slack” (which accounts for the difference between the actual file size and the disk space used for storage) that themselves complicate ideas of order and linearity. Storage becomes a hidden, dynamic world in which physical arrangement on a spinning drive consists of the equivalent of dispersed crevices, hidey-holes, and secret areas where data proliferates. Kirschenbaum asserts, “there is, in short, no simple way to know how many instances of a single file are residing in how many states, in how many different locations, at any given moment in the operating system.” ((Ibid., 52.)) As well, digital objects themselves have the potential to contain trace data that, while possibly not achieving the singular identity of a record, can have evidential value or help establish provenance.\r\n\r\nTake, for instance, Kirschenbaum’s exploration of a floppy disk image, in which he finds evidence of how the storage media was used over time and what its hidden and partially deleted data can manifest about its user: “[W]e discover on the original diskette the incompletely overwritten remains of previous software … a piece of 1980s software culture frozen in allographic amber.” ((Ibid., 140.)) Discovering this legacy information reveals multiple levels of creatorship and a trail of ownership and social and cultural meaning that extend beyond the object, the creator, or the fonds. In this case, the unintentionally preserved (by the user, at least) data provides a testament to its origins that is not visible in the individual files themselves. Here provenance is not a result of aggregation or description but a characteristic of how digital information is created and transmitted. Context is not just relational, implied, or conceptualized, but can be a part of the very media itself, like secret, half-formed barnacles clinging to the vessel of the digital record. Incomplete but decipherable. Fragmentary but meaningful. Allographic amber.\r\n\r\n<b>Fonds Essentialism</b>\r\n\r\nNeedless to say, most people do not interact with digital information at the forensic level. In Kenneth Thibodeau’s useful model, digital objects are compounds, composed of a physical, logical, and conceptual object. Respectively, those adjectives refer to the physical inscription on storage media; the logical suite of translational software and processes that access and “read” that inscription; and the conceptual object the user interacts with, such as the text, image, or interface on a screen. ((Kenneth Thibodeau, “Overview of Technological Approaches to Digital Preservation and Challenges in Coming Years,” in <i>The State of Digital Preservation: An International Perspective</i> (Washington D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2002).)) The conceptual object—the representational environment of the screen as experienced in the word processing program, the image editor, the social media app—inculcates its own affordances and logic on the creation or use of records. In fact, given the hidden, inscrutable nature of storage and inscription, the formal representation of digital objects on a screen can have an outsized influence on their creation, management, and perception—an interpretive tendency that Nick Montford calls “screen essentialism.” Considering the extensive influence that the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i> has had, historically, on how archival collections are arranged and described, a similar predilection may characterize the archival enterprise—call it <i>fonds essentialism</i>.\r\n\r\nThe conceptual object—the screen—presents its own challenges to the implied narrative of current modes of archival description. The way that a user interacts with an aggregation of digital materials is fundamentally different from how a user would interact with a set of document boxes or a finding aid. The screen imposes its own logic, its own “formal regimen,” in Kirschenbaum’s terms, on how digital objects are interpreted or accessed, but also how they are described. Traditional archival representation for analog materials emerges from a narrative: a story about what a collection is, what it holds, and the order and location of its contents. It moves through a descriptive summary of contextual detail and administrative information and on to a hierarchy of series and subseries often arranged by type, function, chronology, or other broad categories. Papers, folders, boxes, and series must be arranged in physical space, after all, and that comes to shape how they are arranged in the intellectual space of description. A finding aid is a narrative to be read and its intellectual availability is largely linear and structural. The conceptual object of the digital record and the interface to an aggregation of digital records offer quite a different type of interaction.\r\n\r\nText mining and hyperlinks are simple examples of ways to navigate large groups of materials absent a singular narrative sequence. Lev Manovich, in theorizing new media, has noted that the database (or, the database logic) has supplanted narrative as the method of interacting with digital information. In new media, “narrative becomes just one method of accessing data among others,” and digital information assumes “the projection of the ontology of a computer onto culture itself.” ((Lev Manovich, “Database as a Genre of New Media,” <i>Journal of A&amp;I Society</i> 14, no. 2 (May 2000): 176-77.)) In a database, objects are related but not ordered. The database logic is nonlinear and there is no original order because order is dependent upon query. Search and navigation become algorithm-dependent and not predetermined by a creator, an archivist, or a static finding aid—though all of those organizations are themselves available. Digital objects will have an identifier, yes, but where they “rest” in intellectual space is contingent, mutable. The key point is that, even at the level of representation, arrangement is dynamic: access and representation need not depend on the fonds. Description becomes relational as well and can extend beyond individual aggregations of records. The logic of physical space no longer drives retrieval or predominates in description. Original order and provenance are not lost or obviated in this model, but they are not the exclusive means of access, either.\r\n\r\n<b>Recent Practices</b>\r\n\r\nCase studies from projects handling significant amounts of born-digital records provide insight into the theoretical and practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. As the Emory University project asked of the born-digital content in its Salmon Rushdie acquisition, “Would we treat the born-digital files the same as print material? Would we impose any sort of arrangement on the materials? How much added description could we provide? As the following discussion will reveal, the application of archival theory and principles may shift to accommodate the differences between paper and born-digital archives.” ((Laura Carroll et al., “A Comprehensive Approach to Born-Digital Archives,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 72.)) Or, as the large-scale, born-digital Vancouver Olympics project team put it, “core archival activities may diverge from long-established practices when moving into the digital environment.” ((Courtney C. Mumma, Glenn Dingwall, and Sue Bigelow, “A First Look at the Acquisition and Appraisal of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Fonds: Or, SELECT * FROM VANOC_Records AS Archives WHERE Value=‘true’;,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 93.)) Along with the multi-institutional AIMS project and the PARADIGM (Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media) project in the UK, these case studies detail the practical issues involved in rethinking arrangement and description in born-digital archives. ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/</a>; Paradigm project, “Workbook on Digital Private Papers,” The Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (Paradigm) Project, accessed October 2012,  <a href=\"http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html\">http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html</a>.))\r\n\r\nTaken together, the projects provide an overview of how arrangement may look in entirely born-digital collections. All note the difficulty in parsing user-generated description and the often quixotic or meaningless nature of directory structures and naming. The projects largely employed filtering, text mining, and other cross-record queries to determine the content of most files. The sheer volume of files contained in accessions precluded any item-level content review or hierarchical rearrangement; yet, at the same time, “the creation of file and item descriptions and inventories is not only easier and faster, it yields much richer information.… What takes hours or days to perform in the paper environment takes mere seconds to accomplish in the digital environment, and is done to a greater level of detail.” ((Mumma et al., \"A First Look,\" 115-16.))\r\n\r\nThough the many technical processes necessary for format validation, emulation, automated metadata extraction, and other methods of processing born-digital archives are too complex to be fully recounted here, these case studies point to their key characteristics. [VIDEO 1] Arrangement, as we think of it, is no longer a process of imposing intellectualized hierarchies or physical relocation; instead, it becomes largely automated, algorithmic, and batch processed. At the same time, archival representation will build upon the affordances of the digital objects themselves to extract and compile metadata that can then be repurposed to bridge and augment a wealth of contextual relations far beyond the order of their creation and their agency of origin.\r\n\r\n<b>Visual Descriptions</b>\r\n\r\nAs the “logical associations of records extend beyond the records themselves and embrace relations with other entities in the wider world,” as Geoffrey Yeo puts it, archivists will be tasked with building interfaces that draw upon these aforementioned possibilities and linking them to the online interfaces through which records will be made available. ((Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds,” 71.)) The interface thus becomes the “critical element in the interaction between documentary evidence and its consumers.” ((Margaret Hedstrom, “Archives, Memory, and Interfaces with the Past,” <i>Archival Science</i> 2, no. 1-2 (2002): 24.))\r\n\r\nSince few archives are accessioning entirely born-digital collections, it is difficult to find archival examples of a description for such a collection. Born-digital content that is currently being processed is usually a small portion of a larger physical collection and, as such, is integrated in a hybrid fashion into traditional finding aids; see, for instance, \"<a href=\"http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt9p3038mq/\">Series 8: Born digital files</a>,\" \"<a href=\"http://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/rushdie1000/\">Series 11: Computers and related devices</a>,\" or \"<a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">Series 13: Computer files</a>.\"\r\n\r\nThere are, however, some archival projects, as well as work in the digital humanities, that offer a window into how researchers and scholars are making using of large sets of digital data. While the data sets and digital records being utilized are not necessarily archival collections, the tools, methods of inquiry, and cross-collection, multi-institutional repositories that emerge from these projects presage both how entirely born-digital archives may come to be used and what digital archival collection interfaces may look like in the future.\r\n\r\nTwo projects taking an innovative, insightful approach to exploring archival collections through the mining of large archival corpora are The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online and Cameron Blevins’s work text mining and topic modeling Martha Ballard’s diary. ((The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online can be found at <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/\">http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/</a>, and the associated Criminal Intent project can be found at <a href=\"http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/\">http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/</a>. Cameron Blevin’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary can be found online at <a href=\"http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/\">http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/</a> and at <a href=\"http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml\">http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml</a>.)) The Old Bailey Proceedings provides access to nearly 200,000 digitized trial records from London’s criminal courts, spans almost 250 years, allows full text searching, and has an API through which users can query the archive. The With Criminal Intent project has built a suite of related tools that can help perform data-mining projects using this archive. [IMAGE7] This project measures and visualizes trends over time as a means of revealing historical themes, building and revealing new narratives, and providing insights into the past through data-driven analysis.\r\n\r\nBlevins’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary features a different collection, a single diary by an eighteenth-century housewife composed of almost 10,000 entries from 1785 to 1812. This project aspires to a similar goal of revealing novel insights into, and interpretations of, historical material through the ability of digital tools to mine vast sets of information. Blevins uses topic modeling—an algorithmic method that searches word patterns and groupings throughout large collections of texts (for Ballard’s diary, each entry was treated as a different “text”)—to chart and track thematic trends across the diary. A similar approach has been taken by the Mining the Dispatch project, which examines changing sentiments toward the Civil War over the course of six years (over 112,000 items) in the Richmond, Virginia <i>Daily Dispatch</i> newspaper. ((“Mining the Dispatch,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/\">http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/</a>.)) [IMAGE8]\r\n\r\nThese projects may fall under the broader rubric of the digital humanities, and the collections they are working with may not be archival collections in the traditional sense, but they offer a glimpse of the discovery, navigation, exploration, and analytic tools that foreshadow uses of digital archival collections. Other initiatives have sought to build upon the network of social relations that influence records creation. The SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context) Project “provides access to the socio-historical contexts ([including] people, families, and corporate bodies) in which the records were created” through the use of the EAC-CPF standard that describes corporate bodies, persons, and families. ((“SNAC: The Social Networks and Archival Context Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/\">http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/</a>.)) Early results show a promising method for using social context for discovery and interpretation. [IMAGE9] The archivists at Stanford University who are managing the Robert Creeley collection, which contains a significant quantity of born-digital content, especially emails, have used the custom-built MUSE tool for exploring semantic patterns in email archives. ((The Robert Creeley collection can be found at <a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html</a>. For more information on the MUSE tool visit <a href=\"http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/\">http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/</a>.)) [IMAGE10] Similarly, other projects have explored building unique visual interfaces to archival collections that extend contextual relations across collections, archives, and disciplines. [VIDEO 2]\r\n\r\nWhat distinguishes these projects from archival representations of old is that context and meaning are not exclusively provided through descriptive, narrative details that precede an arrangement and location list, but instead through networks, inter-linkages, modeling, and content analysis. Users can move dynamically within a collection and laterally across collections. Search, query, and tools like topic modeling also allow the user to build their own patterns and hierarchies for discovery. In this view, archival description still plays a crucial role in providing information on what something is or how it came to be created, but no longer is the fonds or idea of original order the sole determinant of representation.\r\n\r\n<b>Conclusion</b>\r\n\r\nAs Luciana Duranti has noted, archival description “has been carried out or not carried out depending on specific needs and conditions, attitudes and requirements, and its products have consistently reflected the conceptions about archives held by the society of the time.” ((Duranti, “Origin and Development,” 53.)) In the physical world of items, folders, boxes, and shelves, the archive must be sorted, ordered, and stored sequentially in space. Those properties, along with social, cultural, and political attitudes have driven how archival arrangement and description are theorized and practiced. Indeed, description itself has always had to serve multiple purposes: to provide historical or biographical information, scope and content detail, physical location for retrieval, administrative information for ongoing management, and restrictions and material types governing use. In a sense, description itself is a compound object, tugged between the needs of physical arrangement, intellectual representation, and user expectation. The properties of digital records allow archivists to revisit that negotiation. At the same time, other qualities of digital information, like the forensic disk image, have the potential to preserve both a mechanical version of “order” as well as provenancial and contextual information that formerly were provided through description. File fixity, forensic imaging, directory manifests, and auto-generated metadata may all come to play a larger role in defining provenance.\r\n\r\nWe disrespect des fonds, then, not as an act of elimination or insubordination, but in order to bring other contextual relations to its same level of privilege. Consider it less a disrespect, perhaps, than a humbling; or, instead, consider it a reaffirmation that the multiplicity of meanings possible with digital records can be better realized through an ongoing interrogation of archival traditions of arrangement and description. In rethinking <i>respect des fonds</i>, we gain a better awareness of the extent to which the material affordances of paper records have had an undue influence on how we conceptualize and practice grouping and describing collections. Bits, however, are fundamentally different at the material and symbolic levels. The use of digital objects is different as well, influenced by computational processing, algorithmic query, automation, and dynamism, not to mention social conditions, user expectations, technology dependencies, storage requirements, and a host of other characteristics of how we create and use technology.\r\n\r\nParallels and bonds, series and topics, models and paradigms; at times these concepts have collided and resulted in a seeming antagonism between ideas like original order and random access, historical contingency and abstract principle, finding aid and dynamic query. But there have been similarities too: how the tension between record and representation mirrors that of inscription and screen; and how the component nature of digital objects resembles the component purpose of traditional archival description. To entrench methods of arrangement and description borne of the qualities of physical collections is to disregard the potential expansion of context that digital information can support. In recognizing how historically and socially contingent traditional practices (and the theories spawning those practices) were, we better recognize their potential dysfunction in a time of born-digital records. This is not to say that we should discard the idea of the fonds or the utility of original order, but perhaps it is time to revoke their privileged place in archival discourse and revisit the true goals of arrangement and description in light of the capabilities of digital records. Maybe then we can begin to understand what is possible when we think of collections as mutually contextual and interrelated instead of cloistered and static. And perhaps then other bonds, other parallels, other contexts, meanings, and interpretations can receive the same amount of respect that we have, for too long now, granted the fonds.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nWikipedia articles created as part of this work:\r\n\r\nRespect des fonds: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds</a>\r\n\r\nOriginal Order: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order</a>\r\n\r\nArchival Bond: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond</a>','Disrespect des Fonds: Rethinking Arrangement and Description in Born-Digital Archives','','inherit','open','open','','4722-revision-10','','','2013-06-18 01:25:54','2013-06-18 01:25:54','',4722,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4722-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(4745,3,'2013-06-18 01:27:01','2013-06-18 01:27:01','<b>Introduction</b>\r\n\r\nIn her article, “Disciplinarity and Disorder,” in Issue 1 of this journal, Gabrielle Dean opens her essay with a detailed and expressive “fantasy” describing the “primal scene of archival research [that] takes place in a dreary reading room,” featuring an archivist, a researcher, a cart, dusty gray boxes, and a “numbered file folder.” As her fantasy takes flight, with the researcher scribbling away and papers swirling and new collections sprouting up organically, she crafts an evocative metaphor for the life cycle of preservation and regeneration that archivists aim to enable through access to primary sources. Dean cogently deconstructs the origins and implications of this “primal scene” over the course of her essay. But what also merits highlighting in her opening metaphor are the accoutrements that populate it—the cart, the box, the file folder—familiar players on the stage of the archival encounter. These objects and symbols are evocative of that idealized moment of archaeological discovery that characterizes the use of the archive. They are objects and symbols of history, certainly, but relics, alas, of an analog age.\r\n\r\nA similar fantasy, one potentially more fraught with anxiety and dread, must darken the reveries of archivists as they attempt to provide access to more contemporary materials. A daydream involving the researcher of tomorrow may instead feature dreadful moments of “file cannot be opened” error messages, of FTP transfers gone awry, of decaying media orphaned from long-lost playback devices. Our imaginary researcher will not be awaiting archival discovery sitting in a dreary reading room, but instead exist in some networked who-knows-where, furiously emailing an endless stream of access and transfer request and constantly griping about obsolete formats and buggy interfaces. At the same time, our imaginary archivist will not be pushing carts or shelving boxes, but creating user accounts for virtual reading rooms, running pattern-recognition text-mining queries, uploading disk images, or helping users with emulation software. Like the content of our archives themselves, the props and symbols of our archival fantasies increasingly will be associated with born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nHow will traditional principles of archival arrangement and description be challenged or modified to account for born-digital materials? Arrangement and description have long been the primary method of facilitating the use of archives, and their methodologies have been dependent upon the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. The articulation of this theory in 1841 has been held as the “starting point” or beginning of the modern era of archival theory, a “watershed” event establishing the “basic principle” and “very core” of the archival endeavor. Superlatives abound. <i>Respect des fonds</i>, “more than any other principle, has come to provide the archival profession with a unique identity.” ((Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” in <i>Bibliographical Foundations of French Historical Studies</i> (New York: Haworth Press, 1992), 108.))\r\n\r\nBut <i>respect des fonds</i> was born of a particular historic moment, for a particular type of archival document, and was conceived to address the practical needs of specific social circumstances. Even as <i>respect des fonds</i> has mutated and evolved over the decades, subject to revisions, contestations, and reaffirmations, its methodologies have largely been a product of the nature of the archival record as a physical document to be sorted, grouped, and described after receipt from a single donating entity. In an era defined by digital materials and their affordances and limitations, one in which narrative linearity often seems replaced by data-driven relationalism, the meaning of <i>respect des fonds</i> is ever more slippery.\r\n\r\nBroadly stated, <i>respect des fonds</i> is the principle of grouping records by the administration, organization, individual, or creating body in which they originated. <i>Respect des fonds</i> mandates that the records of the creating entity not be mixed with those of a different entity. It prioritizes the “organic” nature of archival records, identifying the locus of their generation, and the evidence their consolidation provides about that originating body, as essential to preserving and maintaining context. Comprised of the related “principle of original order” and “the principle of provenance,” <i>respect des fonds</i> displaced prior methods of archival arrangement that were predicated upon classifications by subject, function, topic, legal utility, chronology, and other categories. Though often referenced as a core component of archival identity, as a theoretical concept, <i>respect des fonds</i> is, as one writer says, “elusive and oft-misunderstood.” ((Dan Zelenyj, “Linchpin Imperilled: The Functional Interpretation of Series and the Principle of Respect des Fonds,” <i>Archivaria</i> 42 (1996): 126.))\r\n\r\nThe introduction of born-digital records into the archives offers an opportunity to examine how the practical methodologies of arrangement and description are shifting and how those changing practices lead to a reconsideration of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Much as digital records’ technological dependencies, ease of duplication, and subordination to features of systems and storage have led to a reassessment of the existing precepts of archival appraisal and selection, they also prompt a similar analysis of arrangement and description. One of those axioms due reassessment is the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i>.\r\n\r\nThis essay details the social and material conditions of the emergence of <i>respect des fonds</i>, the theory’s complex practical implementations and contested assumption, the emergence of alternate models, and how born-digital materials illuminate the theory’s analog origins and limitations. I will also explain the specific qualities of digital objects, including the nature of inscription and its impact on notions of original order and authenticity, as well as how nonlinear retrieval supplants the narrative logic of <i>respect des fonds</i> with a broader notion of context and discoverability. I will then consider recent interpretive methods, such as data visualization and text mining, as potential harbingers of new modes of representing and creating interfaces to digital collections—representations that better capitalize on the possibilities of digital materials. Finally, I will argue that the affordances of born-digital archives—such as their potential for parallel representation, machine-enabled interpretation, and expansive contextual and intellectual availability—provoke a reconsideration of the place of privilege of <i>respect des fonds </i>in archival arrangement and description.\r\n\r\n<b>The Old Regime</b>\r\n\r\nBefore <i>respect des</i> <i>fonds</i> can be respected, disrespected, or neglected, a better understanding of its origins is warranted, along with an examination of how the principle has (or has not) been applied and its periodic contestation. The seductive purity of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> often overshadows the concept’s decidedly complex origins. <i>Respect des fonds</i> as a guiding method of archival control was never as ennobled an idea as its contemporary evocation often implies. Its original articulation was mired in professional infighting, reductive practicalities, and the tumult and disorganization of political change.\r\n\r\nWhile we can find records grouped according to creator in some earlier instances, ((Luciana Duranti, “Origin and Development of Archival Description,” <i>Archivaria</i> 35 (1993): 50.)) the formal articulation of the concept of <i>respect des fonds</i> was, like much of modernity, a by-product of the French Revolution. The Revolution featured a simultaneous destruction and reconstruction of the archive, an attempt to both erase and recast the historical record. Most famously, when revolutionaries stormed the Bastille they destroyed its documentary contents—records that instantiated the subjugation and exploitation of the despised monarchy. [IMAGE1]\r\n\r\nYet the revolutionaries’ also scrupulously preserved the record of their own activities. The <i>Archives Nationales</i> was established in 1790, with a head archivist, hours designated for the general public, and a centralized administration tasked both with preserving the legacy of the new government and managing select records of the Old Regime. Those tasks, however, were segregated in ways that impacted how each class of documents was handled. Records of the National Assembly were to be scrupulously maintained, while feudal titles were widely destroyed. As one Minster put it, “all the old documents with gothic script are … only legal titles of feudalism, of the subjection of the feeble to the strong.” ((As cited in Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development since the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 3, no. 3 (1940): 162.))\r\n\r\nThe management of archives during this time was chaotic. Property records were sent to one administrative body within the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, legal records to another, and documents of historical interest went to the <i>Bibliotheque Nationales</i>. At the same time, archivists were tasked with maintaining a distinction between records documenting pre- and post-Revolutionary activities. In addition, the first two administrative heads of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, Armand-Gaston Camus and Pierre Daunou, were both trained as librarians and had, by the early 1800s, established twenty-four “groupings” of records into which future accessions were to be integrated. Within these groups, additional classifications and intellectual methods of ordering existed. The archives, then, were “arranged in accordance with an arbitrarily devised ‘methodical’ scheme that was derived from library experience.” ((T. R Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archive : Principles and Techniques</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 169.)) As well, political tumult and instability of governance continued to have an impact on the arrangement of the archives, and “decisions about preservation, classification, inventory, and access were therefore the result not just of practical considerations or the opinions of individual archivists and librarians, but also of key shifts in national politics.” ((Lara Moore, <i>Restoring Order: The Ecole Des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870</i> (Duluth, Minnesota: Litwin Books, 2008), 17.))\r\n\r\n<b>The Origins of <i>Respect des Fonds</i></b>\r\n\r\nWhile the true extent of records destruction during the post-Revolutionary years is disputed, ((Carl Lokke, “Archives and the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 31, no. 1 (January 1968): 30-31.)) as Judith Panitch notes, “this chaotic episode of archival history reveals much about archives themselves, suggesting specifically their fundamental fragility and malleability.” ((Judith Panitch, “Liberty, equality, posterity? Some Archival Lessons from the Case of the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 59, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 33.)) That malleability is evident in the conflicting approaches to archival arrangement and description that characterized this era, practices that lead up to the declaration of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Records of the time were arranged primarily by sometimes-quixotic methods of classification, by schema idiosyncratic in origin and inconsistent in application. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 167.))\r\n\r\nA number of developments in the next few decades pushed this lack of uniformity to its breaking point and helped impel the conceptualization of <i>respect des fonds</i> as an archival principle, if, as I will show, less of an actual practice. The establishment of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> in 1821 created a formal institution to train archivists to staff both the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and the over 2500 provincial archives across France. Laws passed in the 1830s also drastically expanded the number of archivists mandated to work both in the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and in the provincial archives. Formal training and new positions, however, when combined with lax oversight and inconsistent guidance on practices, led, predictably, to a near-comic proliferation of methods of classification and arrangement. [IMAGE2] Due to the proliferation of classification systems and schema, change was inevitable.\r\n\r\nThat change came in the form of the infamous “Circular no. 14,” released in 1841 by Natalis de Wailly, Administrative Head of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>. This document is recognized as the first articulation of the fonds as the fundamental method of archival arrangement, the purpose of which was “to form a collection of all the documents which originate from a body, an organization, a family or an individual, and to arrange the different fonds according to a certain order.” ((As quoted in Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 107.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> made creatorship the organizing principle of archival records and espoused the formation of collections according to the organization, entity, family, or individual responsible for their creation. Such an arrangement would ensure, as one writer later put it, the essential need “to know where it [the archival document] was created, in the framework of what process, to what end, for whom, when and how it was received by the addressee, and how it came into our hands.” ((Michael Duchein, “Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des fonds in Archival Science,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 67.))\r\n\r\nHowever, as Nancy Bartlett has explicated, this “watershed” moment was less momentous than contemporary evocations suggest. For one, de Wailly’s circular dictated “that <i>respect des fonds</i> was prescribed only for archival records created prior to 1789.” More contemporary fonds were to continue to be arranged categorically. In addition, minutes from subsequent meetings of the commission overseeing the work of archivists—a commission on which de Wailly served—reveal that “<i>respect des fonds</i> was if nothing more a preliminary standard for archival arrangement and description in departmental archives, a means of insuring that beginning archivists without the benefit of direct supervision might not cause too much intellectual damage to vulnerable records in their care.” ((Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 111.))\r\n\r\nThe principle was, in fact, a practical exigency, a method to simplify archival arrangement seen as more easily implemented by novice archivists than the more rigorous arrangement by classification. Bartlett also notes that <i>respect des fonds</i> remained absent from both the curriculum of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> as well as the publications of the professional society of its graduates. Lastly, the principle was, at the time, not applied to accessions into the <i>Archive Nationales</i> itself, as it operated under a different administrative department than de Wailly’s Interior Ministry.\r\n\r\n<i>Respect des fonds</i>, then, was never a perfectly realized theory. Its formation was a contingency of a unique historical moment; its conception depended upon practical necessities and its implementation was inconsistent and disputed. What today seems near dogma—that archives be arranged by fonds—was at the time novel and simplistic, more the product of utility and political manipulation than a grand inspiration regarding the functional authenticity of fonds or evidential purity towards their arrangement.\r\n\r\n<b>The Original Original Order</b>\r\n\r\nThough implemented inconsistently in its home country, the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained a wide acceptance across Europe. In Prussia, the theory (known as <i>Provenienzprinzip,</i> the principle of provenance) mandated that “official papers are to be maintained in the order and with the designations which they received in the course of the official activity of the agency concerned.” ((Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archives</i>, 175.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> received its most elaborate and sustained justification, and expansion, however, in the Netherlands, where the Dutch archivists Muller, Feith, and Fruin produced their famous <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> in 1898. Often referred to colloquially as the “Dutch Manual” and seen as the “starting point of archival theory and methodology,” ((Peter Horsman, Eric Ketelaar, and Theo Thomassen, “New Respect for the Old Order: The Context of the Dutch Manual,” <i>The American Archivist </i>66, no. 2 (2003): 249.)) the work provided a detailed set of guidelines for the arrangement of records. The principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained even wider acceptance and popularity after its ratification at the First International Congress of Archivists meeting in Brussels in 1910. ((Lawrence D. Geller, “Joseph Cuvelier, Belgian Archival Education, and the First International Congress of Archivists, Brussels, 1910,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 16. Proceedings from the 1910 meeting can be found online at <a href=\"http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/\">http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/</a>.)) [IMAGE3]\r\n\r\nThe Dutch Manual, and the methodologies implemented in its wake, not only forbid the intermingling of the fonds of one agency with those of another—in keeping with the French conception of <i>respect des fonds</i>—but also expanded the theory to apply to the records within each fond—the internal arrangement of the archival collection. Or as the Dutch Manual put it, “the system of arrangement must be based on the original organization of the archival collection.” ((Samuel Muller, Johan Adriaan Feith, and Robert Fruin, <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> (H.W. Wilson Co., 1968), 52.)) This concept has come to be known as the “principle of original order,” an intra-fonds corollary to the external means of arrangement associated with the principle of provenance; <i>respect des fonds</i> encompasses both principles.\r\n\r\nA closer examination of the Dutch Manual, however, reveals certain methodological impracticalities that even its authors admit. First, they claim that the original order within a fonds may be modified or “restored” to account for multiple transfers from an agency, not all of which may truly represent the idealized “original order.” As well, records may be reorganized to account for “inconsequential irregularities attributable to record-keeping officials.” The authors also note that reconstituting the original order may be avoided when “the trouble which would have to be taken in order to reconstruct the old organization is out of proportion to the result to be obtained.” ((Muller et al., <i>Manual</i>, 83.)) Needless to say, the simple idea of “restoring original order” seems itself problematic, fraught with subjective decision-making likely far removed from whatever idealized “organic” origin archivists may discover within fonds. The complicated approach to “restoration” and “reconstruction” that the Dutch Manual advises often borders on, as one writer put it, “abandoning entirely their carefully developed ethic of conservation.” ((Frank Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” <i>The American Archivist </i>45, no. 1 (1982): 28.))\r\n\r\n<b>Critique des Fonds</b>\r\n\r\nThe widespread adoption <i>of respect des fonds</i> did not proceed unquestioned, however. As early as the 1930s, some archivists were taking issue with the methodology of arranging collections according to original order. In his survey of the development of archival theory, Ernst Posner points to the German Max Bar and two Swedish archivists who demonstrated “that slavish preservation of the original arrangement of a fonds is often insufficient,” the principle of provenance “is subject to certain restrictions” that make blanket adoption impractical, and adherence to <i>respect des fonds</i> often impedes use of archival materials. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 169.))\r\n\r\nSome Australian and American archivists in the 1960s, primarily Peter Scott and Mario Fenyo, challenged the definition of fonds even further. The problems with the traditional concept of the fonds were manifold. Defining fonds as the records of a “transferring or controlling agency” was problematic since the agent of transfer was not always the creating agency. Fonds could also be mixed or “broken” into multiple transfers to an archive, making reconstitution difficult. Fonds could also be the result of “a succession of agencies,” blurring true creatorship. Ordering series within fonds was difficult since future accessions may need to be inserted at different places in the existing organizational system, leading to physical disorder or the constant revision of finding aids or inventories. After reviewing minutes of early NARA meetings in an attempt to define what, exactly, constitutes a fonds, Fenyo succinctly pointed out, “no one knows what the word fonds means, not even the French who invented it.” ((Mario D. Fenyo, “The Record Group Concept: A Critique,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 2 (April 1966): 230.)) For Scott, his belief that “the very arbitrariness of the concept [of the fonds] is sufficient to make one question its usefulness,” ((Peter Scott, “The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 4 (October 1966): 497.)) led him to develop the “series system” [IMAGE4] which sought to orient arrangement and description according to function and use instead of agent or material type—a theory that, Terry Cook noted, “shifted the entire archival description enterprise from a static cataloging mode to a dynamic system of multiple interrelationships.” ((Terry Cook, “What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift,” <i>Archivaria</i> 43 (1999): 38.))\r\n\r\nThe principle of original order underwent a similar critique. A lack of clarity on the custodianship of records prior to their delivery to an archive, the problem of multiple and ongoing accessions, and the potential for incoherent or unknown methods of ordering or classification by creating bodies all led Fenyo to proclaim, “archivists generally believe that the arrangement of series within a record group reflects to some extent the organization and even history of the agency that created those records.… But the records in the National Archives reflect no such thing.” ((Fenyo, \"The Record Group Concept,\" 236.)) For archives consisting of personal papers, original order is seen as particularly problematic, since a chronological arrangement seemingly provides the greatest meaning and value to the records of an individual, but is unlikely to be the order of records upon accession. Restoration of original order also risks destroying the contextual information accrued by collections that have passed through multiple states of custodianship prior to their acceptance into the archive. ((Debra Barr, “Protecting Provenance: Response to the Report of the Working Group on Description at the Fonds Level,” <i>Archivaria</i> 28 (Summer 1989): 141-145. See also Robert Edwards, “‘With Respect to Original Order’: Changing Values in Archival Arrangement,” <i>Archives Association of British Columbia</i> 11, no. 1 (Winter 2001).)) Lastly, the principle of original order prioritizes filing systems of unknown or dubious legitimacy over the principle of use or accessibility. As Frank Boles states, “usability acknowledges the evidential superiority of documents over filing systems by placing primary emphasis on access to documents.” ((Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” 31.)) In this critique, usability and original order are often in conflict.\r\n\r\n<b>Of Bonds and Parallels</b>\r\n\r\nOther conceptual models besides the series system have attempted to address these critiques by forming new ideas about how order or grouping can evidence archival authenticity, identity, and meaning. One theory to articulate the interrelations of individual records can be found in Luciana Duranti’s notion of the archival bond, which she defines as the “network of relations that each record has with the records belonging in the same aggregation.” ((Luciana Duranti, “The Archival Bond,” <i>Archives and Museum Informatics</i> 11 (1997): 213-18.)) Not to be confused with context, which exists outside the record, the archival bond, for Duranti, is core to the identity of the record. As she states, “documents that are expressions of a transaction are not records until they are put into relation with other records.” ((Ibid., 216.)) Emerging from research into the authenticity of electronic records (including the InterPARES project), the archival bond identifies a web of documentary co-dependencies that presumes an inheritance and relationship between records based on functional proximity. ((“The InterPARES Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://www.interpares.org\">www.interpares.org</a>.))\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most exhaustive attempt to deal with many difficulties that exist within the gulf between <i>respect des fonds</i> as principle and practice was undertaken by Michel Duchein in 1983. ((Duchein, \"Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems,\" 64–82.)) While Duchein proposes solutions to the many problems of the fonds concept, the reader cannot help but be overwhelmed by the fact that his cataloging of the “theoretical problems” and “practical difficulties” far outnumber, and begin to drown out, his proposed solutions. For Duchein, within fonds there can be all sorts of nebulous, arbitrary, and forgotten methods of classification “from which all imaginable disorders flow.” He calls these, in a poetic moment, “brutal manipulations.” ((Ibid., 77.)) But after this disquisition, on the last page of his article Duchein mentions one idea that seems if not prescient, then at least transitive in the way it conceives of context: the <i>parallelismus membrorum</i>, “the similarity of parallel files.” <i>Parallelismus membrorum</i> is a rhetorical term referring to the patterns within a text formed by the utilization of repeated grammatical structures. (“I came. I saw. I conquered,” is a brief example). Duchein here employs the motif to refer to the contextual relations that exist between records of different fonds, the network of meanings that stretch across the archive.\r\n\r\nChris Hurley explored an idea similar to <i>parallelismus membrorum</i> in his delineation of “parallel provenance” a concept built around “composing different things from the same particles—combining things in different ways to produce a variety of views of what they look like in the aggregate … not so much about identifying a different creator as recognizing manifold context.” ((Chris Hurley, “Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?,” <i>Archives and Manuscripts</i> 33, no. 1 (2005): 126.)) [IMAGE5] Other contemporary writers, such as Laura Millar and Geoffrey Yeo, have sought to stretch the meaning of the fonds even further, arguing it exists purely at the conceptual level. ((Geoffrey Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds and the Physical Collection,” <i>Archivaria</i> 73 (Spring 2012): 43-91; Laura Millar, “The Death of the Fonds and the Resurrection of Provenance: Archival Context in Space and Time,” <i>Archivaria</i> 53 (Spring 2002): 1-15.)) But as the definition of the fonds becomes more distant, more abstract, its privileging as a form of aggregation seems less certain, especially in a digital environment in which creatorship is but one of many means of grouping records.\r\n\r\nThe archival bond, the series system, <i>parallelismus membrorum, </i>and parallel provenance all mark attempts to theorize relationships between records and collections in ways that can elide the practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Equally, these ideas represent a continued expansion of context beyond the limitations of grouping by creatorship or creator-derived order. In each case, similarities and dependencies emerge out of cross-collection networks or semantically derived principles. As the models gain distance from the vagaries of the individual records, one starts to recognize a familiar pattern of removal—not a disjunction, exactly, but a subtle passage from the material trace to the abstract representation. The familiarity is borne of the similar movement from item to representation that characterizes electronic records and their attendant phenomenological tension between the physical inscription on a drive and the symbolic interface on a screen.\r\n\r\n<b>Bit Level Processing</b>\r\n\r\nBut enough of models. Consider instead the bit, the binary, the magnetic flux reversal of the spinning disk that is the origin of the digital object. Material inscription offers a good point to segue into an examination of digital records and how they both complicate or even circumvent historical notions of <i>respect des fonds </i> while at the same time enabling realization of a more expansive notion of context and interrelation.\r\n\r\nStarting at the bit level, the characteristics of inscription (how digital information is written onto storage media) call into question the idea of original order. When data is written to a storage device, it has a material, physical trace, but that trace is far from the legibility or interpretability we associate with analog documents. As Matt Kirschenbaum has noted in his study of new media and digital forensics, “we write <i>on</i> paper, but we write <i>to</i> a magnetic disk (or tape)”; the semantic difference signifies that the act of inscription is “logically distinct” from the act of creation and intellectual manipulation. ((Matt Kirschenbaum, <i>Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination</i> (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 87. Emphasis in original.)) [IMAGE 6] In addition, a key component of storage media is that it is random access; that means the bits composing a record are inscribed to available clusters across the platter of a drive depending on which tracks and sectors are available for inscription. That is, the component bits of a digital object are non-sequential in their material physical arrangement. Aggregated, they can create an interpretable object, but their component location is nonlinear. Here, even at the bit level of a single item, there is no original order. Furthermore, each time these bits are reconstructed, each time the file is accessed and translated into an interpretable, editable representation, the file will be altered in minute ways (for instance, a file’s “last opened” date) and thus be composed of a new order as new bits are assigned to other available areas of the disk. As Kirschenbaum notes, quoting a dictum of forensic science, “every contact leaves a trace.” The act of interpreting a digital object, thus, continually alters its material order.\r\n\r\nMoving beyond the non-sequential arrangement of bits of individual records, but remaining at the forensic level, other features of the digital environment challenge long-standing presumptions of authenticity and uniqueness that are dependent upon physical arrangement or description. Temporary files, such as those stored by auto-save or recovery programs, mean that a drive can contain multiple versions of identical files, many of them beyond the management (or even awareness) of their creator. This “ambient data” is matched by other features of data dispersal throughout a storage system, such as “swap space” (disk space sometimes allocated for use by RAM) and “disk slack” (which accounts for the difference between the actual file size and the disk space used for storage) that themselves complicate ideas of order and linearity. Storage becomes a hidden, dynamic world in which physical arrangement on a spinning drive consists of the equivalent of dispersed crevices, hidey-holes, and secret areas where data proliferates. Kirschenbaum asserts, “there is, in short, no simple way to know how many instances of a single file are residing in how many states, in how many different locations, at any given moment in the operating system.” ((Ibid., 52.)) As well, digital objects themselves have the potential to contain trace data that, while possibly not achieving the singular identity of a record, can have evidential value or help establish provenance.\r\n\r\nTake, for instance, Kirschenbaum’s exploration of a floppy disk image, in which he finds evidence of how the storage media was used over time and what its hidden and partially deleted data can manifest about its user: “[W]e discover on the original diskette the incompletely overwritten remains of previous software … a piece of 1980s software culture frozen in allographic amber.” ((Ibid., 140.)) Discovering this legacy information reveals multiple levels of creatorship and a trail of ownership and social and cultural meaning that extend beyond the object, the creator, or the fonds. In this case, the unintentionally preserved (by the user, at least) data provides a testament to its origins that is not visible in the individual files themselves. Here provenance is not a result of aggregation or description but a characteristic of how digital information is created and transmitted. Context is not just relational, implied, or conceptualized, but can be a part of the very media itself, like secret, half-formed barnacles clinging to the vessel of the digital record. Incomplete but decipherable. Fragmentary but meaningful. Allographic amber.\r\n\r\n<b>Fonds Essentialism</b>\r\n\r\nNeedless to say, most people do not interact with digital information at the forensic level. In Kenneth Thibodeau’s useful model, digital objects are compounds, composed of a physical, logical, and conceptual object. Respectively, those adjectives refer to the physical inscription on storage media; the logical suite of translational software and processes that access and “read” that inscription; and the conceptual object the user interacts with, such as the text, image, or interface on a screen. ((Kenneth Thibodeau, “Overview of Technological Approaches to Digital Preservation and Challenges in Coming Years,” in <i>The State of Digital Preservation: An International Perspective</i> (Washington D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2002).)) The conceptual object—the representational environment of the screen as experienced in the word processing program, the image editor, the social media app—inculcates its own affordances and logic on the creation or use of records. In fact, given the hidden, inscrutable nature of storage and inscription, the formal representation of digital objects on a screen can have an outsized influence on their creation, management, and perception—an interpretive tendency that Nick Montford calls “screen essentialism.” Considering the extensive influence that the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i> has had, historically, on how archival collections are arranged and described, a similar predilection may characterize the archival enterprise—call it <i>fonds essentialism</i>.\r\n\r\nThe conceptual object—the screen—presents its own challenges to the implied narrative of current modes of archival description. The way that a user interacts with an aggregation of digital materials is fundamentally different from how a user would interact with a set of document boxes or a finding aid. The screen imposes its own logic, its own “formal regimen,” in Kirschenbaum’s terms, on how digital objects are interpreted or accessed, but also how they are described. Traditional archival representation for analog materials emerges from a narrative: a story about what a collection is, what it holds, and the order and location of its contents. It moves through a descriptive summary of contextual detail and administrative information and on to a hierarchy of series and subseries often arranged by type, function, chronology, or other broad categories. Papers, folders, boxes, and series must be arranged in physical space, after all, and that comes to shape how they are arranged in the intellectual space of description. A finding aid is a narrative to be read and its intellectual availability is largely linear and structural. The conceptual object of the digital record and the interface to an aggregation of digital records offer quite a different type of interaction.\r\n\r\nText mining and hyperlinks are simple examples of ways to navigate large groups of materials absent a singular narrative sequence. Lev Manovich, in theorizing new media, has noted that the database (or, the database logic) has supplanted narrative as the method of interacting with digital information. In new media, “narrative becomes just one method of accessing data among others,” and digital information assumes “the projection of the ontology of a computer onto culture itself.” ((Lev Manovich, “Database as a Genre of New Media,” <i>Journal of A&amp;I Society</i> 14, no. 2 (May 2000): 176-77.)) In a database, objects are related but not ordered. The database logic is nonlinear and there is no original order because order is dependent upon query. Search and navigation become algorithm-dependent and not predetermined by a creator, an archivist, or a static finding aid—though all of those organizations are themselves available. Digital objects will have an identifier, yes, but where they “rest” in intellectual space is contingent, mutable. The key point is that, even at the level of representation, arrangement is dynamic: access and representation need not depend on the fonds. Description becomes relational as well and can extend beyond individual aggregations of records. The logic of physical space no longer drives retrieval or predominates in description. Original order and provenance are not lost or obviated in this model, but they are not the exclusive means of access, either.\r\n\r\n<b>Recent Practices</b>\r\n\r\nCase studies from projects handling significant amounts of born-digital records provide insight into the theoretical and practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. As the Emory University project asked of the born-digital content in its Salmon Rushdie acquisition, “Would we treat the born-digital files the same as print material? Would we impose any sort of arrangement on the materials? How much added description could we provide? As the following discussion will reveal, the application of archival theory and principles may shift to accommodate the differences between paper and born-digital archives.” ((Laura Carroll et al., “A Comprehensive Approach to Born-Digital Archives,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 72.)) Or, as the large-scale, born-digital Vancouver Olympics project team put it, “core archival activities may diverge from long-established practices when moving into the digital environment.” ((Courtney C. Mumma, Glenn Dingwall, and Sue Bigelow, “A First Look at the Acquisition and Appraisal of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Fonds: Or, SELECT * FROM VANOC_Records AS Archives WHERE Value=‘true’;,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 93.)) Along with the multi-institutional AIMS project and the PARADIGM (Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media) project in the UK, these case studies detail the practical issues involved in rethinking arrangement and description in born-digital archives. ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/</a>; Paradigm project, “Workbook on Digital Private Papers,” The Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (Paradigm) Project, accessed October 2012,  <a href=\"http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html\">http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html</a>.))\r\n\r\nTaken together, the projects provide an overview of how arrangement may look in entirely born-digital collections. All note the difficulty in parsing user-generated description and the often quixotic or meaningless nature of directory structures and naming. The projects largely employed filtering, text mining, and other cross-record queries to determine the content of most files. The sheer volume of files contained in accessions precluded any item-level content review or hierarchical rearrangement; yet, at the same time, “the creation of file and item descriptions and inventories is not only easier and faster, it yields much richer information.… What takes hours or days to perform in the paper environment takes mere seconds to accomplish in the digital environment, and is done to a greater level of detail.” ((Mumma et al., \"A First Look,\" 115-16.))\r\n\r\nThough the many technical processes necessary for format validation, emulation, automated metadata extraction, and other methods of processing born-digital archives are too complex to be fully recounted here, these case studies point to their key characteristics. [VIDEO 1] Arrangement, as we think of it, is no longer a process of imposing intellectualized hierarchies or physical relocation; instead, it becomes largely automated, algorithmic, and batch processed. At the same time, archival representation will build upon the affordances of the digital objects themselves to extract and compile metadata that can then be repurposed to bridge and augment a wealth of contextual relations far beyond the order of their creation and their agency of origin.\r\n\r\n<b>Visual Descriptions</b>\r\n\r\nAs the “logical associations of records extend beyond the records themselves and embrace relations with other entities in the wider world,” as Geoffrey Yeo puts it, archivists will be tasked with building interfaces that draw upon these aforementioned possibilities and linking them to the online interfaces through which records will be made available. ((Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds,” 71.)) The interface thus becomes the “critical element in the interaction between documentary evidence and its consumers.” ((Margaret Hedstrom, “Archives, Memory, and Interfaces with the Past,” <i>Archival Science</i> 2, no. 1-2 (2002): 24.))\r\n\r\nSince few archives are accessioning entirely born-digital collections, it is difficult to find archival examples of a description for such a collection. Born-digital content that is currently being processed is usually a small portion of a larger physical collection and, as such, is integrated in a hybrid fashion into traditional finding aids; see, for instance, \"<a href=\"http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt9p3038mq/\">Series 8: Born digital files</a>,\" \"<a href=\"http://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/rushdie1000/\">Series 11: Computers and related devices</a>,\" or \"<a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">Series 13: Computer files</a>.\"\r\n\r\nThere are, however, some archival projects, as well as work in the digital humanities, that offer a window into how researchers and scholars are making using of large sets of digital data. While the data sets and digital records being utilized are not necessarily archival collections, the tools, methods of inquiry, and cross-collection, multi-institutional repositories that emerge from these projects presage both how entirely born-digital archives may come to be used and what digital archival collection interfaces may look like in the future.\r\n\r\nTwo projects taking an innovative, insightful approach to exploring archival collections through the mining of large archival corpora are The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online and Cameron Blevins’s work text mining and topic modeling Martha Ballard’s diary. ((The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online can be found at <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/\">http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/</a>, and the associated Criminal Intent project can be found at <a href=\"http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/\">http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/</a>. Cameron Blevin’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary can be found online at <a href=\"http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/\">http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/</a> and at <a href=\"http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml\">http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml</a>.)) The Old Bailey Proceedings provides access to nearly 200,000 digitized trial records from London’s criminal courts, spans almost 250 years, allows full text searching, and has an API through which users can query the archive. The With Criminal Intent project has built a suite of related tools that can help perform data-mining projects using this archive. [IMAGE7] This project measures and visualizes trends over time as a means of revealing historical themes, building and revealing new narratives, and providing insights into the past through data-driven analysis.\r\n\r\nBlevins’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary features a different collection, a single diary by an eighteenth-century housewife composed of almost 10,000 entries from 1785 to 1812. This project aspires to a similar goal of revealing novel insights into, and interpretations of, historical material through the ability of digital tools to mine vast sets of information. Blevins uses topic modeling—an algorithmic method that searches word patterns and groupings throughout large collections of texts (for Ballard’s diary, each entry was treated as a different “text”)—to chart and track thematic trends across the diary. A similar approach has been taken by the Mining the Dispatch project, which examines changing sentiments toward the Civil War over the course of six years (over 112,000 items) in the Richmond, Virginia <i>Daily Dispatch</i> newspaper. ((“Mining the Dispatch,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/\">http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/</a>.)) [IMAGE8]\r\n\r\nThese projects may fall under the broader rubric of the digital humanities, and the collections they are working with may not be archival collections in the traditional sense, but they offer a glimpse of the discovery, navigation, exploration, and analytic tools that foreshadow uses of digital archival collections. Other initiatives have sought to build upon the network of social relations that influence records creation. The SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context) Project “provides access to the socio-historical contexts ([including] people, families, and corporate bodies) in which the records were created” through the use of the EAC-CPF standard that describes corporate bodies, persons, and families. ((“SNAC: The Social Networks and Archival Context Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/\">http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/</a>.)) Early results show a promising method for using social context for discovery and interpretation. [IMAGE9] The archivists at Stanford University who are managing the Robert Creeley collection, which contains a significant quantity of born-digital content, especially emails, have used the custom-built MUSE tool for exploring semantic patterns in email archives. ((The Robert Creeley collection can be found at <a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html</a>. For more information on the MUSE tool visit <a href=\"http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/\">http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/</a>.)) [IMAGE10] Similarly, other projects have explored building unique visual interfaces to archival collections that extend contextual relations across collections, archives, and disciplines. [VIDEO 2]\r\n\r\nWhat distinguishes these projects from archival representations of old is that context and meaning are not exclusively provided through descriptive, narrative details that precede an arrangement and location list, but instead through networks, inter-linkages, modeling, and content analysis. Users can move dynamically within a collection and laterally across collections. Search, query, and tools like topic modeling also allow the user to build their own patterns and hierarchies for discovery. In this view, archival description still plays a crucial role in providing information on what something is or how it came to be created, but no longer is the fonds or idea of original order the sole determinant of representation.\r\n\r\n<b>Conclusion</b>\r\n\r\nAs Luciana Duranti has noted, archival description “has been carried out or not carried out depending on specific needs and conditions, attitudes and requirements, and its products have consistently reflected the conceptions about archives held by the society of the time.” ((Duranti, “Origin and Development,” 53.)) In the physical world of items, folders, boxes, and shelves, the archive must be sorted, ordered, and stored sequentially in space. Those properties, along with social, cultural, and political attitudes have driven how archival arrangement and description are theorized and practiced. Indeed, description itself has always had to serve multiple purposes: to provide historical or biographical information, scope and content detail, physical location for retrieval, administrative information for ongoing management, and restrictions and material types governing use. In a sense, description itself is a compound object, tugged between the needs of physical arrangement, intellectual representation, and user expectation. The properties of digital records allow archivists to revisit that negotiation. At the same time, other qualities of digital information, like the forensic disk image, have the potential to preserve both a mechanical version of “order” as well as provenancial and contextual information that formerly were provided through description. File fixity, forensic imaging, directory manifests, and auto-generated metadata may all come to play a larger role in defining provenance.\r\n\r\nWe disrespect des fonds, then, not as an act of elimination or insubordination, but in order to bring other contextual relations to its same level of privilege. Consider it less a disrespect, perhaps, than a humbling; or, instead, consider it a reaffirmation that the multiplicity of meanings possible with digital records can be better realized through an ongoing interrogation of archival traditions of arrangement and description. In rethinking <i>respect des fonds</i>, we gain a better awareness of the extent to which the material affordances of paper records have had an undue influence on how we conceptualize and practice grouping and describing collections. Bits, however, are fundamentally different at the material and symbolic levels. The use of digital objects is different as well, influenced by computational processing, algorithmic query, automation, and dynamism, not to mention social conditions, user expectations, technology dependencies, storage requirements, and a host of other characteristics of how we create and use technology.\r\n\r\nParallels and bonds, series and topics, models and paradigms; at times these concepts have collided and resulted in a seeming antagonism between ideas like original order and random access, historical contingency and abstract principle, finding aid and dynamic query. But there have been similarities too: how the tension between record and representation mirrors that of inscription and screen; and how the component nature of digital objects resembles the component purpose of traditional archival description. To entrench methods of arrangement and description borne of the qualities of physical collections is to disregard the potential expansion of context that digital information can support. In recognizing how historically and socially contingent traditional practices (and the theories spawning those practices) were, we better recognize their potential dysfunction in a time of born-digital records. This is not to say that we should discard the idea of the fonds or the utility of original order, but perhaps it is time to revoke their privileged place in archival discourse and revisit the true goals of arrangement and description in light of the capabilities of digital records. Maybe then we can begin to understand what is possible when we think of collections as mutually contextual and interrelated instead of cloistered and static. And perhaps then other bonds, other parallels, other contexts, meanings, and interpretations can receive the same amount of respect that we have, for too long now, granted the fonds.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nWikipedia articles created as part of this work:\r\n\r\nRespect des fonds: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds</a>\r\n\r\nOriginal Order: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order</a>\r\n\r\nArchival Bond: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond</a>','Disrespect des Fonds: Rethinking Arrangement and Description in Born-Digital Archives','','inherit','open','open','','4722-revision-11','','','2013-06-18 01:27:01','2013-06-18 01:27:01','',4722,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4722-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0);
INSERT INTO `archive_posts` VALUES (4746,3,'2013-06-18 01:28:22','2013-06-18 01:28:22','<b>Introduction</b>\r\n\r\nIn her article, “Disciplinarity and Disorder,” in Issue 1 of this journal, Gabrielle Dean opens her essay with a detailed and expressive “fantasy” describing the “primal scene of archival research [that] takes place in a dreary reading room,” featuring an archivist, a researcher, a cart, dusty gray boxes, and a “numbered file folder.” As her fantasy takes flight, with the researcher scribbling away and papers swirling and new collections sprouting up organically, she crafts an evocative metaphor for the life cycle of preservation and regeneration that archivists aim to enable through access to primary sources. Dean cogently deconstructs the origins and implications of this “primal scene” over the course of her essay. But what also merits highlighting in her opening metaphor are the accoutrements that populate it—the cart, the box, the file folder—familiar players on the stage of the archival encounter. These objects and symbols are evocative of that idealized moment of archaeological discovery that characterizes the use of the archive. They are objects and symbols of history, certainly, but relics, alas, of an analog age.\r\n\r\nA similar fantasy, one potentially more fraught with anxiety and dread, must darken the reveries of archivists as they attempt to provide access to more contemporary materials. A daydream involving the researcher of tomorrow may instead feature dreadful moments of “file cannot be opened” error messages, of FTP transfers gone awry, of decaying media orphaned from long-lost playback devices. Our imaginary researcher will not be awaiting archival discovery sitting in a dreary reading room, but instead exist in some networked who-knows-where, furiously emailing an endless stream of access and transfer request and constantly griping about obsolete formats and buggy interfaces. At the same time, our imaginary archivist will not be pushing carts or shelving boxes, but creating user accounts for virtual reading rooms, running pattern-recognition text-mining queries, uploading disk images, or helping users with emulation software. Like the content of our archives themselves, the props and symbols of our archival fantasies increasingly will be associated with born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nHow will traditional principles of archival arrangement and description be challenged or modified to account for born-digital materials? Arrangement and description have long been the primary method of facilitating the use of archives, and their methodologies have been dependent upon the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. The articulation of this theory in 1841 has been held as the “starting point” or beginning of the modern era of archival theory, a “watershed” event establishing the “basic principle” and “very core” of the archival endeavor. Superlatives abound. <i>Respect des fonds</i>, “more than any other principle, has come to provide the archival profession with a unique identity.” ((Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” in <i>Bibliographical Foundations of French Historical Studies</i> (New York: Haworth Press, 1992), 108.))\r\n\r\nBut <i>respect des fonds</i> was born of a particular historic moment, for a particular type of archival document, and was conceived to address the practical needs of specific social circumstances. Even as <i>respect des fonds</i> has mutated and evolved over the decades, subject to revisions, contestations, and reaffirmations, its methodologies have largely been a product of the nature of the archival record as a physical document to be sorted, grouped, and described after receipt from a single donating entity. In an era defined by digital materials and their affordances and limitations, one in which narrative linearity often seems replaced by data-driven relationalism, the meaning of <i>respect des fonds</i> is ever more slippery.\r\n\r\nBroadly stated, <i>respect des fonds</i> is the principle of grouping records by the administration, organization, individual, or creating body in which they originated. <i>Respect des fonds</i> mandates that the records of the creating entity not be mixed with those of a different entity. It prioritizes the “organic” nature of archival records, identifying the locus of their generation, and the evidence their consolidation provides about that originating body, as essential to preserving and maintaining context. Comprised of the related “principle of original order” and “the principle of provenance,” <i>respect des fonds</i> displaced prior methods of archival arrangement that were predicated upon classifications by subject, function, topic, legal utility, chronology, and other categories. Though often referenced as a core component of archival identity, as a theoretical concept, <i>respect des fonds</i> is, as one writer says, “elusive and oft-misunderstood.” ((Dan Zelenyj, “Linchpin Imperilled: The Functional Interpretation of Series and the Principle of Respect des Fonds,” <i>Archivaria</i> 42 (1996): 126.))\r\n\r\nThe introduction of born-digital records into the archives offers an opportunity to examine how the practical methodologies of arrangement and description are shifting and how those changing practices lead to a reconsideration of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Much as digital records’ technological dependencies, ease of duplication, and subordination to features of systems and storage have led to a reassessment of the existing precepts of archival appraisal and selection, they also prompt a similar analysis of arrangement and description. One of those axioms due reassessment is the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i>.\r\n\r\nThis essay details the social and material conditions of the emergence of <i>respect des fonds</i>, the theory’s complex practical implementations and contested assumption, the emergence of alternate models, and how born-digital materials illuminate the theory’s analog origins and limitations. I will also explain the specific qualities of digital objects, including the nature of inscription and its impact on notions of original order and authenticity, as well as how nonlinear retrieval supplants the narrative logic of <i>respect des fonds</i> with a broader notion of context and discoverability. I will then consider recent interpretive methods, such as data visualization and text mining, as potential harbingers of new modes of representing and creating interfaces to digital collections—representations that better capitalize on the possibilities of digital materials. Finally, I will argue that the affordances of born-digital archives—such as their potential for parallel representation, machine-enabled interpretation, and expansive contextual and intellectual availability—provoke a reconsideration of the place of privilege of <i>respect des fonds </i>in archival arrangement and description.\r\n\r\n<b>The Old Regime</b>\r\n\r\nBefore <i>respect des</i> <i>fonds</i> can be respected, disrespected, or neglected, a better understanding of its origins is warranted, along with an examination of how the principle has (or has not) been applied and its periodic contestation. The seductive purity of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> often overshadows the concept’s decidedly complex origins. <i>Respect des fonds</i> as a guiding method of archival control was never as ennobled an idea as its contemporary evocation often implies. Its original articulation was mired in professional infighting, reductive practicalities, and the tumult and disorganization of political change.\r\n\r\nWhile we can find records grouped according to creator in some earlier instances, ((Luciana Duranti, “Origin and Development of Archival Description,” <i>Archivaria</i> 35 (1993): 50.)) the formal articulation of the concept of <i>respect des fonds</i> was, like much of modernity, a by-product of the French Revolution. The Revolution featured a simultaneous destruction and reconstruction of the archive, an attempt to both erase and recast the historical record. Most famously, when revolutionaries stormed the Bastille they destroyed its documentary contents—records that instantiated the subjugation and exploitation of the despised monarchy. [IMAGE1]\r\n\r\nYet the revolutionaries’ also scrupulously preserved the record of their own activities. The <i>Archives Nationales</i> was established in 1790, with a head archivist, hours designated for the general public, and a centralized administration tasked both with preserving the legacy of the new government and managing select records of the Old Regime. Those tasks, however, were segregated in ways that impacted how each class of documents was handled. Records of the National Assembly were to be scrupulously maintained, while feudal titles were widely destroyed. As one Minster put it, “all the old documents with gothic script are … only legal titles of feudalism, of the subjection of the feeble to the strong.” ((As cited in Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development since the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 3, no. 3 (1940): 162.))\r\n\r\nThe management of archives during this time was chaotic. Property records were sent to one administrative body within the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, legal records to another, and documents of historical interest went to the <i>Bibliotheque Nationales</i>. At the same time, archivists were tasked with maintaining a distinction between records documenting pre- and post-Revolutionary activities. In addition, the first two administrative heads of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, Armand-Gaston Camus and Pierre Daunou, were both trained as librarians and had, by the early 1800s, established twenty-four “groupings” of records into which future accessions were to be integrated. Within these groups, additional classifications and intellectual methods of ordering existed. The archives, then, were “arranged in accordance with an arbitrarily devised ‘methodical’ scheme that was derived from library experience.” ((T. R Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archive : Principles and Techniques</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 169.)) As well, political tumult and instability of governance continued to have an impact on the arrangement of the archives, and “decisions about preservation, classification, inventory, and access were therefore the result not just of practical considerations or the opinions of individual archivists and librarians, but also of key shifts in national politics.” ((Lara Moore, <i>Restoring Order: The Ecole Des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870</i> (Duluth, Minnesota: Litwin Books, 2008), 17.))\r\n\r\n<b>The Origins of <i>Respect des Fonds</i></b>\r\n\r\nWhile the true extent of records destruction during the post-Revolutionary years is disputed, ((Carl Lokke, “Archives and the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 31, no. 1 (January 1968): 30-31.)) as Judith Panitch notes, “this chaotic episode of archival history reveals much about archives themselves, suggesting specifically their fundamental fragility and malleability.” ((Judith Panitch, “Liberty, equality, posterity? Some Archival Lessons from the Case of the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 59, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 33.)) That malleability is evident in the conflicting approaches to archival arrangement and description that characterized this era, practices that lead up to the declaration of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Records of the time were arranged primarily by sometimes-quixotic methods of classification, by schema idiosyncratic in origin and inconsistent in application. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 167.))\r\n\r\nA number of developments in the next few decades pushed this lack of uniformity to its breaking point and helped impel the conceptualization of <i>respect des fonds</i> as an archival principle, if, as I will show, less of an actual practice. The establishment of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> in 1821 created a formal institution to train archivists to staff both the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and the over 2500 provincial archives across France. Laws passed in the 1830s also drastically expanded the number of archivists mandated to work both in the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and in the provincial archives. Formal training and new positions, however, when combined with lax oversight and inconsistent guidance on practices, led, predictably, to a near-comic proliferation of methods of classification and arrangement. [IMAGE2] Due to the proliferation of classification systems and schema, change was inevitable.\r\n\r\nThat change came in the form of the infamous “Circular no. 14,” released in 1841 by Natalis de Wailly, Administrative Head of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>. This document is recognized as the first articulation of the fonds as the fundamental method of archival arrangement, the purpose of which was “to form a collection of all the documents which originate from a body, an organization, a family or an individual, and to arrange the different fonds according to a certain order.” ((As quoted in Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 107.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> made creatorship the organizing principle of archival records and espoused the formation of collections according to the organization, entity, family, or individual responsible for their creation. Such an arrangement would ensure, as one writer later put it, the essential need “to know where it [the archival document] was created, in the framework of what process, to what end, for whom, when and how it was received by the addressee, and how it came into our hands.” ((Michael Duchein, “Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des fonds in Archival Science,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 67.))\r\n\r\nHowever, as Nancy Bartlett has explicated, this “watershed” moment was less momentous than contemporary evocations suggest. For one, de Wailly’s circular dictated “that <i>respect des fonds</i> was prescribed only for archival records created prior to 1789.” More contemporary fonds were to continue to be arranged categorically. In addition, minutes from subsequent meetings of the commission overseeing the work of archivists—a commission on which de Wailly served—reveal that “<i>respect des fonds</i> was if nothing more a preliminary standard for archival arrangement and description in departmental archives, a means of insuring that beginning archivists without the benefit of direct supervision might not cause too much intellectual damage to vulnerable records in their care.” ((Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 111.))\r\n\r\nThe principle was, in fact, a practical exigency, a method to simplify archival arrangement seen as more easily implemented by novice archivists than the more rigorous arrangement by classification. Bartlett also notes that <i>respect des fonds</i> remained absent from both the curriculum of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> as well as the publications of the professional society of its graduates. Lastly, the principle was, at the time, not applied to accessions into the <i>Archive Nationales</i> itself, as it operated under a different administrative department than de Wailly’s Interior Ministry.\r\n\r\n<i>Respect des fonds</i>, then, was never a perfectly realized theory. Its formation was a contingency of a unique historical moment; its conception depended upon practical necessities and its implementation was inconsistent and disputed. What today seems near dogma—that archives be arranged by fonds—was at the time novel and simplistic, more the product of utility and political manipulation than a grand inspiration regarding the functional authenticity of fonds or evidential purity towards their arrangement.\r\n\r\n<b>The Original Original Order</b>\r\n\r\nThough implemented inconsistently in its home country, the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained a wide acceptance across Europe. In Prussia, the theory (known as <i>Provenienzprinzip,</i> the principle of provenance) mandated that “official papers are to be maintained in the order and with the designations which they received in the course of the official activity of the agency concerned.” ((Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archives</i>, 175.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> received its most elaborate and sustained justification, and expansion, however, in the Netherlands, where the Dutch archivists Muller, Feith, and Fruin produced their famous <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> in 1898. Often referred to colloquially as the “Dutch Manual” and seen as the “starting point of archival theory and methodology,” ((Peter Horsman, Eric Ketelaar, and Theo Thomassen, “New Respect for the Old Order: The Context of the Dutch Manual,” <i>The American Archivist </i>66, no. 2 (2003): 249.)) the work provided a detailed set of guidelines for the arrangement of records. The principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained even wider acceptance and popularity after its ratification at the First International Congress of Archivists meeting in Brussels in 1910. ((Lawrence D. Geller, “Joseph Cuvelier, Belgian Archival Education, and the First International Congress of Archivists, Brussels, 1910,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 16. Proceedings from the 1910 meeting can be found online at <a href=\"http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/\">http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/</a>.)) [IMAGE3]\r\n\r\nThe Dutch Manual, and the methodologies implemented in its wake, not only forbid the intermingling of the fonds of one agency with those of another—in keeping with the French conception of <i>respect des fonds</i>—but also expanded the theory to apply to the records within each fond—the internal arrangement of the archival collection. Or as the Dutch Manual put it, “the system of arrangement must be based on the original organization of the archival collection.” ((Samuel Muller, Johan Adriaan Feith, and Robert Fruin, <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> (H.W. Wilson Co., 1968), 52.)) This concept has come to be known as the “principle of original order,” an intra-fonds corollary to the external means of arrangement associated with the principle of provenance; <i>respect des fonds</i> encompasses both principles.\r\n\r\nA closer examination of the Dutch Manual, however, reveals certain methodological impracticalities that even its authors admit. First, they claim that the original order within a fonds may be modified or “restored” to account for multiple transfers from an agency, not all of which may truly represent the idealized “original order.” As well, records may be reorganized to account for “inconsequential irregularities attributable to record-keeping officials.” The authors also note that reconstituting the original order may be avoided when “the trouble which would have to be taken in order to reconstruct the old organization is out of proportion to the result to be obtained.” ((Muller et al., <i>Manual</i>, 83.)) Needless to say, the simple idea of “restoring original order” seems itself problematic, fraught with subjective decision-making likely far removed from whatever idealized “organic” origin archivists may discover within fonds. The complicated approach to “restoration” and “reconstruction” that the Dutch Manual advises often borders on, as one writer put it, “abandoning entirely their carefully developed ethic of conservation.” ((Frank Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” <i>The American Archivist </i>45, no. 1 (1982): 28.))\r\n\r\n<b>Critique des Fonds</b>\r\n\r\nThe widespread adoption <i>of respect des fonds</i> did not proceed unquestioned, however. As early as the 1930s, some archivists were taking issue with the methodology of arranging collections according to original order. In his survey of the development of archival theory, Ernst Posner points to the German Max Bar and two Swedish archivists who demonstrated “that slavish preservation of the original arrangement of a fonds is often insufficient,” the principle of provenance “is subject to certain restrictions” that make blanket adoption impractical, and adherence to <i>respect des fonds</i> often impedes use of archival materials. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 169.))\r\n\r\nSome Australian and American archivists in the 1960s, primarily Peter Scott and Mario Fenyo, challenged the definition of fonds even further. The problems with the traditional concept of the fonds were manifold. Defining fonds as the records of a “transferring or controlling agency” was problematic since the agent of transfer was not always the creating agency. Fonds could also be mixed or “broken” into multiple transfers to an archive, making reconstitution difficult. Fonds could also be the result of “a succession of agencies,” blurring true creatorship. Ordering series within fonds was difficult since future accessions may need to be inserted at different places in the existing organizational system, leading to physical disorder or the constant revision of finding aids or inventories. After reviewing minutes of early NARA meetings in an attempt to define what, exactly, constitutes a fonds, Fenyo succinctly pointed out, “no one knows what the word fonds means, not even the French who invented it.” ((Mario D. Fenyo, “The Record Group Concept: A Critique,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 2 (April 1966): 230.)) For Scott, his belief that “the very arbitrariness of the concept [of the fonds] is sufficient to make one question its usefulness,” ((Peter Scott, “The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 4 (October 1966): 497.)) led him to develop the “series system” [IMAGE4] which sought to orient arrangement and description according to function and use instead of agent or material type—a theory that, Terry Cook noted, “shifted the entire archival description enterprise from a static cataloging mode to a dynamic system of multiple interrelationships.” ((Terry Cook, “What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift,” <i>Archivaria</i> 43 (1999): 38.))\r\n\r\nThe principle of original order underwent a similar critique. A lack of clarity on the custodianship of records prior to their delivery to an archive, the problem of multiple and ongoing accessions, and the potential for incoherent or unknown methods of ordering or classification by creating bodies all led Fenyo to proclaim, “archivists generally believe that the arrangement of series within a record group reflects to some extent the organization and even history of the agency that created those records.… But the records in the National Archives reflect no such thing.” ((Fenyo, \"The Record Group Concept,\" 236.)) For archives consisting of personal papers, original order is seen as particularly problematic, since a chronological arrangement seemingly provides the greatest meaning and value to the records of an individual, but is unlikely to be the order of records upon accession. Restoration of original order also risks destroying the contextual information accrued by collections that have passed through multiple states of custodianship prior to their acceptance into the archive. ((Debra Barr, “Protecting Provenance: Response to the Report of the Working Group on Description at the Fonds Level,” <i>Archivaria</i> 28 (Summer 1989): 141-145. See also Robert Edwards, “‘With Respect to Original Order’: Changing Values in Archival Arrangement,” <i>Archives Association of British Columbia</i> 11, no. 1 (Winter 2001).)) Lastly, the principle of original order prioritizes filing systems of unknown or dubious legitimacy over the principle of use or accessibility. As Frank Boles states, “usability acknowledges the evidential superiority of documents over filing systems by placing primary emphasis on access to documents.” ((Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” 31.)) In this critique, usability and original order are often in conflict.\r\n\r\n<b>Of Bonds and Parallels</b>\r\n\r\nOther conceptual models besides the series system have attempted to address these critiques by forming new ideas about how order or grouping can evidence archival authenticity, identity, and meaning. One theory to articulate the interrelations of individual records can be found in Luciana Duranti’s notion of the archival bond, which she defines as the “network of relations that each record has with the records belonging in the same aggregation.” ((Luciana Duranti, “The Archival Bond,” <i>Archives and Museum Informatics</i> 11 (1997): 213-18.)) Not to be confused with context, which exists outside the record, the archival bond, for Duranti, is core to the identity of the record. As she states, “documents that are expressions of a transaction are not records until they are put into relation with other records.” ((Ibid., 216.)) Emerging from research into the authenticity of electronic records (including the InterPARES project), the archival bond identifies a web of documentary co-dependencies that presumes an inheritance and relationship between records based on functional proximity. ((“The InterPARES Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://www.interpares.org\">www.interpares.org</a>.))\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most exhaustive attempt to deal with many difficulties that exist within the gulf between <i>respect des fonds</i> as principle and practice was undertaken by Michel Duchein in 1983. ((Duchein, \"Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems,\" 64–82.)) While Duchein proposes solutions to the many problems of the fonds concept, the reader cannot help but be overwhelmed by the fact that his cataloging of the “theoretical problems” and “practical difficulties” far outnumber, and begin to drown out, his proposed solutions. For Duchein, within fonds there can be all sorts of nebulous, arbitrary, and forgotten methods of classification “from which all imaginable disorders flow.” He calls these, in a poetic moment, “brutal manipulations.” ((Ibid., 77.)) But after this disquisition, on the last page of his article Duchein mentions one idea that seems if not prescient, then at least transitive in the way it conceives of context: the <i>parallelismus membrorum</i>, “the similarity of parallel files.” <i>Parallelismus membrorum</i> is a rhetorical term referring to the patterns within a text formed by the utilization of repeated grammatical structures. (“I came. I saw. I conquered,” is a brief example). Duchein here employs the motif to refer to the contextual relations that exist between records of different fonds, the network of meanings that stretch across the archive.\r\n\r\nChris Hurley explored an idea similar to <i>parallelismus membrorum</i> in his delineation of “parallel provenance” a concept built around “composing different things from the same particles—combining things in different ways to produce a variety of views of what they look like in the aggregate … not so much about identifying a different creator as recognizing manifold context.” ((Chris Hurley, “Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?,” <i>Archives and Manuscripts</i> 33, no. 1 (2005): 126.)) [IMAGE5] Other contemporary writers, such as Laura Millar and Geoffrey Yeo, have sought to stretch the meaning of the fonds even further, arguing it exists purely at the conceptual level. ((Geoffrey Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds and the Physical Collection,” <i>Archivaria</i> 73 (Spring 2012): 43-91; Laura Millar, “The Death of the Fonds and the Resurrection of Provenance: Archival Context in Space and Time,” <i>Archivaria</i> 53 (Spring 2002): 1-15.)) But as the definition of the fonds becomes more distant, more abstract, its privileging as a form of aggregation seems less certain, especially in a digital environment in which creatorship is but one of many means of grouping records.\r\n\r\nThe archival bond, the series system, <i>parallelismus membrorum, </i>and parallel provenance all mark attempts to theorize relationships between records and collections in ways that can elide the practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Equally, these ideas represent a continued expansion of context beyond the limitations of grouping by creatorship or creator-derived order. In each case, similarities and dependencies emerge out of cross-collection networks or semantically derived principles. As the models gain distance from the vagaries of the individual records, one starts to recognize a familiar pattern of removal—not a disjunction, exactly, but a subtle passage from the material trace to the abstract representation. The familiarity is borne of the similar movement from item to representation that characterizes electronic records and their attendant phenomenological tension between the physical inscription on a drive and the symbolic interface on a screen.\r\n\r\n<b>Bit Level Processing</b>\r\n\r\nBut enough of models. Consider instead the bit, the binary, the magnetic flux reversal of the spinning disk that is the origin of the digital object. Material inscription offers a good point to segue into an examination of digital records and how they both complicate or even circumvent historical notions of <i>respect des fonds </i> while at the same time enabling realization of a more expansive notion of context and interrelation.\r\n\r\nStarting at the bit level, the characteristics of inscription (how digital information is written onto storage media) call into question the idea of original order. When data is written to a storage device, it has a material, physical trace, but that trace is far from the legibility or interpretability we associate with analog documents. As Matt Kirschenbaum has noted in his study of new media and digital forensics, “we write <i>on</i> paper, but we write <i>to</i> a magnetic disk (or tape)”; the semantic difference signifies that the act of inscription is “logically distinct” from the act of creation and intellectual manipulation. ((Matt Kirschenbaum, <i>Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination</i> (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 87. Emphasis in original.)) [IMAGE 6] In addition, a key component of storage media is that it is random access; that means the bits composing a record are inscribed to available clusters across the platter of a drive depending on which tracks and sectors are available for inscription. That is, the component bits of a digital object are non-sequential in their material physical arrangement. Aggregated, they can create an interpretable object, but their component location is nonlinear. Here, even at the bit level of a single item, there is no original order. Furthermore, each time these bits are reconstructed, each time the file is accessed and translated into an interpretable, editable representation, the file will be altered in minute ways (for instance, a file’s “last opened” date) and thus be composed of a new order as new bits are assigned to other available areas of the disk. As Kirschenbaum notes, quoting a dictum of forensic science, “every contact leaves a trace.” The act of interpreting a digital object, thus, continually alters its material order.\r\n\r\nMoving beyond the non-sequential arrangement of bits of individual records, but remaining at the forensic level, other features of the digital environment challenge long-standing presumptions of authenticity and uniqueness that are dependent upon physical arrangement or description. Temporary files, such as those stored by auto-save or recovery programs, mean that a drive can contain multiple versions of identical files, many of them beyond the management (or even awareness) of their creator. This “ambient data” is matched by other features of data dispersal throughout a storage system, such as “swap space” (disk space sometimes allocated for use by RAM) and “disk slack” (which accounts for the difference between the actual file size and the disk space used for storage) that themselves complicate ideas of order and linearity. Storage becomes a hidden, dynamic world in which physical arrangement on a spinning drive consists of the equivalent of dispersed crevices, hidey-holes, and secret areas where data proliferates. Kirschenbaum asserts, “there is, in short, no simple way to know how many instances of a single file are residing in how many states, in how many different locations, at any given moment in the operating system.” ((Ibid., 52.)) As well, digital objects themselves have the potential to contain trace data that, while possibly not achieving the singular identity of a record, can have evidential value or help establish provenance.\r\n\r\nTake, for instance, Kirschenbaum’s exploration of a floppy disk image, in which he finds evidence of how the storage media was used over time and what its hidden and partially deleted data can manifest about its user: “[W]e discover on the original diskette the incompletely overwritten remains of previous software … a piece of 1980s software culture frozen in allographic amber.” ((Ibid., 140.)) Discovering this legacy information reveals multiple levels of creatorship and a trail of ownership and social and cultural meaning that extend beyond the object, the creator, or the fonds. In this case, the unintentionally preserved (by the user, at least) data provides a testament to its origins that is not visible in the individual files themselves. Here provenance is not a result of aggregation or description but a characteristic of how digital information is created and transmitted. Context is not just relational, implied, or conceptualized, but can be a part of the very media itself, like secret, half-formed barnacles clinging to the vessel of the digital record. Incomplete but decipherable. Fragmentary but meaningful. Allographic amber.\r\n\r\n<b>Fonds Essentialism</b>\r\n\r\nNeedless to say, most people do not interact with digital information at the forensic level. In Kenneth Thibodeau’s useful model, digital objects are compounds, composed of a physical, logical, and conceptual object. Respectively, those adjectives refer to the physical inscription on storage media; the logical suite of translational software and processes that access and “read” that inscription; and the conceptual object the user interacts with, such as the text, image, or interface on a screen. ((Kenneth Thibodeau, “Overview of Technological Approaches to Digital Preservation and Challenges in Coming Years,” in <i>The State of Digital Preservation: An International Perspective</i> (Washington D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2002).)) The conceptual object—the representational environment of the screen as experienced in the word processing program, the image editor, the social media app—inculcates its own affordances and logic on the creation or use of records. In fact, given the hidden, inscrutable nature of storage and inscription, the formal representation of digital objects on a screen can have an outsized influence on their creation, management, and perception—an interpretive tendency that Nick Montford calls “screen essentialism.” Considering the extensive influence that the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i> has had, historically, on how archival collections are arranged and described, a similar predilection may characterize the archival enterprise—call it <i>fonds essentialism</i>.\r\n\r\nThe conceptual object—the screen—presents its own challenges to the implied narrative of current modes of archival description. The way that a user interacts with an aggregation of digital materials is fundamentally different from how a user would interact with a set of document boxes or a finding aid. The screen imposes its own logic, its own “formal regimen,” in Kirschenbaum’s terms, on how digital objects are interpreted or accessed, but also how they are described. Traditional archival representation for analog materials emerges from a narrative: a story about what a collection is, what it holds, and the order and location of its contents. It moves through a descriptive summary of contextual detail and administrative information and on to a hierarchy of series and subseries often arranged by type, function, chronology, or other broad categories. Papers, folders, boxes, and series must be arranged in physical space, after all, and that comes to shape how they are arranged in the intellectual space of description. A finding aid is a narrative to be read and its intellectual availability is largely linear and structural. The conceptual object of the digital record and the interface to an aggregation of digital records offer quite a different type of interaction.\r\n\r\nText mining and hyperlinks are simple examples of ways to navigate large groups of materials absent a singular narrative sequence. Lev Manovich, in theorizing new media, has noted that the database (or, the database logic) has supplanted narrative as the method of interacting with digital information. In new media, “narrative becomes just one method of accessing data among others,” and digital information assumes “the projection of the ontology of a computer onto culture itself.” ((Lev Manovich, “Database as a Genre of New Media,” <i>Journal of A&amp;I Society</i> 14, no. 2 (May 2000): 176-77.)) In a database, objects are related but not ordered. The database logic is nonlinear and there is no original order because order is dependent upon query. Search and navigation become algorithm-dependent and not predetermined by a creator, an archivist, or a static finding aid—though all of those organizations are themselves available. Digital objects will have an identifier, yes, but where they “rest” in intellectual space is contingent, mutable. The key point is that, even at the level of representation, arrangement is dynamic: access and representation need not depend on the fonds. Description becomes relational as well and can extend beyond individual aggregations of records. The logic of physical space no longer drives retrieval or predominates in description. Original order and provenance are not lost or obviated in this model, but they are not the exclusive means of access, either.\r\n\r\n<b>Recent Practices</b>\r\n\r\nCase studies from projects handling significant amounts of born-digital records provide insight into the theoretical and practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. As the Emory University project asked of the born-digital content in its Salmon Rushdie acquisition, “Would we treat the born-digital files the same as print material? Would we impose any sort of arrangement on the materials? How much added description could we provide? As the following discussion will reveal, the application of archival theory and principles may shift to accommodate the differences between paper and born-digital archives.” ((Laura Carroll et al., “A Comprehensive Approach to Born-Digital Archives,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 72.)) Or, as the large-scale, born-digital Vancouver Olympics project team put it, “core archival activities may diverge from long-established practices when moving into the digital environment.” ((Courtney C. Mumma, Glenn Dingwall, and Sue Bigelow, “A First Look at the Acquisition and Appraisal of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Fonds: Or, SELECT * FROM VANOC_Records AS Archives WHERE Value=‘true’;,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 93.)) Along with the multi-institutional AIMS project and the PARADIGM (Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media) project in the UK, these case studies detail the practical issues involved in rethinking arrangement and description in born-digital archives. ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/</a>; Paradigm project, “Workbook on Digital Private Papers,” The Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (Paradigm) Project, accessed October 2012,  <a href=\"http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html\">http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html</a>.))\r\n\r\nTaken together, the projects provide an overview of how arrangement may look in entirely born-digital collections. All note the difficulty in parsing user-generated description and the often quixotic or meaningless nature of directory structures and naming. The projects largely employed filtering, text mining, and other cross-record queries to determine the content of most files. The sheer volume of files contained in accessions precluded any item-level content review or hierarchical rearrangement; yet, at the same time, “the creation of file and item descriptions and inventories is not only easier and faster, it yields much richer information.… What takes hours or days to perform in the paper environment takes mere seconds to accomplish in the digital environment, and is done to a greater level of detail.” ((Mumma et al., \"A First Look,\" 115-16.))\r\n\r\nThough the many technical processes necessary for format validation, emulation, automated metadata extraction, and other methods of processing born-digital archives are too complex to be fully recounted here, these case studies point to their key characteristics. [VIDEO 1] Arrangement, as we think of it, is no longer a process of imposing intellectualized hierarchies or physical relocation; instead, it becomes largely automated, algorithmic, and batch processed. At the same time, archival representation will build upon the affordances of the digital objects themselves to extract and compile metadata that can then be repurposed to bridge and augment a wealth of contextual relations far beyond the order of their creation and their agency of origin.\r\n\r\n<b>Visual Descriptions</b>\r\n\r\nAs the “logical associations of records extend beyond the records themselves and embrace relations with other entities in the wider world,” as Geoffrey Yeo puts it, archivists will be tasked with building interfaces that draw upon these aforementioned possibilities and linking them to the online interfaces through which records will be made available. ((Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds,” 71.)) The interface thus becomes the “critical element in the interaction between documentary evidence and its consumers.” ((Margaret Hedstrom, “Archives, Memory, and Interfaces with the Past,” <i>Archival Science</i> 2, no. 1-2 (2002): 24.))\r\n\r\nSince few archives are accessioning entirely born-digital collections, it is difficult to find archival examples of a description for such a collection. Born-digital content that is currently being processed is usually a small portion of a larger physical collection and, as such, is integrated in a hybrid fashion into traditional finding aids; see, for instance, \"<a href=\"http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt9p3038mq/\">Series 8: Born digital files</a>,\" \"<a href=\"http://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/rushdie1000/\">Series 11: Computers and related devices</a>,\" or \"<a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">Series 13: Computer files</a>.\"\r\n\r\nThere are, however, some archival projects, as well as work in the digital humanities, that offer a window into how researchers and scholars are making using of large sets of digital data. While the data sets and digital records being utilized are not necessarily archival collections, the tools, methods of inquiry, and cross-collection, multi-institutional repositories that emerge from these projects presage both how entirely born-digital archives may come to be used and what digital archival collection interfaces may look like in the future.\r\n\r\nTwo projects taking an innovative, insightful approach to exploring archival collections through the mining of large archival corpora are The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online and Cameron Blevins’s work text mining and topic modeling Martha Ballard’s diary. ((The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online can be found at <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/\">http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/</a>, and the associated Criminal Intent project can be found at <a href=\"http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/\">http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/</a>. Cameron Blevin’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary can be found online at <a href=\"http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/\">http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/</a> and at <a href=\"http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml\">http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml</a>.)) The Old Bailey Proceedings provides access to nearly 200,000 digitized trial records from London’s criminal courts, spans almost 250 years, allows full text searching, and has an API through which users can query the archive. The With Criminal Intent project has built a suite of related tools that can help perform data-mining projects using this archive. [IMAGE7] This project measures and visualizes trends over time as a means of revealing historical themes, building and revealing new narratives, and providing insights into the past through data-driven analysis.\r\n\r\nBlevins’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary features a different collection, a single diary by an eighteenth-century housewife composed of almost 10,000 entries from 1785 to 1812. This project aspires to a similar goal of revealing novel insights into, and interpretations of, historical material through the ability of digital tools to mine vast sets of information. Blevins uses topic modeling—an algorithmic method that searches word patterns and groupings throughout large collections of texts (for Ballard’s diary, each entry was treated as a different “text”)—to chart and track thematic trends across the diary. A similar approach has been taken by the Mining the Dispatch project, which examines changing sentiments toward the Civil War over the course of six years (over 112,000 items) in the Richmond, Virginia <i>Daily Dispatch</i> newspaper. ((“Mining the Dispatch,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/\">http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/</a>.)) [IMAGE8]\r\n\r\nThese projects may fall under the broader rubric of the digital humanities, and the collections they are working with may not be archival collections in the traditional sense, but they offer a glimpse of the discovery, navigation, exploration, and analytic tools that foreshadow uses of digital archival collections. Other initiatives have sought to build upon the network of social relations that influence records creation. The SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context) Project “provides access to the socio-historical contexts ([including] people, families, and corporate bodies) in which the records were created” through the use of the EAC-CPF standard that describes corporate bodies, persons, and families. ((“SNAC: The Social Networks and Archival Context Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/\">http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/</a>.)) Early results show a promising method for using social context for discovery and interpretation. [IMAGE9] The archivists at Stanford University who are managing the Robert Creeley collection, which contains a significant quantity of born-digital content, especially emails, have used the custom-built MUSE tool for exploring semantic patterns in email archives. ((The Robert Creeley collection can be found at <a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html</a>. For more information on the MUSE tool visit <a href=\"http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/\">http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/</a>.)) [IMAGE10] Similarly, other projects have explored building unique visual interfaces to archival collections that extend contextual relations across collections, archives, and disciplines. [VIDEO 2]\r\n\r\nWhat distinguishes these projects from archival representations of old is that context and meaning are not exclusively provided through descriptive, narrative details that precede an arrangement and location list, but instead through networks, inter-linkages, modeling, and content analysis. Users can move dynamically within a collection and laterally across collections. Search, query, and tools like topic modeling also allow the user to build their own patterns and hierarchies for discovery. In this view, archival description still plays a crucial role in providing information on what something is or how it came to be created, but no longer is the fonds or idea of original order the sole determinant of representation.\r\n\r\n<b>Conclusion</b>\r\n\r\nAs Luciana Duranti has noted, archival description “has been carried out or not carried out depending on specific needs and conditions, attitudes and requirements, and its products have consistently reflected the conceptions about archives held by the society of the time.” ((Duranti, “Origin and Development,” 53.)) In the physical world of items, folders, boxes, and shelves, the archive must be sorted, ordered, and stored sequentially in space. Those properties, along with social, cultural, and political attitudes have driven how archival arrangement and description are theorized and practiced. Indeed, description itself has always had to serve multiple purposes: to provide historical or biographical information, scope and content detail, physical location for retrieval, administrative information for ongoing management, and restrictions and material types governing use. In a sense, description itself is a compound object, tugged between the needs of physical arrangement, intellectual representation, and user expectation. The properties of digital records allow archivists to revisit that negotiation. At the same time, other qualities of digital information, like the forensic disk image, have the potential to preserve both a mechanical version of “order” as well as provenancial and contextual information that formerly were provided through description. File fixity, forensic imaging, directory manifests, and auto-generated metadata may all come to play a larger role in defining provenance.\r\n\r\nWe disrespect des fonds, then, not as an act of elimination or insubordination, but in order to bring other contextual relations to its same level of privilege. Consider it less a disrespect, perhaps, than a humbling; or, instead, consider it a reaffirmation that the multiplicity of meanings possible with digital records can be better realized through an ongoing interrogation of archival traditions of arrangement and description. In rethinking <i>respect des fonds</i>, we gain a better awareness of the extent to which the material affordances of paper records have had an undue influence on how we conceptualize and practice grouping and describing collections. Bits, however, are fundamentally different at the material and symbolic levels. The use of digital objects is different as well, influenced by computational processing, algorithmic query, automation, and dynamism, not to mention social conditions, user expectations, technology dependencies, storage requirements, and a host of other characteristics of how we create and use technology.\r\n\r\nParallels and bonds, series and topics, models and paradigms; at times these concepts have collided and resulted in a seeming antagonism between ideas like original order and random access, historical contingency and abstract principle, finding aid and dynamic query. But there have been similarities too: how the tension between record and representation mirrors that of inscription and screen; and how the component nature of digital objects resembles the component purpose of traditional archival description. To entrench methods of arrangement and description borne of the qualities of physical collections is to disregard the potential expansion of context that digital information can support. In recognizing how historically and socially contingent traditional practices (and the theories spawning those practices) were, we better recognize their potential dysfunction in a time of born-digital records. This is not to say that we should discard the idea of the fonds or the utility of original order, but perhaps it is time to revoke their privileged place in archival discourse and revisit the true goals of arrangement and description in light of the capabilities of digital records. Maybe then we can begin to understand what is possible when we think of collections as mutually contextual and interrelated instead of cloistered and static. And perhaps then other bonds, other parallels, other contexts, meanings, and interpretations can receive the same amount of respect that we have, for too long now, granted the fonds.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nWikipedia articles created as part of this work:\r\n\r\nRespect des fonds: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds</a>\r\n\r\nOriginal Order: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order</a>\r\n\r\nArchival Bond: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond</a>','Disrespect des Fonds: Rethinking Arrangement and Description in Born-Digital Archives','','inherit','open','open','','4722-revision-12','','','2013-06-18 01:28:22','2013-06-18 01:28:22','',4722,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4722-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(5104,3,'2013-07-11 16:20:04','2013-07-11 16:20:04','','bailey_archivejournal_image2-e1373515802809','Figure 2. The many arrangement methods of some Ecole des Chartes graduates prior to the emergence of respect des fonds as a methodology. Image from Lara Moore\'s \"Restoring Order,\" 114.','inherit','open','open','','bailey_archivejournal_image2-e1373515802809','','','2013-07-11 16:20:04','2013-07-11 16:20:04','',4722,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/bailey_archivejournal_image2-e1373515802809.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(4747,3,'2013-06-18 01:38:44','2013-06-18 01:38:44','','bailey_archivejournal_image4','Figure 4. Peter Scott\'s diagram depicting his system of archival arrangement based on grouping records at the series level. From Scott, \"The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,\" 1966. ','inherit','open','open','','bailey_archivejournal_image4','','','2013-06-18 01:38:44','2013-06-18 01:38:44','',4722,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image4.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(4927,3,'2013-06-28 19:06:56','2013-06-28 19:06:56','','bailey_archivejournal_image5','Figure 5. Chris Hurly\'s diagram of parallel provenance, \"The Little Truck.\" The little truck is a metaphor for archival description. From Hurley, \"Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?”presentation by Briquet et al. at Digging into Data Challenge, Washington D.C., 2009. Slides available at http://criminalintent.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/criminal_intent_digging_into_data_meeting_10jun2011.pdf.','inherit','open','open','','bailey_archivejournal_image5-2','','','2013-06-28 19:06:56','2013-06-28 19:06:56','',4722,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image5.gif',0,'attachment','image/gif',0),(4748,3,'2013-06-18 01:35:31','2013-06-18 01:35:31','<b>Introduction</b>\r\n\r\nIn her article, “Disciplinarity and Disorder,” in Issue 1 of this journal, Gabrielle Dean opens her essay with a detailed and expressive “fantasy” describing the “primal scene of archival research [that] takes place in a dreary reading room,” featuring an archivist, a researcher, a cart, dusty gray boxes, and a “numbered file folder.” As her fantasy takes flight, with the researcher scribbling away and papers swirling and new collections sprouting up organically, she crafts an evocative metaphor for the life cycle of preservation and regeneration that archivists aim to enable through access to primary sources. Dean cogently deconstructs the origins and implications of this “primal scene” over the course of her essay. But what also merits highlighting in her opening metaphor are the accoutrements that populate it—the cart, the box, the file folder—familiar players on the stage of the archival encounter. These objects and symbols are evocative of that idealized moment of archaeological discovery that characterizes the use of the archive. They are objects and symbols of history, certainly, but relics, alas, of an analog age.\r\n\r\nA similar fantasy, one potentially more fraught with anxiety and dread, must darken the reveries of archivists as they attempt to provide access to more contemporary materials. A daydream involving the researcher of tomorrow may instead feature dreadful moments of “file cannot be opened” error messages, of FTP transfers gone awry, of decaying media orphaned from long-lost playback devices. Our imaginary researcher will not be awaiting archival discovery sitting in a dreary reading room, but instead exist in some networked who-knows-where, furiously emailing an endless stream of access and transfer request and constantly griping about obsolete formats and buggy interfaces. At the same time, our imaginary archivist will not be pushing carts or shelving boxes, but creating user accounts for virtual reading rooms, running pattern-recognition text-mining queries, uploading disk images, or helping users with emulation software. Like the content of our archives themselves, the props and symbols of our archival fantasies increasingly will be associated with born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nHow will traditional principles of archival arrangement and description be challenged or modified to account for born-digital materials? Arrangement and description have long been the primary method of facilitating the use of archives, and their methodologies have been dependent upon the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. The articulation of this theory in 1841 has been held as the “starting point” or beginning of the modern era of archival theory, a “watershed” event establishing the “basic principle” and “very core” of the archival endeavor. Superlatives abound. <i>Respect des fonds</i>, “more than any other principle, has come to provide the archival profession with a unique identity.” ((Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” in <i>Bibliographical Foundations of French Historical Studies</i> (New York: Haworth Press, 1992), 108.))\r\n\r\nBut <i>respect des fonds</i> was born of a particular historic moment, for a particular type of archival document, and was conceived to address the practical needs of specific social circumstances. Even as <i>respect des fonds</i> has mutated and evolved over the decades, subject to revisions, contestations, and reaffirmations, its methodologies have largely been a product of the nature of the archival record as a physical document to be sorted, grouped, and described after receipt from a single donating entity. In an era defined by digital materials and their affordances and limitations, one in which narrative linearity often seems replaced by data-driven relationalism, the meaning of <i>respect des fonds</i> is ever more slippery.\r\n\r\nBroadly stated, <i>respect des fonds</i> is the principle of grouping records by the administration, organization, individual, or creating body in which they originated. <i>Respect des fonds</i> mandates that the records of the creating entity not be mixed with those of a different entity. It prioritizes the “organic” nature of archival records, identifying the locus of their generation, and the evidence their consolidation provides about that originating body, as essential to preserving and maintaining context. Comprised of the related “principle of original order” and “the principle of provenance,” <i>respect des fonds</i> displaced prior methods of archival arrangement that were predicated upon classifications by subject, function, topic, legal utility, chronology, and other categories. Though often referenced as a core component of archival identity, as a theoretical concept, <i>respect des fonds</i> is, as one writer says, “elusive and oft-misunderstood.” ((Dan Zelenyj, “Linchpin Imperilled: The Functional Interpretation of Series and the Principle of Respect des Fonds,” <i>Archivaria</i> 42 (1996): 126.))\r\n\r\nThe introduction of born-digital records into the archives offers an opportunity to examine how the practical methodologies of arrangement and description are shifting and how those changing practices lead to a reconsideration of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Much as digital records’ technological dependencies, ease of duplication, and subordination to features of systems and storage have led to a reassessment of the existing precepts of archival appraisal and selection, they also prompt a similar analysis of arrangement and description. One of those axioms due reassessment is the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i>.\r\n\r\nThis essay details the social and material conditions of the emergence of <i>respect des fonds</i>, the theory’s complex practical implementations and contested assumption, the emergence of alternate models, and how born-digital materials illuminate the theory’s analog origins and limitations. I will also explain the specific qualities of digital objects, including the nature of inscription and its impact on notions of original order and authenticity, as well as how nonlinear retrieval supplants the narrative logic of <i>respect des fonds</i> with a broader notion of context and discoverability. I will then consider recent interpretive methods, such as data visualization and text mining, as potential harbingers of new modes of representing and creating interfaces to digital collections—representations that better capitalize on the possibilities of digital materials. Finally, I will argue that the affordances of born-digital archives—such as their potential for parallel representation, machine-enabled interpretation, and expansive contextual and intellectual availability—provoke a reconsideration of the place of privilege of <i>respect des fonds </i>in archival arrangement and description.\r\n\r\n<b>The Old Regime</b>\r\n\r\nBefore <i>respect des</i> <i>fonds</i> can be respected, disrespected, or neglected, a better understanding of its origins is warranted, along with an examination of how the principle has (or has not) been applied and its periodic contestation. The seductive purity of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> often overshadows the concept’s decidedly complex origins. <i>Respect des fonds</i> as a guiding method of archival control was never as ennobled an idea as its contemporary evocation often implies. Its original articulation was mired in professional infighting, reductive practicalities, and the tumult and disorganization of political change.\r\n\r\nWhile we can find records grouped according to creator in some earlier instances, ((Luciana Duranti, “Origin and Development of Archival Description,” <i>Archivaria</i> 35 (1993): 50.)) the formal articulation of the concept of <i>respect des fonds</i> was, like much of modernity, a by-product of the French Revolution. The Revolution featured a simultaneous destruction and reconstruction of the archive, an attempt to both erase and recast the historical record. Most famously, when revolutionaries stormed the Bastille they destroyed its documentary contents—records that instantiated the subjugation and exploitation of the despised monarchy. [IMAGE1]\r\n\r\nYet the revolutionaries’ also scrupulously preserved the record of their own activities. The <i>Archives Nationales</i> was established in 1790, with a head archivist, hours designated for the general public, and a centralized administration tasked both with preserving the legacy of the new government and managing select records of the Old Regime. Those tasks, however, were segregated in ways that impacted how each class of documents was handled. Records of the National Assembly were to be scrupulously maintained, while feudal titles were widely destroyed. As one Minster put it, “all the old documents with gothic script are … only legal titles of feudalism, of the subjection of the feeble to the strong.” ((As cited in Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development since the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 3, no. 3 (1940): 162.))\r\n\r\nThe management of archives during this time was chaotic. Property records were sent to one administrative body within the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, legal records to another, and documents of historical interest went to the <i>Bibliotheque Nationales</i>. At the same time, archivists were tasked with maintaining a distinction between records documenting pre- and post-Revolutionary activities. In addition, the first two administrative heads of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, Armand-Gaston Camus and Pierre Daunou, were both trained as librarians and had, by the early 1800s, established twenty-four “groupings” of records into which future accessions were to be integrated. Within these groups, additional classifications and intellectual methods of ordering existed. The archives, then, were “arranged in accordance with an arbitrarily devised ‘methodical’ scheme that was derived from library experience.” ((T. R Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archive : Principles and Techniques</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 169.)) As well, political tumult and instability of governance continued to have an impact on the arrangement of the archives, and “decisions about preservation, classification, inventory, and access were therefore the result not just of practical considerations or the opinions of individual archivists and librarians, but also of key shifts in national politics.” ((Lara Moore, <i>Restoring Order: The Ecole Des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870</i> (Duluth, Minnesota: Litwin Books, 2008), 17.))\r\n\r\n<b>The Origins of <i>Respect des Fonds</i></b>\r\n\r\nWhile the true extent of records destruction during the post-Revolutionary years is disputed, ((Carl Lokke, “Archives and the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 31, no. 1 (January 1968): 30-31.)) as Judith Panitch notes, “this chaotic episode of archival history reveals much about archives themselves, suggesting specifically their fundamental fragility and malleability.” ((Judith Panitch, “Liberty, equality, posterity? Some Archival Lessons from the Case of the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 59, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 33.)) That malleability is evident in the conflicting approaches to archival arrangement and description that characterized this era, practices that lead up to the declaration of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Records of the time were arranged primarily by sometimes-quixotic methods of classification, by schema idiosyncratic in origin and inconsistent in application. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 167.))\r\n\r\nA number of developments in the next few decades pushed this lack of uniformity to its breaking point and helped impel the conceptualization of <i>respect des fonds</i> as an archival principle, if, as I will show, less of an actual practice. The establishment of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> in 1821 created a formal institution to train archivists to staff both the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and the over 2500 provincial archives across France. Laws passed in the 1830s also drastically expanded the number of archivists mandated to work both in the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and in the provincial archives. Formal training and new positions, however, when combined with lax oversight and inconsistent guidance on practices, led, predictably, to a near-comic proliferation of methods of classification and arrangement. [IMAGE2] Due to the proliferation of classification systems and schema, change was inevitable.\r\n\r\nThat change came in the form of the infamous “Circular no. 14,” released in 1841 by Natalis de Wailly, Administrative Head of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>. This document is recognized as the first articulation of the fonds as the fundamental method of archival arrangement, the purpose of which was “to form a collection of all the documents which originate from a body, an organization, a family or an individual, and to arrange the different fonds according to a certain order.” ((As quoted in Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 107.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> made creatorship the organizing principle of archival records and espoused the formation of collections according to the organization, entity, family, or individual responsible for their creation. Such an arrangement would ensure, as one writer later put it, the essential need “to know where it [the archival document] was created, in the framework of what process, to what end, for whom, when and how it was received by the addressee, and how it came into our hands.” ((Michael Duchein, “Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des fonds in Archival Science,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 67.))\r\n\r\nHowever, as Nancy Bartlett has explicated, this “watershed” moment was less momentous than contemporary evocations suggest. For one, de Wailly’s circular dictated “that <i>respect des fonds</i> was prescribed only for archival records created prior to 1789.” More contemporary fonds were to continue to be arranged categorically. In addition, minutes from subsequent meetings of the commission overseeing the work of archivists—a commission on which de Wailly served—reveal that “<i>respect des fonds</i> was if nothing more a preliminary standard for archival arrangement and description in departmental archives, a means of insuring that beginning archivists without the benefit of direct supervision might not cause too much intellectual damage to vulnerable records in their care.” ((Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 111.))\r\n\r\nThe principle was, in fact, a practical exigency, a method to simplify archival arrangement seen as more easily implemented by novice archivists than the more rigorous arrangement by classification. Bartlett also notes that <i>respect des fonds</i> remained absent from both the curriculum of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> as well as the publications of the professional society of its graduates. Lastly, the principle was, at the time, not applied to accessions into the <i>Archive Nationales</i> itself, as it operated under a different administrative department than de Wailly’s Interior Ministry.\r\n\r\n<i>Respect des fonds</i>, then, was never a perfectly realized theory. Its formation was a contingency of a unique historical moment; its conception depended upon practical necessities and its implementation was inconsistent and disputed. What today seems near dogma—that archives be arranged by fonds—was at the time novel and simplistic, more the product of utility and political manipulation than a grand inspiration regarding the functional authenticity of fonds or evidential purity towards their arrangement.\r\n\r\n<b>The Original Original Order</b>\r\n\r\nThough implemented inconsistently in its home country, the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained a wide acceptance across Europe. In Prussia, the theory (known as <i>Provenienzprinzip,</i> the principle of provenance) mandated that “official papers are to be maintained in the order and with the designations which they received in the course of the official activity of the agency concerned.” ((Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archives</i>, 175.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> received its most elaborate and sustained justification, and expansion, however, in the Netherlands, where the Dutch archivists Muller, Feith, and Fruin produced their famous <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> in 1898. Often referred to colloquially as the “Dutch Manual” and seen as the “starting point of archival theory and methodology,” ((Peter Horsman, Eric Ketelaar, and Theo Thomassen, “New Respect for the Old Order: The Context of the Dutch Manual,” <i>The American Archivist </i>66, no. 2 (2003): 249.)) the work provided a detailed set of guidelines for the arrangement of records. The principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained even wider acceptance and popularity after its ratification at the First International Congress of Archivists meeting in Brussels in 1910. ((Lawrence D. Geller, “Joseph Cuvelier, Belgian Archival Education, and the First International Congress of Archivists, Brussels, 1910,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 16. Proceedings from the 1910 meeting can be found online at <a href=\"http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/\">http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/</a>.)) [IMAGE3]\r\n\r\nThe Dutch Manual, and the methodologies implemented in its wake, not only forbid the intermingling of the fonds of one agency with those of another—in keeping with the French conception of <i>respect des fonds</i>—but also expanded the theory to apply to the records within each fond—the internal arrangement of the archival collection. Or as the Dutch Manual put it, “the system of arrangement must be based on the original organization of the archival collection.” ((Samuel Muller, Johan Adriaan Feith, and Robert Fruin, <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> (H.W. Wilson Co., 1968), 52.)) This concept has come to be known as the “principle of original order,” an intra-fonds corollary to the external means of arrangement associated with the principle of provenance; <i>respect des fonds</i> encompasses both principles.\r\n\r\nA closer examination of the Dutch Manual, however, reveals certain methodological impracticalities that even its authors admit. First, they claim that the original order within a fonds may be modified or “restored” to account for multiple transfers from an agency, not all of which may truly represent the idealized “original order.” As well, records may be reorganized to account for “inconsequential irregularities attributable to record-keeping officials.” The authors also note that reconstituting the original order may be avoided when “the trouble which would have to be taken in order to reconstruct the old organization is out of proportion to the result to be obtained.” ((Muller et al., <i>Manual</i>, 83.)) Needless to say, the simple idea of “restoring original order” seems itself problematic, fraught with subjective decision-making likely far removed from whatever idealized “organic” origin archivists may discover within fonds. The complicated approach to “restoration” and “reconstruction” that the Dutch Manual advises often borders on, as one writer put it, “abandoning entirely their carefully developed ethic of conservation.” ((Frank Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” <i>The American Archivist </i>45, no. 1 (1982): 28.))\r\n\r\n<b>Critique des Fonds</b>\r\n\r\nThe widespread adoption <i>of respect des fonds</i> did not proceed unquestioned, however. As early as the 1930s, some archivists were taking issue with the methodology of arranging collections according to original order. In his survey of the development of archival theory, Ernst Posner points to the German Max Bar and two Swedish archivists who demonstrated “that slavish preservation of the original arrangement of a fonds is often insufficient,” the principle of provenance “is subject to certain restrictions” that make blanket adoption impractical, and adherence to <i>respect des fonds</i> often impedes use of archival materials. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 169.))\r\n\r\nSome Australian and American archivists in the 1960s, primarily Peter Scott and Mario Fenyo, challenged the definition of fonds even further. The problems with the traditional concept of the fonds were manifold. Defining fonds as the records of a “transferring or controlling agency” was problematic since the agent of transfer was not always the creating agency. Fonds could also be mixed or “broken” into multiple transfers to an archive, making reconstitution difficult. Fonds could also be the result of “a succession of agencies,” blurring true creatorship. Ordering series within fonds was difficult since future accessions may need to be inserted at different places in the existing organizational system, leading to physical disorder or the constant revision of finding aids or inventories. After reviewing minutes of early NARA meetings in an attempt to define what, exactly, constitutes a fonds, Fenyo succinctly pointed out, “no one knows what the word fonds means, not even the French who invented it.” ((Mario D. Fenyo, “The Record Group Concept: A Critique,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 2 (April 1966): 230.)) For Scott, his belief that “the very arbitrariness of the concept [of the fonds] is sufficient to make one question its usefulness,” ((Peter Scott, “The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 4 (October 1966): 497.)) led him to develop the “series system” [IMAGE4] which sought to orient arrangement and description according to function and use instead of agent or material type—a theory that, Terry Cook noted, “shifted the entire archival description enterprise from a static cataloging mode to a dynamic system of multiple interrelationships.” ((Terry Cook, “What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift,” <i>Archivaria</i> 43 (1999): 38.))\r\n\r\nThe principle of original order underwent a similar critique. A lack of clarity on the custodianship of records prior to their delivery to an archive, the problem of multiple and ongoing accessions, and the potential for incoherent or unknown methods of ordering or classification by creating bodies all led Fenyo to proclaim, “archivists generally believe that the arrangement of series within a record group reflects to some extent the organization and even history of the agency that created those records.… But the records in the National Archives reflect no such thing.” ((Fenyo, \"The Record Group Concept,\" 236.)) For archives consisting of personal papers, original order is seen as particularly problematic, since a chronological arrangement seemingly provides the greatest meaning and value to the records of an individual, but is unlikely to be the order of records upon accession. Restoration of original order also risks destroying the contextual information accrued by collections that have passed through multiple states of custodianship prior to their acceptance into the archive. ((Debra Barr, “Protecting Provenance: Response to the Report of the Working Group on Description at the Fonds Level,” <i>Archivaria</i> 28 (Summer 1989): 141-145. See also Robert Edwards, “‘With Respect to Original Order’: Changing Values in Archival Arrangement,” <i>Archives Association of British Columbia</i> 11, no. 1 (Winter 2001).)) Lastly, the principle of original order prioritizes filing systems of unknown or dubious legitimacy over the principle of use or accessibility. As Frank Boles states, “usability acknowledges the evidential superiority of documents over filing systems by placing primary emphasis on access to documents.” ((Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” 31.)) In this critique, usability and original order are often in conflict.\r\n\r\n<b>Of Bonds and Parallels</b>\r\n\r\nOther conceptual models besides the series system have attempted to address these critiques by forming new ideas about how order or grouping can evidence archival authenticity, identity, and meaning. One theory to articulate the interrelations of individual records can be found in Luciana Duranti’s notion of the archival bond, which she defines as the “network of relations that each record has with the records belonging in the same aggregation.” ((Luciana Duranti, “The Archival Bond,” <i>Archives and Museum Informatics</i> 11 (1997): 213-18.)) Not to be confused with context, which exists outside the record, the archival bond, for Duranti, is core to the identity of the record. As she states, “documents that are expressions of a transaction are not records until they are put into relation with other records.” ((Ibid., 216.)) Emerging from research into the authenticity of electronic records (including the InterPARES project), the archival bond identifies a web of documentary co-dependencies that presumes an inheritance and relationship between records based on functional proximity. ((“The InterPARES Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://www.interpares.org\">www.interpares.org</a>.))\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most exhaustive attempt to deal with many difficulties that exist within the gulf between <i>respect des fonds</i> as principle and practice was undertaken by Michel Duchein in 1983. ((Duchein, \"Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems,\" 64–82.)) While Duchein proposes solutions to the many problems of the fonds concept, the reader cannot help but be overwhelmed by the fact that his cataloging of the “theoretical problems” and “practical difficulties” far outnumber, and begin to drown out, his proposed solutions. For Duchein, within fonds there can be all sorts of nebulous, arbitrary, and forgotten methods of classification “from which all imaginable disorders flow.” He calls these, in a poetic moment, “brutal manipulations.” ((Ibid., 77.)) But after this disquisition, on the last page of his article Duchein mentions one idea that seems if not prescient, then at least transitive in the way it conceives of context: the <i>parallelismus membrorum</i>, “the similarity of parallel files.” <i>Parallelismus membrorum</i> is a rhetorical term referring to the patterns within a text formed by the utilization of repeated grammatical structures. (“I came. I saw. I conquered,” is a brief example). Duchein here employs the motif to refer to the contextual relations that exist between records of different fonds, the network of meanings that stretch across the archive.\r\n\r\nChris Hurley explored an idea similar to <i>parallelismus membrorum</i> in his delineation of “parallel provenance” a concept built around “composing different things from the same particles—combining things in different ways to produce a variety of views of what they look like in the aggregate … not so much about identifying a different creator as recognizing manifold context.” ((Chris Hurley, “Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?,” <i>Archives and Manuscripts</i> 33, no. 1 (2005): 126.)) [IMAGE5] Other contemporary writers, such as Laura Millar and Geoffrey Yeo, have sought to stretch the meaning of the fonds even further, arguing it exists purely at the conceptual level. ((Geoffrey Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds and the Physical Collection,” <i>Archivaria</i> 73 (Spring 2012): 43-91; Laura Millar, “The Death of the Fonds and the Resurrection of Provenance: Archival Context in Space and Time,” <i>Archivaria</i> 53 (Spring 2002): 1-15.)) But as the definition of the fonds becomes more distant, more abstract, its privileging as a form of aggregation seems less certain, especially in a digital environment in which creatorship is but one of many means of grouping records.\r\n\r\nThe archival bond, the series system, <i>parallelismus membrorum, </i>and parallel provenance all mark attempts to theorize relationships between records and collections in ways that can elide the practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Equally, these ideas represent a continued expansion of context beyond the limitations of grouping by creatorship or creator-derived order. In each case, similarities and dependencies emerge out of cross-collection networks or semantically derived principles. As the models gain distance from the vagaries of the individual records, one starts to recognize a familiar pattern of removal—not a disjunction, exactly, but a subtle passage from the material trace to the abstract representation. The familiarity is borne of the similar movement from item to representation that characterizes electronic records and their attendant phenomenological tension between the physical inscription on a drive and the symbolic interface on a screen.\r\n\r\n<b>Bit Level Processing</b>\r\n\r\nBut enough of models. Consider instead the bit, the binary, the magnetic flux reversal of the spinning disk that is the origin of the digital object. Material inscription offers a good point to segue into an examination of digital records and how they both complicate or even circumvent historical notions of <i>respect des fonds </i> while at the same time enabling realization of a more expansive notion of context and interrelation.\r\n\r\nStarting at the bit level, the characteristics of inscription (how digital information is written onto storage media) call into question the idea of original order. When data is written to a storage device, it has a material, physical trace, but that trace is far from the legibility or interpretability we associate with analog documents. As Matt Kirschenbaum has noted in his study of new media and digital forensics, “we write <i>on</i> paper, but we write <i>to</i> a magnetic disk (or tape)”; the semantic difference signifies that the act of inscription is “logically distinct” from the act of creation and intellectual manipulation. ((Matt Kirschenbaum, <i>Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination</i> (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 87. Emphasis in original.)) [IMAGE 6] In addition, a key component of storage media is that it is random access; that means the bits composing a record are inscribed to available clusters across the platter of a drive depending on which tracks and sectors are available for inscription. That is, the component bits of a digital object are non-sequential in their material physical arrangement. Aggregated, they can create an interpretable object, but their component location is nonlinear. Here, even at the bit level of a single item, there is no original order. Furthermore, each time these bits are reconstructed, each time the file is accessed and translated into an interpretable, editable representation, the file will be altered in minute ways (for instance, a file’s “last opened” date) and thus be composed of a new order as new bits are assigned to other available areas of the disk. As Kirschenbaum notes, quoting a dictum of forensic science, “every contact leaves a trace.” The act of interpreting a digital object, thus, continually alters its material order.\r\n\r\nMoving beyond the non-sequential arrangement of bits of individual records, but remaining at the forensic level, other features of the digital environment challenge long-standing presumptions of authenticity and uniqueness that are dependent upon physical arrangement or description. Temporary files, such as those stored by auto-save or recovery programs, mean that a drive can contain multiple versions of identical files, many of them beyond the management (or even awareness) of their creator. This “ambient data” is matched by other features of data dispersal throughout a storage system, such as “swap space” (disk space sometimes allocated for use by RAM) and “disk slack” (which accounts for the difference between the actual file size and the disk space used for storage) that themselves complicate ideas of order and linearity. Storage becomes a hidden, dynamic world in which physical arrangement on a spinning drive consists of the equivalent of dispersed crevices, hidey-holes, and secret areas where data proliferates. Kirschenbaum asserts, “there is, in short, no simple way to know how many instances of a single file are residing in how many states, in how many different locations, at any given moment in the operating system.” ((Ibid., 52.)) As well, digital objects themselves have the potential to contain trace data that, while possibly not achieving the singular identity of a record, can have evidential value or help establish provenance.\r\n\r\nTake, for instance, Kirschenbaum’s exploration of a floppy disk image, in which he finds evidence of how the storage media was used over time and what its hidden and partially deleted data can manifest about its user: “[W]e discover on the original diskette the incompletely overwritten remains of previous software … a piece of 1980s software culture frozen in allographic amber.” ((Ibid., 140.)) Discovering this legacy information reveals multiple levels of creatorship and a trail of ownership and social and cultural meaning that extend beyond the object, the creator, or the fonds. In this case, the unintentionally preserved (by the user, at least) data provides a testament to its origins that is not visible in the individual files themselves. Here provenance is not a result of aggregation or description but a characteristic of how digital information is created and transmitted. Context is not just relational, implied, or conceptualized, but can be a part of the very media itself, like secret, half-formed barnacles clinging to the vessel of the digital record. Incomplete but decipherable. Fragmentary but meaningful. Allographic amber.\r\n\r\n<b>Fonds Essentialism</b>\r\n\r\nNeedless to say, most people do not interact with digital information at the forensic level. In Kenneth Thibodeau’s useful model, digital objects are compounds, composed of a physical, logical, and conceptual object. Respectively, those adjectives refer to the physical inscription on storage media; the logical suite of translational software and processes that access and “read” that inscription; and the conceptual object the user interacts with, such as the text, image, or interface on a screen. ((Kenneth Thibodeau, “Overview of Technological Approaches to Digital Preservation and Challenges in Coming Years,” in <i>The State of Digital Preservation: An International Perspective</i> (Washington D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2002).)) The conceptual object—the representational environment of the screen as experienced in the word processing program, the image editor, the social media app—inculcates its own affordances and logic on the creation or use of records. In fact, given the hidden, inscrutable nature of storage and inscription, the formal representation of digital objects on a screen can have an outsized influence on their creation, management, and perception—an interpretive tendency that Nick Montford calls “screen essentialism.” Considering the extensive influence that the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i> has had, historically, on how archival collections are arranged and described, a similar predilection may characterize the archival enterprise—call it <i>fonds essentialism</i>.\r\n\r\nThe conceptual object—the screen—presents its own challenges to the implied narrative of current modes of archival description. The way that a user interacts with an aggregation of digital materials is fundamentally different from how a user would interact with a set of document boxes or a finding aid. The screen imposes its own logic, its own “formal regimen,” in Kirschenbaum’s terms, on how digital objects are interpreted or accessed, but also how they are described. Traditional archival representation for analog materials emerges from a narrative: a story about what a collection is, what it holds, and the order and location of its contents. It moves through a descriptive summary of contextual detail and administrative information and on to a hierarchy of series and subseries often arranged by type, function, chronology, or other broad categories. Papers, folders, boxes, and series must be arranged in physical space, after all, and that comes to shape how they are arranged in the intellectual space of description. A finding aid is a narrative to be read and its intellectual availability is largely linear and structural. The conceptual object of the digital record and the interface to an aggregation of digital records offer quite a different type of interaction.\r\n\r\nText mining and hyperlinks are simple examples of ways to navigate large groups of materials absent a singular narrative sequence. Lev Manovich, in theorizing new media, has noted that the database (or, the database logic) has supplanted narrative as the method of interacting with digital information. In new media, “narrative becomes just one method of accessing data among others,” and digital information assumes “the projection of the ontology of a computer onto culture itself.” ((Lev Manovich, “Database as a Genre of New Media,” <i>Journal of A&amp;I Society</i> 14, no. 2 (May 2000): 176-77.)) In a database, objects are related but not ordered. The database logic is nonlinear and there is no original order because order is dependent upon query. Search and navigation become algorithm-dependent and not predetermined by a creator, an archivist, or a static finding aid—though all of those organizations are themselves available. Digital objects will have an identifier, yes, but where they “rest” in intellectual space is contingent, mutable. The key point is that, even at the level of representation, arrangement is dynamic: access and representation need not depend on the fonds. Description becomes relational as well and can extend beyond individual aggregations of records. The logic of physical space no longer drives retrieval or predominates in description. Original order and provenance are not lost or obviated in this model, but they are not the exclusive means of access, either.\r\n\r\n<b>Recent Practices</b>\r\n\r\nCase studies from projects handling significant amounts of born-digital records provide insight into the theoretical and practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. As the Emory University project asked of the born-digital content in its Salmon Rushdie acquisition, “Would we treat the born-digital files the same as print material? Would we impose any sort of arrangement on the materials? How much added description could we provide? As the following discussion will reveal, the application of archival theory and principles may shift to accommodate the differences between paper and born-digital archives.” ((Laura Carroll et al., “A Comprehensive Approach to Born-Digital Archives,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 72.)) Or, as the large-scale, born-digital Vancouver Olympics project team put it, “core archival activities may diverge from long-established practices when moving into the digital environment.” ((Courtney C. Mumma, Glenn Dingwall, and Sue Bigelow, “A First Look at the Acquisition and Appraisal of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Fonds: Or, SELECT * FROM VANOC_Records AS Archives WHERE Value=‘true’;,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 93.)) Along with the multi-institutional AIMS project and the PARADIGM (Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media) project in the UK, these case studies detail the practical issues involved in rethinking arrangement and description in born-digital archives. ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/</a>; Paradigm project, “Workbook on Digital Private Papers,” The Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (Paradigm) Project, accessed October 2012,  <a href=\"http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html\">http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html</a>.))\r\n\r\nTaken together, the projects provide an overview of how arrangement may look in entirely born-digital collections. All note the difficulty in parsing user-generated description and the often quixotic or meaningless nature of directory structures and naming. The projects largely employed filtering, text mining, and other cross-record queries to determine the content of most files. The sheer volume of files contained in accessions precluded any item-level content review or hierarchical rearrangement; yet, at the same time, “the creation of file and item descriptions and inventories is not only easier and faster, it yields much richer information.… What takes hours or days to perform in the paper environment takes mere seconds to accomplish in the digital environment, and is done to a greater level of detail.” ((Mumma et al., \"A First Look,\" 115-16.))\r\n\r\nThough the many technical processes necessary for format validation, emulation, automated metadata extraction, and other methods of processing born-digital archives are too complex to be fully recounted here, these case studies point to their key characteristics. [VIDEO 1] Arrangement, as we think of it, is no longer a process of imposing intellectualized hierarchies or physical relocation; instead, it becomes largely automated, algorithmic, and batch processed. At the same time, archival representation will build upon the affordances of the digital objects themselves to extract and compile metadata that can then be repurposed to bridge and augment a wealth of contextual relations far beyond the order of their creation and their agency of origin.\r\n\r\n<b>Visual Descriptions</b>\r\n\r\nAs the “logical associations of records extend beyond the records themselves and embrace relations with other entities in the wider world,” as Geoffrey Yeo puts it, archivists will be tasked with building interfaces that draw upon these aforementioned possibilities and linking them to the online interfaces through which records will be made available. ((Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds,” 71.)) The interface thus becomes the “critical element in the interaction between documentary evidence and its consumers.” ((Margaret Hedstrom, “Archives, Memory, and Interfaces with the Past,” <i>Archival Science</i> 2, no. 1-2 (2002): 24.))\r\n\r\nSince few archives are accessioning entirely born-digital collections, it is difficult to find archival examples of a description for such a collection. Born-digital content that is currently being processed is usually a small portion of a larger physical collection and, as such, is integrated in a hybrid fashion into traditional finding aids; see, for instance, \"<a href=\"http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt9p3038mq/\">Series 8: Born digital files</a>,\" \"<a href=\"http://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/rushdie1000/\">Series 11: Computers and related devices</a>,\" or \"<a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">Series 13: Computer files</a>.\"\r\n\r\nThere are, however, some archival projects, as well as work in the digital humanities, that offer a window into how researchers and scholars are making using of large sets of digital data. While the data sets and digital records being utilized are not necessarily archival collections, the tools, methods of inquiry, and cross-collection, multi-institutional repositories that emerge from these projects presage both how entirely born-digital archives may come to be used and what digital archival collection interfaces may look like in the future.\r\n\r\nTwo projects taking an innovative, insightful approach to exploring archival collections through the mining of large archival corpora are The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online and Cameron Blevins’s work text mining and topic modeling Martha Ballard’s diary. ((The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online can be found at <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/\">http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/</a>, and the associated Criminal Intent project can be found at <a href=\"http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/\">http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/</a>. Cameron Blevin’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary can be found online at <a href=\"http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/\">http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/</a> and at <a href=\"http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml\">http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml</a>.)) The Old Bailey Proceedings provides access to nearly 200,000 digitized trial records from London’s criminal courts, spans almost 250 years, allows full text searching, and has an API through which users can query the archive. The With Criminal Intent project has built a suite of related tools that can help perform data-mining projects using this archive. [IMAGE7] This project measures and visualizes trends over time as a means of revealing historical themes, building and revealing new narratives, and providing insights into the past through data-driven analysis.\r\n\r\nBlevins’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary features a different collection, a single diary by an eighteenth-century housewife composed of almost 10,000 entries from 1785 to 1812. This project aspires to a similar goal of revealing novel insights into, and interpretations of, historical material through the ability of digital tools to mine vast sets of information. Blevins uses topic modeling—an algorithmic method that searches word patterns and groupings throughout large collections of texts (for Ballard’s diary, each entry was treated as a different “text”)—to chart and track thematic trends across the diary. A similar approach has been taken by the Mining the Dispatch project, which examines changing sentiments toward the Civil War over the course of six years (over 112,000 items) in the Richmond, Virginia <i>Daily Dispatch</i> newspaper. ((“Mining the Dispatch,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/\">http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/</a>.)) [IMAGE8]\r\n\r\nThese projects may fall under the broader rubric of the digital humanities, and the collections they are working with may not be archival collections in the traditional sense, but they offer a glimpse of the discovery, navigation, exploration, and analytic tools that foreshadow uses of digital archival collections. Other initiatives have sought to build upon the network of social relations that influence records creation. The SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context) Project “provides access to the socio-historical contexts ([including] people, families, and corporate bodies) in which the records were created” through the use of the EAC-CPF standard that describes corporate bodies, persons, and families. ((“SNAC: The Social Networks and Archival Context Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/\">http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/</a>.)) Early results show a promising method for using social context for discovery and interpretation. [IMAGE9] The archivists at Stanford University who are managing the Robert Creeley collection, which contains a significant quantity of born-digital content, especially emails, have used the custom-built MUSE tool for exploring semantic patterns in email archives. ((The Robert Creeley collection can be found at <a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html</a>. For more information on the MUSE tool visit <a href=\"http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/\">http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/</a>.)) [IMAGE10] Similarly, other projects have explored building unique visual interfaces to archival collections that extend contextual relations across collections, archives, and disciplines. [VIDEO 2]\r\n\r\nWhat distinguishes these projects from archival representations of old is that context and meaning are not exclusively provided through descriptive, narrative details that precede an arrangement and location list, but instead through networks, inter-linkages, modeling, and content analysis. Users can move dynamically within a collection and laterally across collections. Search, query, and tools like topic modeling also allow the user to build their own patterns and hierarchies for discovery. In this view, archival description still plays a crucial role in providing information on what something is or how it came to be created, but no longer is the fonds or idea of original order the sole determinant of representation.\r\n\r\n<b>Conclusion</b>\r\n\r\nAs Luciana Duranti has noted, archival description “has been carried out or not carried out depending on specific needs and conditions, attitudes and requirements, and its products have consistently reflected the conceptions about archives held by the society of the time.” ((Duranti, “Origin and Development,” 53.)) In the physical world of items, folders, boxes, and shelves, the archive must be sorted, ordered, and stored sequentially in space. Those properties, along with social, cultural, and political attitudes have driven how archival arrangement and description are theorized and practiced. Indeed, description itself has always had to serve multiple purposes: to provide historical or biographical information, scope and content detail, physical location for retrieval, administrative information for ongoing management, and restrictions and material types governing use. In a sense, description itself is a compound object, tugged between the needs of physical arrangement, intellectual representation, and user expectation. The properties of digital records allow archivists to revisit that negotiation. At the same time, other qualities of digital information, like the forensic disk image, have the potential to preserve both a mechanical version of “order” as well as provenancial and contextual information that formerly were provided through description. File fixity, forensic imaging, directory manifests, and auto-generated metadata may all come to play a larger role in defining provenance.\r\n\r\nWe disrespect des fonds, then, not as an act of elimination or insubordination, but in order to bring other contextual relations to its same level of privilege. Consider it less a disrespect, perhaps, than a humbling; or, instead, consider it a reaffirmation that the multiplicity of meanings possible with digital records can be better realized through an ongoing interrogation of archival traditions of arrangement and description. In rethinking <i>respect des fonds</i>, we gain a better awareness of the extent to which the material affordances of paper records have had an undue influence on how we conceptualize and practice grouping and describing collections. Bits, however, are fundamentally different at the material and symbolic levels. The use of digital objects is different as well, influenced by computational processing, algorithmic query, automation, and dynamism, not to mention social conditions, user expectations, technology dependencies, storage requirements, and a host of other characteristics of how we create and use technology.\r\n\r\nParallels and bonds, series and topics, models and paradigms; at times these concepts have collided and resulted in a seeming antagonism between ideas like original order and random access, historical contingency and abstract principle, finding aid and dynamic query. But there have been similarities too: how the tension between record and representation mirrors that of inscription and screen; and how the component nature of digital objects resembles the component purpose of traditional archival description. To entrench methods of arrangement and description borne of the qualities of physical collections is to disregard the potential expansion of context that digital information can support. In recognizing how historically and socially contingent traditional practices (and the theories spawning those practices) were, we better recognize their potential dysfunction in a time of born-digital records. This is not to say that we should discard the idea of the fonds or the utility of original order, but perhaps it is time to revoke their privileged place in archival discourse and revisit the true goals of arrangement and description in light of the capabilities of digital records. Maybe then we can begin to understand what is possible when we think of collections as mutually contextual and interrelated instead of cloistered and static. And perhaps then other bonds, other parallels, other contexts, meanings, and interpretations can receive the same amount of respect that we have, for too long now, granted the fonds.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nWikipedia articles created as part of this work:\r\n\r\nRespect des fonds: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds</a>\r\n\r\nOriginal Order: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order</a>\r\n\r\nArchival Bond: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond</a>','Disrespect des Fonds: Rethinking Arrangement and Description in Born-Digital Archives','','inherit','open','open','','4722-revision-13','','','2013-06-18 01:35:31','2013-06-18 01:35:31','',4722,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4722-revision-13/',0,'revision','',0),(4749,3,'2013-06-18 01:48:56','2013-06-18 01:48:56','<b>Introduction</b>\r\n\r\nIn her article, “Disciplinarity and Disorder,” in Issue 1 of this journal, Gabrielle Dean opens her essay with a detailed and expressive “fantasy” describing the “primal scene of archival research [that] takes place in a dreary reading room,” featuring an archivist, a researcher, a cart, dusty gray boxes, and a “numbered file folder.” As her fantasy takes flight, with the researcher scribbling away and papers swirling and new collections sprouting up organically, she crafts an evocative metaphor for the life cycle of preservation and regeneration that archivists aim to enable through access to primary sources. Dean cogently deconstructs the origins and implications of this “primal scene” over the course of her essay. But what also merits highlighting in her opening metaphor are the accoutrements that populate it—the cart, the box, the file folder—familiar players on the stage of the archival encounter. These objects and symbols are evocative of that idealized moment of archaeological discovery that characterizes the use of the archive. They are objects and symbols of history, certainly, but relics, alas, of an analog age.\r\n\r\nA similar fantasy, one potentially more fraught with anxiety and dread, must darken the reveries of archivists as they attempt to provide access to more contemporary materials. A daydream involving the researcher of tomorrow may instead feature dreadful moments of “file cannot be opened” error messages, of FTP transfers gone awry, of decaying media orphaned from long-lost playback devices. Our imaginary researcher will not be awaiting archival discovery sitting in a dreary reading room, but instead exist in some networked who-knows-where, furiously emailing an endless stream of access and transfer request and constantly griping about obsolete formats and buggy interfaces. At the same time, our imaginary archivist will not be pushing carts or shelving boxes, but creating user accounts for virtual reading rooms, running pattern-recognition text-mining queries, uploading disk images, or helping users with emulation software. Like the content of our archives themselves, the props and symbols of our archival fantasies increasingly will be associated with born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nHow will traditional principles of archival arrangement and description be challenged or modified to account for born-digital materials? Arrangement and description have long been the primary method of facilitating the use of archives, and their methodologies have been dependent upon the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. The articulation of this theory in 1841 has been held as the “starting point” or beginning of the modern era of archival theory, a “watershed” event establishing the “basic principle” and “very core” of the archival endeavor. Superlatives abound. <i>Respect des fonds</i>, “more than any other principle, has come to provide the archival profession with a unique identity.” ((Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” in <i>Bibliographical Foundations of French Historical Studies</i> (New York: Haworth Press, 1992), 108.))\r\n\r\nBut <i>respect des fonds</i> was born of a particular historic moment, for a particular type of archival document, and was conceived to address the practical needs of specific social circumstances. Even as <i>respect des fonds</i> has mutated and evolved over the decades, subject to revisions, contestations, and reaffirmations, its methodologies have largely been a product of the nature of the archival record as a physical document to be sorted, grouped, and described after receipt from a single donating entity. In an era defined by digital materials and their affordances and limitations, one in which narrative linearity often seems replaced by data-driven relationalism, the meaning of <i>respect des fonds</i> is ever more slippery.\r\n\r\nBroadly stated, <i>respect des fonds</i> is the principle of grouping records by the administration, organization, individual, or creating body in which they originated. <i>Respect des fonds</i> mandates that the records of the creating entity not be mixed with those of a different entity. It prioritizes the “organic” nature of archival records, identifying the locus of their generation, and the evidence their consolidation provides about that originating body, as essential to preserving and maintaining context. Comprised of the related “principle of original order” and “the principle of provenance,” <i>respect des fonds</i> displaced prior methods of archival arrangement that were predicated upon classifications by subject, function, topic, legal utility, chronology, and other categories. Though often referenced as a core component of archival identity, as a theoretical concept, <i>respect des fonds</i> is, as one writer says, “elusive and oft-misunderstood.” ((Dan Zelenyj, “Linchpin Imperilled: The Functional Interpretation of Series and the Principle of Respect des Fonds,” <i>Archivaria</i> 42 (1996): 126.))\r\n\r\nThe introduction of born-digital records into the archives offers an opportunity to examine how the practical methodologies of arrangement and description are shifting and how those changing practices lead to a reconsideration of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Much as digital records’ technological dependencies, ease of duplication, and subordination to features of systems and storage have led to a reassessment of the existing precepts of archival appraisal and selection, they also prompt a similar analysis of arrangement and description. One of those axioms due reassessment is the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i>.\r\n\r\nThis essay details the social and material conditions of the emergence of <i>respect des fonds</i>, the theory’s complex practical implementations and contested assumption, the emergence of alternate models, and how born-digital materials illuminate the theory’s analog origins and limitations. I will also explain the specific qualities of digital objects, including the nature of inscription and its impact on notions of original order and authenticity, as well as how nonlinear retrieval supplants the narrative logic of <i>respect des fonds</i> with a broader notion of context and discoverability. I will then consider recent interpretive methods, such as data visualization and text mining, as potential harbingers of new modes of representing and creating interfaces to digital collections—representations that better capitalize on the possibilities of digital materials. Finally, I will argue that the affordances of born-digital archives—such as their potential for parallel representation, machine-enabled interpretation, and expansive contextual and intellectual availability—provoke a reconsideration of the place of privilege of <i>respect des fonds </i>in archival arrangement and description.\r\n\r\n<b>The Old Regime</b>\r\n\r\nBefore <i>respect des</i> <i>fonds</i> can be respected, disrespected, or neglected, a better understanding of its origins is warranted, along with an examination of how the principle has (or has not) been applied and its periodic contestation. The seductive purity of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> often overshadows the concept’s decidedly complex origins. <i>Respect des fonds</i> as a guiding method of archival control was never as ennobled an idea as its contemporary evocation often implies. Its original articulation was mired in professional infighting, reductive practicalities, and the tumult and disorganization of political change.\r\n\r\nWhile we can find records grouped according to creator in some earlier instances, ((Luciana Duranti, “Origin and Development of Archival Description,” <i>Archivaria</i> 35 (1993): 50.)) the formal articulation of the concept of <i>respect des fonds</i> was, like much of modernity, a by-product of the French Revolution. The Revolution featured a simultaneous destruction and reconstruction of the archive, an attempt to both erase and recast the historical record. Most famously, when revolutionaries stormed the Bastille they destroyed its documentary contents—records that instantiated the subjugation and exploitation of the despised monarchy. (See Figure 1.)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4724\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image1.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4724\" alt=\"Figure 1. Storming of the Bastille and arrest of the Governor M. de Launay, July 14, 1789. Those are probably archival records burning in the background.  Public domain Image via Wikimedia Commons. Artist unknown.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image1-300x237.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"237\" /></a> Figure 1. Storming of the Bastille and arrest of the Governor M. de Launay, July 14, 1789. Those are probably archival records burning in the background. Public domain Image via Wikimedia Commons. Artist unknown.[/caption]\r\n\r\nYet the revolutionaries’ also scrupulously preserved the record of their own activities. The <i>Archives Nationales</i> was established in 1790, with a head archivist, hours designated for the general public, and a centralized administration tasked both with preserving the legacy of the new government and managing select records of the Old Regime. Those tasks, however, were segregated in ways that impacted how each class of documents was handled. Records of the National Assembly were to be scrupulously maintained, while feudal titles were widely destroyed. As one Minster put it, “all the old documents with gothic script are … only legal titles of feudalism, of the subjection of the feeble to the strong.” ((As cited in Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development since the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 3, no. 3 (1940): 162.))\r\n\r\nThe management of archives during this time was chaotic. Property records were sent to one administrative body within the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, legal records to another, and documents of historical interest went to the <i>Bibliotheque Nationales</i>. At the same time, archivists were tasked with maintaining a distinction between records documenting pre- and post-Revolutionary activities. In addition, the first two administrative heads of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, Armand-Gaston Camus and Pierre Daunou, were both trained as librarians and had, by the early 1800s, established twenty-four “groupings” of records into which future accessions were to be integrated. Within these groups, additional classifications and intellectual methods of ordering existed. The archives, then, were “arranged in accordance with an arbitrarily devised ‘methodical’ scheme that was derived from library experience.” ((T. R Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archive : Principles and Techniques</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 169.)) As well, political tumult and instability of governance continued to have an impact on the arrangement of the archives, and “decisions about preservation, classification, inventory, and access were therefore the result not just of practical considerations or the opinions of individual archivists and librarians, but also of key shifts in national politics.” ((Lara Moore, <i>Restoring Order: The Ecole Des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870</i> (Duluth, Minnesota: Litwin Books, 2008), 17.))\r\n\r\n<b>The Origins of <i>Respect des Fonds</i></b>\r\n\r\nWhile the true extent of records destruction during the post-Revolutionary years is disputed, ((Carl Lokke, “Archives and the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 31, no. 1 (January 1968): 30-31.)) as Judith Panitch notes, “this chaotic episode of archival history reveals much about archives themselves, suggesting specifically their fundamental fragility and malleability.” ((Judith Panitch, “Liberty, equality, posterity? Some Archival Lessons from the Case of the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 59, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 33.)) That malleability is evident in the conflicting approaches to archival arrangement and description that characterized this era, practices that lead up to the declaration of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Records of the time were arranged primarily by sometimes-quixotic methods of classification, by schema idiosyncratic in origin and inconsistent in application. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 167.))\r\n\r\nA number of developments in the next few decades pushed this lack of uniformity to its breaking point and helped impel the conceptualization of <i>respect des fonds</i> as an archival principle, if, as I will show, less of an actual practice. The establishment of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> in 1821 created a formal institution to train archivists to staff both the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and the over 2500 provincial archives across France. Laws passed in the 1830s also drastically expanded the number of archivists mandated to work both in the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and in the provincial archives. Formal training and new positions, however, when combined with lax oversight and inconsistent guidance on practices, led, predictably, to a near-comic proliferation of methods of classification and arrangement. (See Figure 2.) Due to the proliferation of classification systems and schema, change was inevitable.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4725\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image2.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4725\" alt=\"Figure 2. The many arrangement methods of some Ecole des Chartes graduates prior to the emergence of respect des fonds as a methodology. Image from Lara Moore\'s &quot;Restoring Order,&quot; 114.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image2-300x239.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"239\" /></a> Figure 2. The many arrangement methods of some Ecole des Chartes graduates prior to the emergence of respect des fonds as a methodology. Image from Lara Moore\'s \"Restoring Order,\" 114.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThat change came in the form of the infamous “Circular no. 14,” released in 1841 by Natalis de Wailly, Administrative Head of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>. This document is recognized as the first articulation of the fonds as the fundamental method of archival arrangement, the purpose of which was “to form a collection of all the documents which originate from a body, an organization, a family or an individual, and to arrange the different fonds according to a certain order.” ((As quoted in Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 107.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> made creatorship the organizing principle of archival records and espoused the formation of collections according to the organization, entity, family, or individual responsible for their creation. Such an arrangement would ensure, as one writer later put it, the essential need “to know where it [the archival document] was created, in the framework of what process, to what end, for whom, when and how it was received by the addressee, and how it came into our hands.” ((Michael Duchein, “Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des fonds in Archival Science,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 67.))\r\n\r\nHowever, as Nancy Bartlett has explicated, this “watershed” moment was less momentous than contemporary evocations suggest. For one, de Wailly’s circular dictated “that <i>respect des fonds</i> was prescribed only for archival records created prior to 1789.” More contemporary fonds were to continue to be arranged categorically. In addition, minutes from subsequent meetings of the commission overseeing the work of archivists—a commission on which de Wailly served—reveal that “<i>respect des fonds</i> was if nothing more a preliminary standard for archival arrangement and description in departmental archives, a means of insuring that beginning archivists without the benefit of direct supervision might not cause too much intellectual damage to vulnerable records in their care.” ((Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 111.))\r\n\r\nThe principle was, in fact, a practical exigency, a method to simplify archival arrangement seen as more easily implemented by novice archivists than the more rigorous arrangement by classification. Bartlett also notes that <i>respect des fonds</i> remained absent from both the curriculum of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> as well as the publications of the professional society of its graduates. Lastly, the principle was, at the time, not applied to accessions into the <i>Archive Nationales</i> itself, as it operated under a different administrative department than de Wailly’s Interior Ministry.\r\n\r\n<i>Respect des fonds</i>, then, was never a perfectly realized theory. Its formation was a contingency of a unique historical moment; its conception depended upon practical necessities and its implementation was inconsistent and disputed. What today seems near dogma—that archives be arranged by fonds—was at the time novel and simplistic, more the product of utility and political manipulation than a grand inspiration regarding the functional authenticity of fonds or evidential purity towards their arrangement.\r\n\r\n<b>The Original Original Order</b>\r\n\r\nThough implemented inconsistently in its home country, the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained a wide acceptance across Europe. In Prussia, the theory (known as <i>Provenienzprinzip,</i> the principle of provenance) mandated that “official papers are to be maintained in the order and with the designations which they received in the course of the official activity of the agency concerned.” ((Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archives</i>, 175.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> received its most elaborate and sustained justification, and expansion, however, in the Netherlands, where the Dutch archivists Muller, Feith, and Fruin produced their famous <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> in 1898. Often referred to colloquially as the “Dutch Manual” and seen as the “starting point of archival theory and methodology,” ((Peter Horsman, Eric Ketelaar, and Theo Thomassen, “New Respect for the Old Order: The Context of the Dutch Manual,” <i>The American Archivist </i>66, no. 2 (2003): 249.)) the work provided a detailed set of guidelines for the arrangement of records. The principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained even wider acceptance and popularity after its ratification at the First International Congress of Archivists meeting in Brussels in 1910. ((Lawrence D. Geller, “Joseph Cuvelier, Belgian Archival Education, and the First International Congress of Archivists, Brussels, 1910,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 16. Proceedings from the 1910 meeting can be found online at <a href=\"http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/\">http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/</a>.)) (See Figure 3.)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4726\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"183\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image3.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4726\" alt=\"Figure 3. Front page of the proceedings of the 1910 Congres de Bruxelles, the First International Congress of Archivists and Librarians. The full proceedings are available online at http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/menu.html. Google Translate does a passable job of translating.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image3-183x300.jpg\" width=\"183\" height=\"300\" /></a> Figure 3. Front page of the proceedings of the 1910 Congres de Bruxelles, the First International Congress of Archivists and Librarians. The full proceedings are available online at http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/menu.html. Google Translate does a passable job of translating.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThe Dutch Manual, and the methodologies implemented in its wake, not only forbid the intermingling of the fonds of one agency with those of another—in keeping with the French conception of <i>respect des fonds</i>—but also expanded the theory to apply to the records within each fond—the internal arrangement of the archival collection. Or as the Dutch Manual put it, “the system of arrangement must be based on the original organization of the archival collection.” ((Samuel Muller, Johan Adriaan Feith, and Robert Fruin, <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> (H.W. Wilson Co., 1968), 52.)) This concept has come to be known as the “principle of original order,” an intra-fonds corollary to the external means of arrangement associated with the principle of provenance; <i>respect des fonds</i> encompasses both principles.\r\n\r\nA closer examination of the Dutch Manual, however, reveals certain methodological impracticalities that even its authors admit. First, they claim that the original order within a fonds may be modified or “restored” to account for multiple transfers from an agency, not all of which may truly represent the idealized “original order.” As well, records may be reorganized to account for “inconsequential irregularities attributable to record-keeping officials.” The authors also note that reconstituting the original order may be avoided when “the trouble which would have to be taken in order to reconstruct the old organization is out of proportion to the result to be obtained.” ((Muller et al., <i>Manual</i>, 83.)) Needless to say, the simple idea of “restoring original order” seems itself problematic, fraught with subjective decision-making likely far removed from whatever idealized “organic” origin archivists may discover within fonds. The complicated approach to “restoration” and “reconstruction” that the Dutch Manual advises often borders on, as one writer put it, “abandoning entirely their carefully developed ethic of conservation.” ((Frank Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” <i>The American Archivist </i>45, no. 1 (1982): 28.))\r\n\r\n<b>Critique des Fonds</b>\r\n\r\nThe widespread adoption <i>of respect des fonds</i> did not proceed unquestioned, however. As early as the 1930s, some archivists were taking issue with the methodology of arranging collections according to original order. In his survey of the development of archival theory, Ernst Posner points to the German Max Bar and two Swedish archivists who demonstrated “that slavish preservation of the original arrangement of a fonds is often insufficient,” the principle of provenance “is subject to certain restrictions” that make blanket adoption impractical, and adherence to <i>respect des fonds</i> often impedes use of archival materials. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 169.))\r\n\r\nSome Australian and American archivists in the 1960s, primarily Peter Scott and Mario Fenyo, challenged the definition of fonds even further. The problems with the traditional concept of the fonds were manifold. Defining fonds as the records of a “transferring or controlling agency” was problematic since the agent of transfer was not always the creating agency. Fonds could also be mixed or “broken” into multiple transfers to an archive, making reconstitution difficult. Fonds could also be the result of “a succession of agencies,” blurring true creatorship. Ordering series within fonds was difficult since future accessions may need to be inserted at different places in the existing organizational system, leading to physical disorder or the constant revision of finding aids or inventories. After reviewing minutes of early NARA meetings in an attempt to define what, exactly, constitutes a fonds, Fenyo succinctly pointed out, “no one knows what the word fonds means, not even the French who invented it.” ((Mario D. Fenyo, “The Record Group Concept: A Critique,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 2 (April 1966): 230.)) For Scott, his belief that “the very arbitrariness of the concept [of the fonds] is sufficient to make one question its usefulness,” ((Peter Scott, “The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 4 (October 1966): 497.)) led him to develop the “series system” (See Figure 4) which sought to orient arrangement and description according to function and use instead of agent or material type—a theory that, Terry Cook noted, “shifted the entire archival description enterprise from a static cataloging mode to a dynamic system of multiple interrelationships.” ((Terry Cook, “What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift,” <i>Archivaria</i> 43 (1999): 38.))\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4747\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image4.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4747\" alt=\"Figure 4. Peter Scott\'s diagram depicting his system of archival arrangement based on grouping records at the series level. From Scott, &quot;The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,&quot; 1966. \" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image4-300x177.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"177\" /></a> Figure 4. Peter Scott\'s diagram depicting his system of archival arrangement based on grouping records at the series level. From Scott, \"The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,\" 1966.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThe principle of original order underwent a similar critique. A lack of clarity on the custodianship of records prior to their delivery to an archive, the problem of multiple and ongoing accessions, and the potential for incoherent or unknown methods of ordering or classification by creating bodies all led Fenyo to proclaim, “archivists generally believe that the arrangement of series within a record group reflects to some extent the organization and even history of the agency that created those records.… But the records in the National Archives reflect no such thing.” ((Fenyo, \"The Record Group Concept,\" 236.)) For archives consisting of personal papers, original order is seen as particularly problematic, since a chronological arrangement seemingly provides the greatest meaning and value to the records of an individual, but is unlikely to be the order of records upon accession. Restoration of original order also risks destroying the contextual information accrued by collections that have passed through multiple states of custodianship prior to their acceptance into the archive. ((Debra Barr, “Protecting Provenance: Response to the Report of the Working Group on Description at the Fonds Level,” <i>Archivaria</i> 28 (Summer 1989): 141-145. See also Robert Edwards, “‘With Respect to Original Order’: Changing Values in Archival Arrangement,” <i>Archives Association of British Columbia</i> 11, no. 1 (Winter 2001).)) Lastly, the principle of original order prioritizes filing systems of unknown or dubious legitimacy over the principle of use or accessibility. As Frank Boles states, “usability acknowledges the evidential superiority of documents over filing systems by placing primary emphasis on access to documents.” ((Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” 31.)) In this critique, usability and original order are often in conflict.\r\n\r\n<b>Of Bonds and Parallels</b>\r\n\r\nOther conceptual models besides the series system have attempted to address these critiques by forming new ideas about how order or grouping can evidence archival authenticity, identity, and meaning. One theory to articulate the interrelations of individual records can be found in Luciana Duranti’s notion of the archival bond, which she defines as the “network of relations that each record has with the records belonging in the same aggregation.” ((Luciana Duranti, “The Archival Bond,” <i>Archives and Museum Informatics</i> 11 (1997): 213-18.)) Not to be confused with context, which exists outside the record, the archival bond, for Duranti, is core to the identity of the record. As she states, “documents that are expressions of a transaction are not records until they are put into relation with other records.” ((Ibid., 216.)) Emerging from research into the authenticity of electronic records (including the InterPARES project), the archival bond identifies a web of documentary co-dependencies that presumes an inheritance and relationship between records based on functional proximity. ((“The InterPARES Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://www.interpares.org\">www.interpares.org</a>.))\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most exhaustive attempt to deal with many difficulties that exist within the gulf between <i>respect des fonds</i> as principle and practice was undertaken by Michel Duchein in 1983. ((Duchein, \"Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems,\" 64–82.)) While Duchein proposes solutions to the many problems of the fonds concept, the reader cannot help but be overwhelmed by the fact that his cataloging of the “theoretical problems” and “practical difficulties” far outnumber, and begin to drown out, his proposed solutions. For Duchein, within fonds there can be all sorts of nebulous, arbitrary, and forgotten methods of classification “from which all imaginable disorders flow.” He calls these, in a poetic moment, “brutal manipulations.” ((Ibid., 77.)) But after this disquisition, on the last page of his article Duchein mentions one idea that seems if not prescient, then at least transitive in the way it conceives of context: the <i>parallelismus membrorum</i>, “the similarity of parallel files.” <i>Parallelismus membrorum</i> is a rhetorical term referring to the patterns within a text formed by the utilization of repeated grammatical structures. (“I came. I saw. I conquered,” is a brief example). Duchein here employs the motif to refer to the contextual relations that exist between records of different fonds, the network of meanings that stretch across the archive.\r\n\r\nChris Hurley explored an idea similar to <i>parallelismus membrorum</i> in his delineation of “parallel provenance” a concept built around “composing different things from the same particles—combining things in different ways to produce a variety of views of what they look like in the aggregate … not so much about identifying a different creator as recognizing manifold context.” ((Chris Hurley, “Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?,” <i>Archives and Manuscripts</i> 33, no. 1 (2005): 126.)) (See Figure 5.) Other contemporary writers, such as Laura Millar and Geoffrey Yeo, have sought to stretch the meaning of the fonds even further, arguing it exists purely at the conceptual level. ((Geoffrey Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds and the Physical Collection,” <i>Archivaria</i> 73 (Spring 2012): 43-91; Laura Millar, “The Death of the Fonds and the Resurrection of Provenance: Archival Context in Space and Time,” <i>Archivaria</i> 53 (Spring 2002): 1-15.)) But as the definition of the fonds becomes more distant, more abstract, its privileging as a form of aggregation seems less certain, especially in a digital environment in which creatorship is but one of many means of grouping records.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4728\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image5.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4728\" alt=\"Figure 5. Chris Hurly\'s diagram of parallel provenance, &quot;The Little Truck.&quot; The little truck is a metaphor for archival description. From Hurley, &quot;Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?”\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image5-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" /></a> Figure 5. Chris Hurly\'s diagram of parallel provenance, \"The Little Truck.\" The little truck is a metaphor for archival description. From Hurley, \"Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?”[/caption]\r\n\r\nThe archival bond, the series system, <i>parallelismus membrorum, </i>and parallel provenance all mark attempts to theorize relationships between records and collections in ways that can elide the practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Equally, these ideas represent a continued expansion of context beyond the limitations of grouping by creatorship or creator-derived order. In each case, similarities and dependencies emerge out of cross-collection networks or semantically derived principles. As the models gain distance from the vagaries of the individual records, one starts to recognize a familiar pattern of removal—not a disjunction, exactly, but a subtle passage from the material trace to the abstract representation. The familiarity is borne of the similar movement from item to representation that characterizes electronic records and their attendant phenomenological tension between the physical inscription on a drive and the symbolic interface on a screen.\r\n\r\n<b>Bit Level Processing</b>\r\n\r\nBut enough of models. Consider instead the bit, the binary, the magnetic flux reversal of the spinning disk that is the origin of the digital object. Material inscription offers a good point to segue into an examination of digital records and how they both complicate or even circumvent historical notions of <i>respect des fonds </i> while at the same time enabling realization of a more expansive notion of context and interrelation.\r\n\r\nStarting at the bit level, the characteristics of inscription (how digital information is written onto storage media) call into question the idea of original order. When data is written to a storage device, it has a material, physical trace, but that trace is far from the legibility or interpretability we associate with analog documents. As Matt Kirschenbaum has noted in his study of new media and digital forensics, “we write <i>on</i> paper, but we write <i>to</i> a magnetic disk (or tape)”; the semantic difference signifies that the act of inscription is “logically distinct” from the act of creation and intellectual manipulation. ((Matt Kirschenbaum, <i>Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination</i> (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 87. Emphasis in original.)) (See Figure 6.) In addition, a key component of storage media is that it is random access; that means the bits composing a record are inscribed to available clusters across the platter of a drive depending on which tracks and sectors are available for inscription. That is, the component bits of a digital object are non-sequential in their material physical arrangement. Aggregated, they can create an interpretable object, but their component location is nonlinear. Here, even at the bit level of a single item, there is no original order. Furthermore, each time these bits are reconstructed, each time the file is accessed and translated into an interpretable, editable representation, the file will be altered in minute ways (for instance, a file’s “last opened” date) and thus be composed of a new order as new bits are assigned to other available areas of the disk. As Kirschenbaum notes, quoting a dictum of forensic science, “every contact leaves a trace.” The act of interpreting a digital object, thus, continually alters its material order.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4729\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image6.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4729\" alt=\"Figure 6. Close-up of a disk drive at the Computer History Museum, showing arms and a read/write head. Processing Born-Digital Materials Using AccessData FTK at Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, 2011.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image6-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" /></a> Figure 6. Close-up of a disk drive at the Computer History Museum, showing arms and a read/write head.<br />Processing Born-Digital Materials Using AccessData FTK at Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, 2011.[/caption]\r\n\r\nMoving beyond the non-sequential arrangement of bits of individual records, but remaining at the forensic level, other features of the digital environment challenge long-standing presumptions of authenticity and uniqueness that are dependent upon physical arrangement or description. Temporary files, such as those stored by auto-save or recovery programs, mean that a drive can contain multiple versions of identical files, many of them beyond the management (or even awareness) of their creator. This “ambient data” is matched by other features of data dispersal throughout a storage system, such as “swap space” (disk space sometimes allocated for use by RAM) and “disk slack” (which accounts for the difference between the actual file size and the disk space used for storage) that themselves complicate ideas of order and linearity. Storage becomes a hidden, dynamic world in which physical arrangement on a spinning drive consists of the equivalent of dispersed crevices, hidey-holes, and secret areas where data proliferates. Kirschenbaum asserts, “there is, in short, no simple way to know how many instances of a single file are residing in how many states, in how many different locations, at any given moment in the operating system.” ((Ibid., 52.)) As well, digital objects themselves have the potential to contain trace data that, while possibly not achieving the singular identity of a record, can have evidential value or help establish provenance.\r\n\r\nTake, for instance, Kirschenbaum’s exploration of a floppy disk image, in which he finds evidence of how the storage media was used over time and what its hidden and partially deleted data can manifest about its user: “[W]e discover on the original diskette the incompletely overwritten remains of previous software … a piece of 1980s software culture frozen in allographic amber.” ((Ibid., 140.)) Discovering this legacy information reveals multiple levels of creatorship and a trail of ownership and social and cultural meaning that extend beyond the object, the creator, or the fonds. In this case, the unintentionally preserved (by the user, at least) data provides a testament to its origins that is not visible in the individual files themselves. Here provenance is not a result of aggregation or description but a characteristic of how digital information is created and transmitted. Context is not just relational, implied, or conceptualized, but can be a part of the very media itself, like secret, half-formed barnacles clinging to the vessel of the digital record. Incomplete but decipherable. Fragmentary but meaningful. Allographic amber.\r\n\r\n<b>Fonds Essentialism</b>\r\n\r\nNeedless to say, most people do not interact with digital information at the forensic level. In Kenneth Thibodeau’s useful model, digital objects are compounds, composed of a physical, logical, and conceptual object. Respectively, those adjectives refer to the physical inscription on storage media; the logical suite of translational software and processes that access and “read” that inscription; and the conceptual object the user interacts with, such as the text, image, or interface on a screen. ((Kenneth Thibodeau, “Overview of Technological Approaches to Digital Preservation and Challenges in Coming Years,” in <i>The State of Digital Preservation: An International Perspective</i> (Washington D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2002).)) The conceptual object—the representational environment of the screen as experienced in the word processing program, the image editor, the social media app—inculcates its own affordances and logic on the creation or use of records. In fact, given the hidden, inscrutable nature of storage and inscription, the formal representation of digital objects on a screen can have an outsized influence on their creation, management, and perception—an interpretive tendency that Nick Montford calls “screen essentialism.” Considering the extensive influence that the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i> has had, historically, on how archival collections are arranged and described, a similar predilection may characterize the archival enterprise—call it <i>fonds essentialism</i>.\r\n\r\nThe conceptual object—the screen—presents its own challenges to the implied narrative of current modes of archival description. The way that a user interacts with an aggregation of digital materials is fundamentally different from how a user would interact with a set of document boxes or a finding aid. The screen imposes its own logic, its own “formal regimen,” in Kirschenbaum’s terms, on how digital objects are interpreted or accessed, but also how they are described. Traditional archival representation for analog materials emerges from a narrative: a story about what a collection is, what it holds, and the order and location of its contents. It moves through a descriptive summary of contextual detail and administrative information and on to a hierarchy of series and subseries often arranged by type, function, chronology, or other broad categories. Papers, folders, boxes, and series must be arranged in physical space, after all, and that comes to shape how they are arranged in the intellectual space of description. A finding aid is a narrative to be read and its intellectual availability is largely linear and structural. The conceptual object of the digital record and the interface to an aggregation of digital records offer quite a different type of interaction.\r\n\r\nText mining and hyperlinks are simple examples of ways to navigate large groups of materials absent a singular narrative sequence. Lev Manovich, in theorizing new media, has noted that the database (or, the database logic) has supplanted narrative as the method of interacting with digital information. In new media, “narrative becomes just one method of accessing data among others,” and digital information assumes “the projection of the ontology of a computer onto culture itself.” ((Lev Manovich, “Database as a Genre of New Media,” <i>Journal of A&amp;I Society</i> 14, no. 2 (May 2000): 176-77.)) In a database, objects are related but not ordered. The database logic is nonlinear and there is no original order because order is dependent upon query. Search and navigation become algorithm-dependent and not predetermined by a creator, an archivist, or a static finding aid—though all of those organizations are themselves available. Digital objects will have an identifier, yes, but where they “rest” in intellectual space is contingent, mutable. The key point is that, even at the level of representation, arrangement is dynamic: access and representation need not depend on the fonds. Description becomes relational as well and can extend beyond individual aggregations of records. The logic of physical space no longer drives retrieval or predominates in description. Original order and provenance are not lost or obviated in this model, but they are not the exclusive means of access, either.\r\n\r\n<b>Recent Practices</b>\r\n\r\nCase studies from projects handling significant amounts of born-digital records provide insight into the theoretical and practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. As the Emory University project asked of the born-digital content in its Salmon Rushdie acquisition, “Would we treat the born-digital files the same as print material? Would we impose any sort of arrangement on the materials? How much added description could we provide? As the following discussion will reveal, the application of archival theory and principles may shift to accommodate the differences between paper and born-digital archives.” ((Laura Carroll et al., “A Comprehensive Approach to Born-Digital Archives,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 72.)) Or, as the large-scale, born-digital Vancouver Olympics project team put it, “core archival activities may diverge from long-established practices when moving into the digital environment.” ((Courtney C. Mumma, Glenn Dingwall, and Sue Bigelow, “A First Look at the Acquisition and Appraisal of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Fonds: Or, SELECT * FROM VANOC_Records AS Archives WHERE Value=‘true’;,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 93.)) Along with the multi-institutional AIMS project and the PARADIGM (Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media) project in the UK, these case studies detail the practical issues involved in rethinking arrangement and description in born-digital archives. ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/</a>; Paradigm project, “Workbook on Digital Private Papers,” The Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (Paradigm) Project, accessed October 2012,  <a href=\"http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html\">http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html</a>.))\r\n\r\nTaken together, the projects provide an overview of how arrangement may look in entirely born-digital collections. All note the difficulty in parsing user-generated description and the often quixotic or meaningless nature of directory structures and naming. The projects largely employed filtering, text mining, and other cross-record queries to determine the content of most files. The sheer volume of files contained in accessions precluded any item-level content review or hierarchical rearrangement; yet, at the same time, “the creation of file and item descriptions and inventories is not only easier and faster, it yields much richer information.… What takes hours or days to perform in the paper environment takes mere seconds to accomplish in the digital environment, and is done to a greater level of detail.” ((Mumma et al., \"A First Look,\" 115-16.))\r\n\r\nThough the many technical processes necessary for format validation, emulation, automated metadata extraction, and other methods of processing born-digital archives are too complex to be fully recounted here, these case studies point to their key characteristics. [VIDEO 1] Arrangement, as we think of it, is no longer a process of imposing intellectualized hierarchies or physical relocation; instead, it becomes largely automated, algorithmic, and batch processed. At the same time, archival representation will build upon the affordances of the digital objects themselves to extract and compile metadata that can then be repurposed to bridge and augment a wealth of contextual relations far beyond the order of their creation and their agency of origin.\r\n\r\n<b>Visual Descriptions</b>\r\n\r\nAs the “logical associations of records extend beyond the records themselves and embrace relations with other entities in the wider world,” as Geoffrey Yeo puts it, archivists will be tasked with building interfaces that draw upon these aforementioned possibilities and linking them to the online interfaces through which records will be made available. ((Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds,” 71.)) The interface thus becomes the “critical element in the interaction between documentary evidence and its consumers.” ((Margaret Hedstrom, “Archives, Memory, and Interfaces with the Past,” <i>Archival Science</i> 2, no. 1-2 (2002): 24.))\r\n\r\nSince few archives are accessioning entirely born-digital collections, it is difficult to find archival examples of a description for such a collection. Born-digital content that is currently being processed is usually a small portion of a larger physical collection and, as such, is integrated in a hybrid fashion into traditional finding aids; see, for instance, \"<a href=\"http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt9p3038mq/\">Series 8: Born digital files</a>,\" \"<a href=\"http://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/rushdie1000/\">Series 11: Computers and related devices</a>,\" or \"<a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">Series 13: Computer files</a>.\"\r\n\r\nThere are, however, some archival projects, as well as work in the digital humanities, that offer a window into how researchers and scholars are making using of large sets of digital data. While the data sets and digital records being utilized are not necessarily archival collections, the tools, methods of inquiry, and cross-collection, multi-institutional repositories that emerge from these projects presage both how entirely born-digital archives may come to be used and what digital archival collection interfaces may look like in the future.\r\n\r\nTwo projects taking an innovative, insightful approach to exploring archival collections through the mining of large archival corpora are The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online and Cameron Blevins’s work text mining and topic modeling Martha Ballard’s diary. ((The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online can be found at <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/\">http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/</a>, and the associated Criminal Intent project can be found at <a href=\"http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/\">http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/</a>. Cameron Blevin’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary can be found online at <a href=\"http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/\">http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/</a> and at <a href=\"http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml\">http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml</a>.)) The Old Bailey Proceedings provides access to nearly 200,000 digitized trial records from London’s criminal courts, spans almost 250 years, allows full text searching, and has an API through which users can query the archive. The With Criminal Intent project has built a suite of related tools that can help perform data-mining projects using this archive. (See Figure 7.) This project measures and visualizes trends over time as a means of revealing historical themes, building and revealing new narratives, and providing insights into the past through data-driven analysis.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4730\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image7.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4730\" alt=\"Figure 7. Image from &quot;Data Mining with Criminal Intent&quot; presentation by Briquet et al. at Digging into Data Challenge, Washington D.C., 2009. Slides available at http://criminalintent.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/criminal_intent_digging_into_data_meeting_10jun2011.pdf.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image7-300x179.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"179\" /></a> Figure 7. Image from \"Data Mining with Criminal Intent\" presentation by Briquet et al. at Digging into Data Challenge, Washington D.C., 2009. Slides available at http://criminalintent.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/criminal_intent_digging_into_data_meeting_10jun2011.pdf.[/caption]\r\n\r\nBlevins’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary features a different collection, a single diary by an eighteenth-century housewife composed of almost 10,000 entries from 1785 to 1812. This project aspires to a similar goal of revealing novel insights into, and interpretations of, historical material through the ability of digital tools to mine vast sets of information. Blevins uses topic modeling—an algorithmic method that searches word patterns and groupings throughout large collections of texts (for Ballard’s diary, each entry was treated as a different “text”)—to chart and track thematic trends across the diary. A similar approach has been taken by the Mining the Dispatch project, which examines changing sentiments toward the Civil War over the course of six years (over 112,000 items) in the Richmond, Virginia <i>Daily Dispatch</i> newspaper. ((“Mining the Dispatch,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/\">http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/</a>.)) (See Figure 8.)\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nThese projects may fall under the broader rubric of the digital humanities, and the collections they are working with may not be archival collections in the traditional sense, but they offer a glimpse of the discovery, navigation, exploration, and analytic tools that foreshadow uses of digital archival collections. Other initiatives have sought to build upon the network of social relations that influence records creation. The SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context) Project “provides access to the socio-historical contexts ([including] people, families, and corporate bodies) in which the records were created” through the use of the EAC-CPF standard that describes corporate bodies, persons, and families. ((“SNAC: The Social Networks and Archival Context Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/\">http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/</a>.)) Early results show a promising method for using social context for discovery and interpretation. [IMAGE9] The archivists at Stanford University who are managing the Robert Creeley collection, which contains a significant quantity of born-digital content, especially emails, have used the custom-built MUSE tool for exploring semantic patterns in email archives. ((The Robert Creeley collection can be found at <a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html</a>. For more information on the MUSE tool visit <a href=\"http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/\">http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/</a>.)) [IMAGE10] Similarly, other projects have explored building unique visual interfaces to archival collections that extend contextual relations across collections, archives, and disciplines. [VIDEO 2]\r\n\r\nWhat distinguishes these projects from archival representations of old is that context and meaning are not exclusively provided through descriptive, narrative details that precede an arrangement and location list, but instead through networks, inter-linkages, modeling, and content analysis. Users can move dynamically within a collection and laterally across collections. Search, query, and tools like topic modeling also allow the user to build their own patterns and hierarchies for discovery. In this view, archival description still plays a crucial role in providing information on what something is or how it came to be created, but no longer is the fonds or idea of original order the sole determinant of representation.\r\n\r\n<b>Conclusion</b>\r\n\r\nAs Luciana Duranti has noted, archival description “has been carried out or not carried out depending on specific needs and conditions, attitudes and requirements, and its products have consistently reflected the conceptions about archives held by the society of the time.” ((Duranti, “Origin and Development,” 53.)) In the physical world of items, folders, boxes, and shelves, the archive must be sorted, ordered, and stored sequentially in space. Those properties, along with social, cultural, and political attitudes have driven how archival arrangement and description are theorized and practiced. Indeed, description itself has always had to serve multiple purposes: to provide historical or biographical information, scope and content detail, physical location for retrieval, administrative information for ongoing management, and restrictions and material types governing use. In a sense, description itself is a compound object, tugged between the needs of physical arrangement, intellectual representation, and user expectation. The properties of digital records allow archivists to revisit that negotiation. At the same time, other qualities of digital information, like the forensic disk image, have the potential to preserve both a mechanical version of “order” as well as provenancial and contextual information that formerly were provided through description. File fixity, forensic imaging, directory manifests, and auto-generated metadata may all come to play a larger role in defining provenance.\r\n\r\nWe disrespect des fonds, then, not as an act of elimination or insubordination, but in order to bring other contextual relations to its same level of privilege. Consider it less a disrespect, perhaps, than a humbling; or, instead, consider it a reaffirmation that the multiplicity of meanings possible with digital records can be better realized through an ongoing interrogation of archival traditions of arrangement and description. In rethinking <i>respect des fonds</i>, we gain a better awareness of the extent to which the material affordances of paper records have had an undue influence on how we conceptualize and practice grouping and describing collections. Bits, however, are fundamentally different at the material and symbolic levels. The use of digital objects is different as well, influenced by computational processing, algorithmic query, automation, and dynamism, not to mention social conditions, user expectations, technology dependencies, storage requirements, and a host of other characteristics of how we create and use technology.\r\n\r\nParallels and bonds, series and topics, models and paradigms; at times these concepts have collided and resulted in a seeming antagonism between ideas like original order and random access, historical contingency and abstract principle, finding aid and dynamic query. But there have been similarities too: how the tension between record and representation mirrors that of inscription and screen; and how the component nature of digital objects resembles the component purpose of traditional archival description. To entrench methods of arrangement and description borne of the qualities of physical collections is to disregard the potential expansion of context that digital information can support. In recognizing how historically and socially contingent traditional practices (and the theories spawning those practices) were, we better recognize their potential dysfunction in a time of born-digital records. This is not to say that we should discard the idea of the fonds or the utility of original order, but perhaps it is time to revoke their privileged place in archival discourse and revisit the true goals of arrangement and description in light of the capabilities of digital records. Maybe then we can begin to understand what is possible when we think of collections as mutually contextual and interrelated instead of cloistered and static. And perhaps then other bonds, other parallels, other contexts, meanings, and interpretations can receive the same amount of respect that we have, for too long now, granted the fonds.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nWikipedia articles created as part of this work:\r\n\r\nRespect des fonds: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds</a>\r\n\r\nOriginal Order: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order</a>\r\n\r\nArchival Bond: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond</a>','Disrespect des Fonds: Rethinking Arrangement and Description in Born-Digital Archives','','inherit','open','open','','4722-revision-14','','','2013-06-18 01:48:56','2013-06-18 01:48:56','',4722,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4722-revision-14/',0,'revision','',0),(4750,3,'2013-06-18 01:50:45','2013-06-18 01:50:45','<b>Introduction</b>\r\n\r\nIn her article, “Disciplinarity and Disorder,” in Issue 1 of this journal, Gabrielle Dean opens her essay with a detailed and expressive “fantasy” describing the “primal scene of archival research [that] takes place in a dreary reading room,” featuring an archivist, a researcher, a cart, dusty gray boxes, and a “numbered file folder.” As her fantasy takes flight, with the researcher scribbling away and papers swirling and new collections sprouting up organically, she crafts an evocative metaphor for the life cycle of preservation and regeneration that archivists aim to enable through access to primary sources. Dean cogently deconstructs the origins and implications of this “primal scene” over the course of her essay. But what also merits highlighting in her opening metaphor are the accoutrements that populate it—the cart, the box, the file folder—familiar players on the stage of the archival encounter. These objects and symbols are evocative of that idealized moment of archaeological discovery that characterizes the use of the archive. They are objects and symbols of history, certainly, but relics, alas, of an analog age.\r\n\r\nA similar fantasy, one potentially more fraught with anxiety and dread, must darken the reveries of archivists as they attempt to provide access to more contemporary materials. A daydream involving the researcher of tomorrow may instead feature dreadful moments of “file cannot be opened” error messages, of FTP transfers gone awry, of decaying media orphaned from long-lost playback devices. Our imaginary researcher will not be awaiting archival discovery sitting in a dreary reading room, but instead exist in some networked who-knows-where, furiously emailing an endless stream of access and transfer request and constantly griping about obsolete formats and buggy interfaces. At the same time, our imaginary archivist will not be pushing carts or shelving boxes, but creating user accounts for virtual reading rooms, running pattern-recognition text-mining queries, uploading disk images, or helping users with emulation software. Like the content of our archives themselves, the props and symbols of our archival fantasies increasingly will be associated with born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nHow will traditional principles of archival arrangement and description be challenged or modified to account for born-digital materials? Arrangement and description have long been the primary method of facilitating the use of archives, and their methodologies have been dependent upon the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. The articulation of this theory in 1841 has been held as the “starting point” or beginning of the modern era of archival theory, a “watershed” event establishing the “basic principle” and “very core” of the archival endeavor. Superlatives abound. <i>Respect des fonds</i>, “more than any other principle, has come to provide the archival profession with a unique identity.” ((Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” in <i>Bibliographical Foundations of French Historical Studies</i> (New York: Haworth Press, 1992), 108.))\r\n\r\nBut <i>respect des fonds</i> was born of a particular historic moment, for a particular type of archival document, and was conceived to address the practical needs of specific social circumstances. Even as <i>respect des fonds</i> has mutated and evolved over the decades, subject to revisions, contestations, and reaffirmations, its methodologies have largely been a product of the nature of the archival record as a physical document to be sorted, grouped, and described after receipt from a single donating entity. In an era defined by digital materials and their affordances and limitations, one in which narrative linearity often seems replaced by data-driven relationalism, the meaning of <i>respect des fonds</i> is ever more slippery.\r\n\r\nBroadly stated, <i>respect des fonds</i> is the principle of grouping records by the administration, organization, individual, or creating body in which they originated. <i>Respect des fonds</i> mandates that the records of the creating entity not be mixed with those of a different entity. It prioritizes the “organic” nature of archival records, identifying the locus of their generation, and the evidence their consolidation provides about that originating body, as essential to preserving and maintaining context. Comprised of the related “principle of original order” and “the principle of provenance,” <i>respect des fonds</i> displaced prior methods of archival arrangement that were predicated upon classifications by subject, function, topic, legal utility, chronology, and other categories. Though often referenced as a core component of archival identity, as a theoretical concept, <i>respect des fonds</i> is, as one writer says, “elusive and oft-misunderstood.” ((Dan Zelenyj, “Linchpin Imperilled: The Functional Interpretation of Series and the Principle of Respect des Fonds,” <i>Archivaria</i> 42 (1996): 126.))\r\n\r\nThe introduction of born-digital records into the archives offers an opportunity to examine how the practical methodologies of arrangement and description are shifting and how those changing practices lead to a reconsideration of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Much as digital records’ technological dependencies, ease of duplication, and subordination to features of systems and storage have led to a reassessment of the existing precepts of archival appraisal and selection, they also prompt a similar analysis of arrangement and description. One of those axioms due reassessment is the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i>.\r\n\r\nThis essay details the social and material conditions of the emergence of <i>respect des fonds</i>, the theory’s complex practical implementations and contested assumption, the emergence of alternate models, and how born-digital materials illuminate the theory’s analog origins and limitations. I will also explain the specific qualities of digital objects, including the nature of inscription and its impact on notions of original order and authenticity, as well as how nonlinear retrieval supplants the narrative logic of <i>respect des fonds</i> with a broader notion of context and discoverability. I will then consider recent interpretive methods, such as data visualization and text mining, as potential harbingers of new modes of representing and creating interfaces to digital collections—representations that better capitalize on the possibilities of digital materials. Finally, I will argue that the affordances of born-digital archives—such as their potential for parallel representation, machine-enabled interpretation, and expansive contextual and intellectual availability—provoke a reconsideration of the place of privilege of <i>respect des fonds </i>in archival arrangement and description.\r\n\r\n<b>The Old Regime</b>\r\n\r\nBefore <i>respect des</i> <i>fonds</i> can be respected, disrespected, or neglected, a better understanding of its origins is warranted, along with an examination of how the principle has (or has not) been applied and its periodic contestation. The seductive purity of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> often overshadows the concept’s decidedly complex origins. <i>Respect des fonds</i> as a guiding method of archival control was never as ennobled an idea as its contemporary evocation often implies. Its original articulation was mired in professional infighting, reductive practicalities, and the tumult and disorganization of political change.\r\n\r\nWhile we can find records grouped according to creator in some earlier instances, ((Luciana Duranti, “Origin and Development of Archival Description,” <i>Archivaria</i> 35 (1993): 50.)) the formal articulation of the concept of <i>respect des fonds</i> was, like much of modernity, a by-product of the French Revolution. The Revolution featured a simultaneous destruction and reconstruction of the archive, an attempt to both erase and recast the historical record. Most famously, when revolutionaries stormed the Bastille they destroyed its documentary contents—records that instantiated the subjugation and exploitation of the despised monarchy. (See Figure 1.)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4724\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image1.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4724\" alt=\"Figure 1. Storming of the Bastille and arrest of the Governor M. de Launay, July 14, 1789. Those are probably archival records burning in the background.  Public domain Image via Wikimedia Commons. Artist unknown.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image1-300x237.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"237\" /></a> Figure 1. Storming of the Bastille and arrest of the Governor M. de Launay, July 14, 1789. Those are probably archival records burning in the background. Public domain Image via Wikimedia Commons. Artist unknown.[/caption]\r\n\r\nYet the revolutionaries’ also scrupulously preserved the record of their own activities. The <i>Archives Nationales</i> was established in 1790, with a head archivist, hours designated for the general public, and a centralized administration tasked both with preserving the legacy of the new government and managing select records of the Old Regime. Those tasks, however, were segregated in ways that impacted how each class of documents was handled. Records of the National Assembly were to be scrupulously maintained, while feudal titles were widely destroyed. As one Minster put it, “all the old documents with gothic script are … only legal titles of feudalism, of the subjection of the feeble to the strong.” ((As cited in Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development since the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 3, no. 3 (1940): 162.))\r\n\r\nThe management of archives during this time was chaotic. Property records were sent to one administrative body within the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, legal records to another, and documents of historical interest went to the <i>Bibliotheque Nationales</i>. At the same time, archivists were tasked with maintaining a distinction between records documenting pre- and post-Revolutionary activities. In addition, the first two administrative heads of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, Armand-Gaston Camus and Pierre Daunou, were both trained as librarians and had, by the early 1800s, established twenty-four “groupings” of records into which future accessions were to be integrated. Within these groups, additional classifications and intellectual methods of ordering existed. The archives, then, were “arranged in accordance with an arbitrarily devised ‘methodical’ scheme that was derived from library experience.” ((T. R Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archive : Principles and Techniques</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 169.)) As well, political tumult and instability of governance continued to have an impact on the arrangement of the archives, and “decisions about preservation, classification, inventory, and access were therefore the result not just of practical considerations or the opinions of individual archivists and librarians, but also of key shifts in national politics.” ((Lara Moore, <i>Restoring Order: The Ecole Des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870</i> (Duluth, Minnesota: Litwin Books, 2008), 17.))\r\n\r\n<b>The Origins of <i>Respect des Fonds</i></b>\r\n\r\nWhile the true extent of records destruction during the post-Revolutionary years is disputed, ((Carl Lokke, “Archives and the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 31, no. 1 (January 1968): 30-31.)) as Judith Panitch notes, “this chaotic episode of archival history reveals much about archives themselves, suggesting specifically their fundamental fragility and malleability.” ((Judith Panitch, “Liberty, equality, posterity? Some Archival Lessons from the Case of the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 59, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 33.)) That malleability is evident in the conflicting approaches to archival arrangement and description that characterized this era, practices that lead up to the declaration of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Records of the time were arranged primarily by sometimes-quixotic methods of classification, by schema idiosyncratic in origin and inconsistent in application. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 167.))\r\n\r\nA number of developments in the next few decades pushed this lack of uniformity to its breaking point and helped impel the conceptualization of <i>respect des fonds</i> as an archival principle, if, as I will show, less of an actual practice. The establishment of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> in 1821 created a formal institution to train archivists to staff both the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and the over 2500 provincial archives across France. Laws passed in the 1830s also drastically expanded the number of archivists mandated to work both in the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and in the provincial archives. Formal training and new positions, however, when combined with lax oversight and inconsistent guidance on practices, led, predictably, to a near-comic proliferation of methods of classification and arrangement. (See Figure 2.) Due to the proliferation of classification systems and schema, change was inevitable.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4725\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image2.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4725\" alt=\"Figure 2. The many arrangement methods of some Ecole des Chartes graduates prior to the emergence of respect des fonds as a methodology. Image from Lara Moore\'s &quot;Restoring Order,&quot; 114.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image2-300x239.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"239\" /></a> Figure 2. The many arrangement methods of some Ecole des Chartes graduates prior to the emergence of respect des fonds as a methodology. Image from Lara Moore\'s \"Restoring Order,\" 114.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThat change came in the form of the infamous “Circular no. 14,” released in 1841 by Natalis de Wailly, Administrative Head of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>. This document is recognized as the first articulation of the fonds as the fundamental method of archival arrangement, the purpose of which was “to form a collection of all the documents which originate from a body, an organization, a family or an individual, and to arrange the different fonds according to a certain order.” ((As quoted in Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 107.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> made creatorship the organizing principle of archival records and espoused the formation of collections according to the organization, entity, family, or individual responsible for their creation. Such an arrangement would ensure, as one writer later put it, the essential need “to know where it [the archival document] was created, in the framework of what process, to what end, for whom, when and how it was received by the addressee, and how it came into our hands.” ((Michael Duchein, “Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des fonds in Archival Science,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 67.))\r\n\r\nHowever, as Nancy Bartlett has explicated, this “watershed” moment was less momentous than contemporary evocations suggest. For one, de Wailly’s circular dictated “that <i>respect des fonds</i> was prescribed only for archival records created prior to 1789.” More contemporary fonds were to continue to be arranged categorically. In addition, minutes from subsequent meetings of the commission overseeing the work of archivists—a commission on which de Wailly served—reveal that “<i>respect des fonds</i> was if nothing more a preliminary standard for archival arrangement and description in departmental archives, a means of insuring that beginning archivists without the benefit of direct supervision might not cause too much intellectual damage to vulnerable records in their care.” ((Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 111.))\r\n\r\nThe principle was, in fact, a practical exigency, a method to simplify archival arrangement seen as more easily implemented by novice archivists than the more rigorous arrangement by classification. Bartlett also notes that <i>respect des fonds</i> remained absent from both the curriculum of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> as well as the publications of the professional society of its graduates. Lastly, the principle was, at the time, not applied to accessions into the <i>Archive Nationales</i> itself, as it operated under a different administrative department than de Wailly’s Interior Ministry.\r\n\r\n<i>Respect des fonds</i>, then, was never a perfectly realized theory. Its formation was a contingency of a unique historical moment; its conception depended upon practical necessities and its implementation was inconsistent and disputed. What today seems near dogma—that archives be arranged by fonds—was at the time novel and simplistic, more the product of utility and political manipulation than a grand inspiration regarding the functional authenticity of fonds or evidential purity towards their arrangement.\r\n\r\n<b>The Original Original Order</b>\r\n\r\nThough implemented inconsistently in its home country, the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained a wide acceptance across Europe. In Prussia, the theory (known as <i>Provenienzprinzip,</i> the principle of provenance) mandated that “official papers are to be maintained in the order and with the designations which they received in the course of the official activity of the agency concerned.” ((Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archives</i>, 175.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> received its most elaborate and sustained justification, and expansion, however, in the Netherlands, where the Dutch archivists Muller, Feith, and Fruin produced their famous <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> in 1898. Often referred to colloquially as the “Dutch Manual” and seen as the “starting point of archival theory and methodology,” ((Peter Horsman, Eric Ketelaar, and Theo Thomassen, “New Respect for the Old Order: The Context of the Dutch Manual,” <i>The American Archivist </i>66, no. 2 (2003): 249.)) the work provided a detailed set of guidelines for the arrangement of records. The principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained even wider acceptance and popularity after its ratification at the First International Congress of Archivists meeting in Brussels in 1910. ((Lawrence D. Geller, “Joseph Cuvelier, Belgian Archival Education, and the First International Congress of Archivists, Brussels, 1910,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 16. Proceedings from the 1910 meeting can be found online at <a href=\"http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/\">http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/</a>.)) (See Figure 3.)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4726\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"183\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image3.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4726\" alt=\"Figure 3. Front page of the proceedings of the 1910 Congres de Bruxelles, the First International Congress of Archivists and Librarians. The full proceedings are available online at http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/menu.html. Google Translate does a passable job of translating.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image3-183x300.jpg\" width=\"183\" height=\"300\" /></a> Figure 3. Front page of the proceedings of the 1910 Congres de Bruxelles, the First International Congress of Archivists and Librarians. The full proceedings are available online at http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/menu.html. Google Translate does a passable job of translating.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThe Dutch Manual, and the methodologies implemented in its wake, not only forbid the intermingling of the fonds of one agency with those of another—in keeping with the French conception of <i>respect des fonds</i>—but also expanded the theory to apply to the records within each fond—the internal arrangement of the archival collection. Or as the Dutch Manual put it, “the system of arrangement must be based on the original organization of the archival collection.” ((Samuel Muller, Johan Adriaan Feith, and Robert Fruin, <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> (H.W. Wilson Co., 1968), 52.)) This concept has come to be known as the “principle of original order,” an intra-fonds corollary to the external means of arrangement associated with the principle of provenance; <i>respect des fonds</i> encompasses both principles.\r\n\r\nA closer examination of the Dutch Manual, however, reveals certain methodological impracticalities that even its authors admit. First, they claim that the original order within a fonds may be modified or “restored” to account for multiple transfers from an agency, not all of which may truly represent the idealized “original order.” As well, records may be reorganized to account for “inconsequential irregularities attributable to record-keeping officials.” The authors also note that reconstituting the original order may be avoided when “the trouble which would have to be taken in order to reconstruct the old organization is out of proportion to the result to be obtained.” ((Muller et al., <i>Manual</i>, 83.)) Needless to say, the simple idea of “restoring original order” seems itself problematic, fraught with subjective decision-making likely far removed from whatever idealized “organic” origin archivists may discover within fonds. The complicated approach to “restoration” and “reconstruction” that the Dutch Manual advises often borders on, as one writer put it, “abandoning entirely their carefully developed ethic of conservation.” ((Frank Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” <i>The American Archivist </i>45, no. 1 (1982): 28.))\r\n\r\n<b>Critique des Fonds</b>\r\n\r\nThe widespread adoption <i>of respect des fonds</i> did not proceed unquestioned, however. As early as the 1930s, some archivists were taking issue with the methodology of arranging collections according to original order. In his survey of the development of archival theory, Ernst Posner points to the German Max Bar and two Swedish archivists who demonstrated “that slavish preservation of the original arrangement of a fonds is often insufficient,” the principle of provenance “is subject to certain restrictions” that make blanket adoption impractical, and adherence to <i>respect des fonds</i> often impedes use of archival materials. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 169.))\r\n\r\nSome Australian and American archivists in the 1960s, primarily Peter Scott and Mario Fenyo, challenged the definition of fonds even further. The problems with the traditional concept of the fonds were manifold. Defining fonds as the records of a “transferring or controlling agency” was problematic since the agent of transfer was not always the creating agency. Fonds could also be mixed or “broken” into multiple transfers to an archive, making reconstitution difficult. Fonds could also be the result of “a succession of agencies,” blurring true creatorship. Ordering series within fonds was difficult since future accessions may need to be inserted at different places in the existing organizational system, leading to physical disorder or the constant revision of finding aids or inventories. After reviewing minutes of early NARA meetings in an attempt to define what, exactly, constitutes a fonds, Fenyo succinctly pointed out, “no one knows what the word fonds means, not even the French who invented it.” ((Mario D. Fenyo, “The Record Group Concept: A Critique,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 2 (April 1966): 230.)) For Scott, his belief that “the very arbitrariness of the concept [of the fonds] is sufficient to make one question its usefulness,” ((Peter Scott, “The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 4 (October 1966): 497.)) led him to develop the “series system” (See Figure 4) which sought to orient arrangement and description according to function and use instead of agent or material type—a theory that, Terry Cook noted, “shifted the entire archival description enterprise from a static cataloging mode to a dynamic system of multiple interrelationships.” ((Terry Cook, “What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift,” <i>Archivaria</i> 43 (1999): 38.))\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4747\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image4.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4747\" alt=\"Figure 4. Peter Scott\'s diagram depicting his system of archival arrangement based on grouping records at the series level. From Scott, &quot;The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,&quot; 1966. \" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image4-300x177.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"177\" /></a> Figure 4. Peter Scott\'s diagram depicting his system of archival arrangement based on grouping records at the series level. From Scott, \"The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,\" 1966.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThe principle of original order underwent a similar critique. A lack of clarity on the custodianship of records prior to their delivery to an archive, the problem of multiple and ongoing accessions, and the potential for incoherent or unknown methods of ordering or classification by creating bodies all led Fenyo to proclaim, “archivists generally believe that the arrangement of series within a record group reflects to some extent the organization and even history of the agency that created those records.… But the records in the National Archives reflect no such thing.” ((Fenyo, \"The Record Group Concept,\" 236.)) For archives consisting of personal papers, original order is seen as particularly problematic, since a chronological arrangement seemingly provides the greatest meaning and value to the records of an individual, but is unlikely to be the order of records upon accession. Restoration of original order also risks destroying the contextual information accrued by collections that have passed through multiple states of custodianship prior to their acceptance into the archive. ((Debra Barr, “Protecting Provenance: Response to the Report of the Working Group on Description at the Fonds Level,” <i>Archivaria</i> 28 (Summer 1989): 141-145. See also Robert Edwards, “‘With Respect to Original Order’: Changing Values in Archival Arrangement,” <i>Archives Association of British Columbia</i> 11, no. 1 (Winter 2001).)) Lastly, the principle of original order prioritizes filing systems of unknown or dubious legitimacy over the principle of use or accessibility. As Frank Boles states, “usability acknowledges the evidential superiority of documents over filing systems by placing primary emphasis on access to documents.” ((Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” 31.)) In this critique, usability and original order are often in conflict.\r\n\r\n<b>Of Bonds and Parallels</b>\r\n\r\nOther conceptual models besides the series system have attempted to address these critiques by forming new ideas about how order or grouping can evidence archival authenticity, identity, and meaning. One theory to articulate the interrelations of individual records can be found in Luciana Duranti’s notion of the archival bond, which she defines as the “network of relations that each record has with the records belonging in the same aggregation.” ((Luciana Duranti, “The Archival Bond,” <i>Archives and Museum Informatics</i> 11 (1997): 213-18.)) Not to be confused with context, which exists outside the record, the archival bond, for Duranti, is core to the identity of the record. As she states, “documents that are expressions of a transaction are not records until they are put into relation with other records.” ((Ibid., 216.)) Emerging from research into the authenticity of electronic records (including the InterPARES project), the archival bond identifies a web of documentary co-dependencies that presumes an inheritance and relationship between records based on functional proximity. ((“The InterPARES Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://www.interpares.org\">www.interpares.org</a>.))\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most exhaustive attempt to deal with many difficulties that exist within the gulf between <i>respect des fonds</i> as principle and practice was undertaken by Michel Duchein in 1983. ((Duchein, \"Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems,\" 64–82.)) While Duchein proposes solutions to the many problems of the fonds concept, the reader cannot help but be overwhelmed by the fact that his cataloging of the “theoretical problems” and “practical difficulties” far outnumber, and begin to drown out, his proposed solutions. For Duchein, within fonds there can be all sorts of nebulous, arbitrary, and forgotten methods of classification “from which all imaginable disorders flow.” He calls these, in a poetic moment, “brutal manipulations.” ((Ibid., 77.)) But after this disquisition, on the last page of his article Duchein mentions one idea that seems if not prescient, then at least transitive in the way it conceives of context: the <i>parallelismus membrorum</i>, “the similarity of parallel files.” <i>Parallelismus membrorum</i> is a rhetorical term referring to the patterns within a text formed by the utilization of repeated grammatical structures. (“I came. I saw. I conquered,” is a brief example). Duchein here employs the motif to refer to the contextual relations that exist between records of different fonds, the network of meanings that stretch across the archive.\r\n\r\nChris Hurley explored an idea similar to <i>parallelismus membrorum</i> in his delineation of “parallel provenance” a concept built around “composing different things from the same particles—combining things in different ways to produce a variety of views of what they look like in the aggregate … not so much about identifying a different creator as recognizing manifold context.” ((Chris Hurley, “Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?,” <i>Archives and Manuscripts</i> 33, no. 1 (2005): 126.)) (See Figure 5.) Other contemporary writers, such as Laura Millar and Geoffrey Yeo, have sought to stretch the meaning of the fonds even further, arguing it exists purely at the conceptual level. ((Geoffrey Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds and the Physical Collection,” <i>Archivaria</i> 73 (Spring 2012): 43-91; Laura Millar, “The Death of the Fonds and the Resurrection of Provenance: Archival Context in Space and Time,” <i>Archivaria</i> 53 (Spring 2002): 1-15.)) But as the definition of the fonds becomes more distant, more abstract, its privileging as a form of aggregation seems less certain, especially in a digital environment in which creatorship is but one of many means of grouping records.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4728\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image5.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4728\" alt=\"Figure 5. Chris Hurly\'s diagram of parallel provenance, &quot;The Little Truck.&quot; The little truck is a metaphor for archival description. From Hurley, &quot;Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?”\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image5-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" /></a> Figure 5. Chris Hurly\'s diagram of parallel provenance, \"The Little Truck.\" The little truck is a metaphor for archival description. From Hurley, \"Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?”[/caption]\r\n\r\nThe archival bond, the series system, <i>parallelismus membrorum, </i>and parallel provenance all mark attempts to theorize relationships between records and collections in ways that can elide the practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Equally, these ideas represent a continued expansion of context beyond the limitations of grouping by creatorship or creator-derived order. In each case, similarities and dependencies emerge out of cross-collection networks or semantically derived principles. As the models gain distance from the vagaries of the individual records, one starts to recognize a familiar pattern of removal—not a disjunction, exactly, but a subtle passage from the material trace to the abstract representation. The familiarity is borne of the similar movement from item to representation that characterizes electronic records and their attendant phenomenological tension between the physical inscription on a drive and the symbolic interface on a screen.\r\n\r\n<b>Bit Level Processing</b>\r\n\r\nBut enough of models. Consider instead the bit, the binary, the magnetic flux reversal of the spinning disk that is the origin of the digital object. Material inscription offers a good point to segue into an examination of digital records and how they both complicate or even circumvent historical notions of <i>respect des fonds </i> while at the same time enabling realization of a more expansive notion of context and interrelation.\r\n\r\nStarting at the bit level, the characteristics of inscription (how digital information is written onto storage media) call into question the idea of original order. When data is written to a storage device, it has a material, physical trace, but that trace is far from the legibility or interpretability we associate with analog documents. As Matt Kirschenbaum has noted in his study of new media and digital forensics, “we write <i>on</i> paper, but we write <i>to</i> a magnetic disk (or tape)”; the semantic difference signifies that the act of inscription is “logically distinct” from the act of creation and intellectual manipulation. ((Matt Kirschenbaum, <i>Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination</i> (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 87. Emphasis in original.)) (See Figure 6.) In addition, a key component of storage media is that it is random access; that means the bits composing a record are inscribed to available clusters across the platter of a drive depending on which tracks and sectors are available for inscription. That is, the component bits of a digital object are non-sequential in their material physical arrangement. Aggregated, they can create an interpretable object, but their component location is nonlinear. Here, even at the bit level of a single item, there is no original order. Furthermore, each time these bits are reconstructed, each time the file is accessed and translated into an interpretable, editable representation, the file will be altered in minute ways (for instance, a file’s “last opened” date) and thus be composed of a new order as new bits are assigned to other available areas of the disk. As Kirschenbaum notes, quoting a dictum of forensic science, “every contact leaves a trace.” The act of interpreting a digital object, thus, continually alters its material order.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4729\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image6.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4729\" alt=\"Figure 6. Close-up of a disk drive at the Computer History Museum, showing arms and a read/write head. Processing Born-Digital Materials Using AccessData FTK at Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, 2011.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image6-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" /></a> Figure 6. Close-up of a disk drive at the Computer History Museum, showing arms and a read/write head.<br />Processing Born-Digital Materials Using AccessData FTK at Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, 2011.[/caption]\r\n\r\nMoving beyond the non-sequential arrangement of bits of individual records, but remaining at the forensic level, other features of the digital environment challenge long-standing presumptions of authenticity and uniqueness that are dependent upon physical arrangement or description. Temporary files, such as those stored by auto-save or recovery programs, mean that a drive can contain multiple versions of identical files, many of them beyond the management (or even awareness) of their creator. This “ambient data” is matched by other features of data dispersal throughout a storage system, such as “swap space” (disk space sometimes allocated for use by RAM) and “disk slack” (which accounts for the difference between the actual file size and the disk space used for storage) that themselves complicate ideas of order and linearity. Storage becomes a hidden, dynamic world in which physical arrangement on a spinning drive consists of the equivalent of dispersed crevices, hidey-holes, and secret areas where data proliferates. Kirschenbaum asserts, “there is, in short, no simple way to know how many instances of a single file are residing in how many states, in how many different locations, at any given moment in the operating system.” ((Ibid., 52.)) As well, digital objects themselves have the potential to contain trace data that, while possibly not achieving the singular identity of a record, can have evidential value or help establish provenance.\r\n\r\nTake, for instance, Kirschenbaum’s exploration of a floppy disk image, in which he finds evidence of how the storage media was used over time and what its hidden and partially deleted data can manifest about its user: “[W]e discover on the original diskette the incompletely overwritten remains of previous software … a piece of 1980s software culture frozen in allographic amber.” ((Ibid., 140.)) Discovering this legacy information reveals multiple levels of creatorship and a trail of ownership and social and cultural meaning that extend beyond the object, the creator, or the fonds. In this case, the unintentionally preserved (by the user, at least) data provides a testament to its origins that is not visible in the individual files themselves. Here provenance is not a result of aggregation or description but a characteristic of how digital information is created and transmitted. Context is not just relational, implied, or conceptualized, but can be a part of the very media itself, like secret, half-formed barnacles clinging to the vessel of the digital record. Incomplete but decipherable. Fragmentary but meaningful. Allographic amber.\r\n\r\n<b>Fonds Essentialism</b>\r\n\r\nNeedless to say, most people do not interact with digital information at the forensic level. In Kenneth Thibodeau’s useful model, digital objects are compounds, composed of a physical, logical, and conceptual object. Respectively, those adjectives refer to the physical inscription on storage media; the logical suite of translational software and processes that access and “read” that inscription; and the conceptual object the user interacts with, such as the text, image, or interface on a screen. ((Kenneth Thibodeau, “Overview of Technological Approaches to Digital Preservation and Challenges in Coming Years,” in <i>The State of Digital Preservation: An International Perspective</i> (Washington D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2002).)) The conceptual object—the representational environment of the screen as experienced in the word processing program, the image editor, the social media app—inculcates its own affordances and logic on the creation or use of records. In fact, given the hidden, inscrutable nature of storage and inscription, the formal representation of digital objects on a screen can have an outsized influence on their creation, management, and perception—an interpretive tendency that Nick Montford calls “screen essentialism.” Considering the extensive influence that the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i> has had, historically, on how archival collections are arranged and described, a similar predilection may characterize the archival enterprise—call it <i>fonds essentialism</i>.\r\n\r\nThe conceptual object—the screen—presents its own challenges to the implied narrative of current modes of archival description. The way that a user interacts with an aggregation of digital materials is fundamentally different from how a user would interact with a set of document boxes or a finding aid. The screen imposes its own logic, its own “formal regimen,” in Kirschenbaum’s terms, on how digital objects are interpreted or accessed, but also how they are described. Traditional archival representation for analog materials emerges from a narrative: a story about what a collection is, what it holds, and the order and location of its contents. It moves through a descriptive summary of contextual detail and administrative information and on to a hierarchy of series and subseries often arranged by type, function, chronology, or other broad categories. Papers, folders, boxes, and series must be arranged in physical space, after all, and that comes to shape how they are arranged in the intellectual space of description. A finding aid is a narrative to be read and its intellectual availability is largely linear and structural. The conceptual object of the digital record and the interface to an aggregation of digital records offer quite a different type of interaction.\r\n\r\nText mining and hyperlinks are simple examples of ways to navigate large groups of materials absent a singular narrative sequence. Lev Manovich, in theorizing new media, has noted that the database (or, the database logic) has supplanted narrative as the method of interacting with digital information. In new media, “narrative becomes just one method of accessing data among others,” and digital information assumes “the projection of the ontology of a computer onto culture itself.” ((Lev Manovich, “Database as a Genre of New Media,” <i>Journal of A&amp;I Society</i> 14, no. 2 (May 2000): 176-77.)) In a database, objects are related but not ordered. The database logic is nonlinear and there is no original order because order is dependent upon query. Search and navigation become algorithm-dependent and not predetermined by a creator, an archivist, or a static finding aid—though all of those organizations are themselves available. Digital objects will have an identifier, yes, but where they “rest” in intellectual space is contingent, mutable. The key point is that, even at the level of representation, arrangement is dynamic: access and representation need not depend on the fonds. Description becomes relational as well and can extend beyond individual aggregations of records. The logic of physical space no longer drives retrieval or predominates in description. Original order and provenance are not lost or obviated in this model, but they are not the exclusive means of access, either.\r\n\r\n<b>Recent Practices</b>\r\n\r\nCase studies from projects handling significant amounts of born-digital records provide insight into the theoretical and practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. As the Emory University project asked of the born-digital content in its Salmon Rushdie acquisition, “Would we treat the born-digital files the same as print material? Would we impose any sort of arrangement on the materials? How much added description could we provide? As the following discussion will reveal, the application of archival theory and principles may shift to accommodate the differences between paper and born-digital archives.” ((Laura Carroll et al., “A Comprehensive Approach to Born-Digital Archives,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 72.)) Or, as the large-scale, born-digital Vancouver Olympics project team put it, “core archival activities may diverge from long-established practices when moving into the digital environment.” ((Courtney C. Mumma, Glenn Dingwall, and Sue Bigelow, “A First Look at the Acquisition and Appraisal of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Fonds: Or, SELECT * FROM VANOC_Records AS Archives WHERE Value=‘true’;,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 93.)) Along with the multi-institutional AIMS project and the PARADIGM (Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media) project in the UK, these case studies detail the practical issues involved in rethinking arrangement and description in born-digital archives. ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/</a>; Paradigm project, “Workbook on Digital Private Papers,” The Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (Paradigm) Project, accessed October 2012,  <a href=\"http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html\">http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html</a>.))\r\n\r\nTaken together, the projects provide an overview of how arrangement may look in entirely born-digital collections. All note the difficulty in parsing user-generated description and the often quixotic or meaningless nature of directory structures and naming. The projects largely employed filtering, text mining, and other cross-record queries to determine the content of most files. The sheer volume of files contained in accessions precluded any item-level content review or hierarchical rearrangement; yet, at the same time, “the creation of file and item descriptions and inventories is not only easier and faster, it yields much richer information.… What takes hours or days to perform in the paper environment takes mere seconds to accomplish in the digital environment, and is done to a greater level of detail.” ((Mumma et al., \"A First Look,\" 115-16.))\r\n\r\nThough the many technical processes necessary for format validation, emulation, automated metadata extraction, and other methods of processing born-digital archives are too complex to be fully recounted here, these case studies point to their key characteristics. [VIDEO 1] Arrangement, as we think of it, is no longer a process of imposing intellectualized hierarchies or physical relocation; instead, it becomes largely automated, algorithmic, and batch processed. At the same time, archival representation will build upon the affordances of the digital objects themselves to extract and compile metadata that can then be repurposed to bridge and augment a wealth of contextual relations far beyond the order of their creation and their agency of origin.\r\n\r\n<b>Visual Descriptions</b>\r\n\r\nAs the “logical associations of records extend beyond the records themselves and embrace relations with other entities in the wider world,” as Geoffrey Yeo puts it, archivists will be tasked with building interfaces that draw upon these aforementioned possibilities and linking them to the online interfaces through which records will be made available. ((Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds,” 71.)) The interface thus becomes the “critical element in the interaction between documentary evidence and its consumers.” ((Margaret Hedstrom, “Archives, Memory, and Interfaces with the Past,” <i>Archival Science</i> 2, no. 1-2 (2002): 24.))\r\n\r\nSince few archives are accessioning entirely born-digital collections, it is difficult to find archival examples of a description for such a collection. Born-digital content that is currently being processed is usually a small portion of a larger physical collection and, as such, is integrated in a hybrid fashion into traditional finding aids; see, for instance, \"<a href=\"http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt9p3038mq/\">Series 8: Born digital files</a>,\" \"<a href=\"http://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/rushdie1000/\">Series 11: Computers and related devices</a>,\" or \"<a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">Series 13: Computer files</a>.\"\r\n\r\nThere are, however, some archival projects, as well as work in the digital humanities, that offer a window into how researchers and scholars are making using of large sets of digital data. While the data sets and digital records being utilized are not necessarily archival collections, the tools, methods of inquiry, and cross-collection, multi-institutional repositories that emerge from these projects presage both how entirely born-digital archives may come to be used and what digital archival collection interfaces may look like in the future.\r\n\r\nTwo projects taking an innovative, insightful approach to exploring archival collections through the mining of large archival corpora are The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online and Cameron Blevins’s work text mining and topic modeling Martha Ballard’s diary. ((The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online can be found at <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/\">http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/</a>, and the associated Criminal Intent project can be found at <a href=\"http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/\">http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/</a>. Cameron Blevin’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary can be found online at <a href=\"http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/\">http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/</a> and at <a href=\"http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml\">http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml</a>.)) The Old Bailey Proceedings provides access to nearly 200,000 digitized trial records from London’s criminal courts, spans almost 250 years, allows full text searching, and has an API through which users can query the archive. The With Criminal Intent project has built a suite of related tools that can help perform data-mining projects using this archive. (See Figure 7.) This project measures and visualizes trends over time as a means of revealing historical themes, building and revealing new narratives, and providing insights into the past through data-driven analysis.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4730\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image7.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4730\" alt=\"Figure 7. Image from &quot;Data Mining with Criminal Intent&quot; presentation by Briquet et al. at Digging into Data Challenge, Washington D.C., 2009. Slides available at http://criminalintent.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/criminal_intent_digging_into_data_meeting_10jun2011.pdf.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image7-300x179.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"179\" /></a> Figure 7. Image from \"Data Mining with Criminal Intent\" presentation by Briquet et al. at Digging into Data Challenge, Washington D.C., 2009. Slides available at http://criminalintent.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/criminal_intent_digging_into_data_meeting_10jun2011.pdf.[/caption]\r\n\r\nBlevins’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary features a different collection, a single diary by an eighteenth-century housewife composed of almost 10,000 entries from 1785 to 1812. This project aspires to a similar goal of revealing novel insights into, and interpretations of, historical material through the ability of digital tools to mine vast sets of information. Blevins uses topic modeling—an algorithmic method that searches word patterns and groupings throughout large collections of texts (for Ballard’s diary, each entry was treated as a different “text”)—to chart and track thematic trends across the diary. A similar approach has been taken by the Mining the Dispatch project, which examines changing sentiments toward the Civil War over the course of six years (over 112,000 items) in the Richmond, Virginia <i>Daily Dispatch</i> newspaper. ((“Mining the Dispatch,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/\">http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/</a>.)) (See Figure 8.)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4731\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image8.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4731\" alt=\"Figure 8. Screenshot from &quot;Mining the Dispatch&quot; website, http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/Topics/view/27.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image8-300x210.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"210\" /></a> Figure 8. Screenshot from \"Mining the Dispatch\" website, http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/Topics/view/27.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThese projects may fall under the broader rubric of the digital humanities, and the collections they are working with may not be archival collections in the traditional sense, but they offer a glimpse of the discovery, navigation, exploration, and analytic tools that foreshadow uses of digital archival collections. Other initiatives have sought to build upon the network of social relations that influence records creation. The SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context) Project “provides access to the socio-historical contexts ([including] people, families, and corporate bodies) in which the records were created” through the use of the EAC-CPF standard that describes corporate bodies, persons, and families. ((“SNAC: The Social Networks and Archival Context Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/\">http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/</a>.)) Early results show a promising method for using social context for discovery and interpretation.  (See Figure 9.) The archivists at Stanford University who are managing the Robert Creeley collection, which contains a significant quantity of born-digital content, especially emails, have used the custom-built MUSE tool for exploring semantic patterns in email archives. ((The Robert Creeley collection can be found at <a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html</a>. For more information on the MUSE tool visit <a href=\"http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/\">http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/</a>.)) (See Figure 10.) Similarly, other projects have explored building unique visual interfaces to archival collections that extend contextual relations across collections, archives, and disciplines. [VIDEO 2]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4732\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image9.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4732\" alt=\"Figure 9. Image from &quot;Historic Social Networks&quot; presentation by Brian Tingle at SAA 2012 Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA. Slides available at http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/images/NAAC-dc-2012_SAA2012_Tingle.pdf.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image9-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" /></a> Figure 9. Image from \"Historic Social Networks\" presentation by Brian Tingle at SAA 2012 Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA. Slides available at http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/images/NAAC-dc-2012_SAA2012_Tingle.pdf.[/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4727\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image10.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4727\" alt=\"Figure 10. Network analysis of Robert Creeley email archive. Image by Elijah Meeks, captured from https://dhs.stanford.edu/visualization/robert-creeley-e-mail-correspodence-network/.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image10-300x265.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"265\" /></a> Figure 10. Network analysis of Robert Creeley email archive. Image by Elijah Meeks, captured from https://dhs.stanford.edu/visualization/robert-creeley-e-mail-correspodence-network/.[/caption]\r\n\r\nWhat distinguishes these projects from archival representations of old is that context and meaning are not exclusively provided through descriptive, narrative details that precede an arrangement and location list, but instead through networks, inter-linkages, modeling, and content analysis. Users can move dynamically within a collection and laterally across collections. Search, query, and tools like topic modeling also allow the user to build their own patterns and hierarchies for discovery. In this view, archival description still plays a crucial role in providing information on what something is or how it came to be created, but no longer is the fonds or idea of original order the sole determinant of representation.\r\n\r\n<b>Conclusion</b>\r\n\r\nAs Luciana Duranti has noted, archival description “has been carried out or not carried out depending on specific needs and conditions, attitudes and requirements, and its products have consistently reflected the conceptions about archives held by the society of the time.” ((Duranti, “Origin and Development,” 53.)) In the physical world of items, folders, boxes, and shelves, the archive must be sorted, ordered, and stored sequentially in space. Those properties, along with social, cultural, and political attitudes have driven how archival arrangement and description are theorized and practiced. Indeed, description itself has always had to serve multiple purposes: to provide historical or biographical information, scope and content detail, physical location for retrieval, administrative information for ongoing management, and restrictions and material types governing use. In a sense, description itself is a compound object, tugged between the needs of physical arrangement, intellectual representation, and user expectation. The properties of digital records allow archivists to revisit that negotiation. At the same time, other qualities of digital information, like the forensic disk image, have the potential to preserve both a mechanical version of “order” as well as provenancial and contextual information that formerly were provided through description. File fixity, forensic imaging, directory manifests, and auto-generated metadata may all come to play a larger role in defining provenance.\r\n\r\nWe disrespect des fonds, then, not as an act of elimination or insubordination, but in order to bring other contextual relations to its same level of privilege. Consider it less a disrespect, perhaps, than a humbling; or, instead, consider it a reaffirmation that the multiplicity of meanings possible with digital records can be better realized through an ongoing interrogation of archival traditions of arrangement and description. In rethinking <i>respect des fonds</i>, we gain a better awareness of the extent to which the material affordances of paper records have had an undue influence on how we conceptualize and practice grouping and describing collections. Bits, however, are fundamentally different at the material and symbolic levels. The use of digital objects is different as well, influenced by computational processing, algorithmic query, automation, and dynamism, not to mention social conditions, user expectations, technology dependencies, storage requirements, and a host of other characteristics of how we create and use technology.\r\n\r\nParallels and bonds, series and topics, models and paradigms; at times these concepts have collided and resulted in a seeming antagonism between ideas like original order and random access, historical contingency and abstract principle, finding aid and dynamic query. But there have been similarities too: how the tension between record and representation mirrors that of inscription and screen; and how the component nature of digital objects resembles the component purpose of traditional archival description. To entrench methods of arrangement and description borne of the qualities of physical collections is to disregard the potential expansion of context that digital information can support. In recognizing how historically and socially contingent traditional practices (and the theories spawning those practices) were, we better recognize their potential dysfunction in a time of born-digital records. This is not to say that we should discard the idea of the fonds or the utility of original order, but perhaps it is time to revoke their privileged place in archival discourse and revisit the true goals of arrangement and description in light of the capabilities of digital records. Maybe then we can begin to understand what is possible when we think of collections as mutually contextual and interrelated instead of cloistered and static. And perhaps then other bonds, other parallels, other contexts, meanings, and interpretations can receive the same amount of respect that we have, for too long now, granted the fonds.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nWikipedia articles created as part of this work:\r\n\r\nRespect des fonds: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds</a>\r\n\r\nOriginal Order: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order</a>\r\n\r\nArchival Bond: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond</a>','Disrespect des Fonds: Rethinking Arrangement and Description in Born-Digital Archives','','inherit','open','open','','4722-revision-15','','','2013-06-18 01:50:45','2013-06-18 01:50:45','',4722,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4722-revision-15/',0,'revision','',0),(4751,3,'2013-06-18 02:00:34','2013-06-18 02:00:34','<b>Introduction</b>\r\n\r\nIn her article, “Disciplinarity and Disorder,” in Issue 1 of this journal, Gabrielle Dean opens her essay with a detailed and expressive “fantasy” describing the “primal scene of archival research [that] takes place in a dreary reading room,” featuring an archivist, a researcher, a cart, dusty gray boxes, and a “numbered file folder.” As her fantasy takes flight, with the researcher scribbling away and papers swirling and new collections sprouting up organically, she crafts an evocative metaphor for the life cycle of preservation and regeneration that archivists aim to enable through access to primary sources. Dean cogently deconstructs the origins and implications of this “primal scene” over the course of her essay. But what also merits highlighting in her opening metaphor are the accoutrements that populate it—the cart, the box, the file folder—familiar players on the stage of the archival encounter. These objects and symbols are evocative of that idealized moment of archaeological discovery that characterizes the use of the archive. They are objects and symbols of history, certainly, but relics, alas, of an analog age.\r\n\r\nA similar fantasy, one potentially more fraught with anxiety and dread, must darken the reveries of archivists as they attempt to provide access to more contemporary materials. A daydream involving the researcher of tomorrow may instead feature dreadful moments of “file cannot be opened” error messages, of FTP transfers gone awry, of decaying media orphaned from long-lost playback devices. Our imaginary researcher will not be awaiting archival discovery sitting in a dreary reading room, but instead exist in some networked who-knows-where, furiously emailing an endless stream of access and transfer request and constantly griping about obsolete formats and buggy interfaces. At the same time, our imaginary archivist will not be pushing carts or shelving boxes, but creating user accounts for virtual reading rooms, running pattern-recognition text-mining queries, uploading disk images, or helping users with emulation software. Like the content of our archives themselves, the props and symbols of our archival fantasies increasingly will be associated with born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nHow will traditional principles of archival arrangement and description be challenged or modified to account for born-digital materials? Arrangement and description have long been the primary method of facilitating the use of archives, and their methodologies have been dependent upon the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. The articulation of this theory in 1841 has been held as the “starting point” or beginning of the modern era of archival theory, a “watershed” event establishing the “basic principle” and “very core” of the archival endeavor. Superlatives abound. <i>Respect des fonds</i>, “more than any other principle, has come to provide the archival profession with a unique identity.” ((Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” in <i>Bibliographical Foundations of French Historical Studies</i> (New York: Haworth Press, 1992), 108.))\r\n\r\nBut <i>respect des fonds</i> was born of a particular historic moment, for a particular type of archival document, and was conceived to address the practical needs of specific social circumstances. Even as <i>respect des fonds</i> has mutated and evolved over the decades, subject to revisions, contestations, and reaffirmations, its methodologies have largely been a product of the nature of the archival record as a physical document to be sorted, grouped, and described after receipt from a single donating entity. In an era defined by digital materials and their affordances and limitations, one in which narrative linearity often seems replaced by data-driven relationalism, the meaning of <i>respect des fonds</i> is ever more slippery.\r\n\r\nBroadly stated, <i>respect des fonds</i> is the principle of grouping records by the administration, organization, individual, or creating body in which they originated. <i>Respect des fonds</i> mandates that the records of the creating entity not be mixed with those of a different entity. It prioritizes the “organic” nature of archival records, identifying the locus of their generation, and the evidence their consolidation provides about that originating body, as essential to preserving and maintaining context. Comprised of the related “principle of original order” and “the principle of provenance,” <i>respect des fonds</i> displaced prior methods of archival arrangement that were predicated upon classifications by subject, function, topic, legal utility, chronology, and other categories. Though often referenced as a core component of archival identity, as a theoretical concept, <i>respect des fonds</i> is, as one writer says, “elusive and oft-misunderstood.” ((Dan Zelenyj, “Linchpin Imperilled: The Functional Interpretation of Series and the Principle of Respect des Fonds,” <i>Archivaria</i> 42 (1996): 126.))\r\n\r\nThe introduction of born-digital records into the archives offers an opportunity to examine how the practical methodologies of arrangement and description are shifting and how those changing practices lead to a reconsideration of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Much as digital records’ technological dependencies, ease of duplication, and subordination to features of systems and storage have led to a reassessment of the existing precepts of archival appraisal and selection, they also prompt a similar analysis of arrangement and description. One of those axioms due reassessment is the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i>.\r\n\r\nThis essay details the social and material conditions of the emergence of <i>respect des fonds</i>, the theory’s complex practical implementations and contested assumption, the emergence of alternate models, and how born-digital materials illuminate the theory’s analog origins and limitations. I will also explain the specific qualities of digital objects, including the nature of inscription and its impact on notions of original order and authenticity, as well as how nonlinear retrieval supplants the narrative logic of <i>respect des fonds</i> with a broader notion of context and discoverability. I will then consider recent interpretive methods, such as data visualization and text mining, as potential harbingers of new modes of representing and creating interfaces to digital collections—representations that better capitalize on the possibilities of digital materials. Finally, I will argue that the affordances of born-digital archives—such as their potential for parallel representation, machine-enabled interpretation, and expansive contextual and intellectual availability—provoke a reconsideration of the place of privilege of <i>respect des fonds </i>in archival arrangement and description.\r\n\r\n<b>The Old Regime</b>\r\n\r\nBefore <i>respect des</i> <i>fonds</i> can be respected, disrespected, or neglected, a better understanding of its origins is warranted, along with an examination of how the principle has (or has not) been applied and its periodic contestation. The seductive purity of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> often overshadows the concept’s decidedly complex origins. <i>Respect des fonds</i> as a guiding method of archival control was never as ennobled an idea as its contemporary evocation often implies. Its original articulation was mired in professional infighting, reductive practicalities, and the tumult and disorganization of political change.\r\n\r\nWhile we can find records grouped according to creator in some earlier instances, ((Luciana Duranti, “Origin and Development of Archival Description,” <i>Archivaria</i> 35 (1993): 50.)) the formal articulation of the concept of <i>respect des fonds</i> was, like much of modernity, a by-product of the French Revolution. The Revolution featured a simultaneous destruction and reconstruction of the archive, an attempt to both erase and recast the historical record. Most famously, when revolutionaries stormed the Bastille they destroyed its documentary contents—records that instantiated the subjugation and exploitation of the despised monarchy. (See Figure 1.)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4724\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image1.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4724\" alt=\"Figure 1. Storming of the Bastille and arrest of the Governor M. de Launay, July 14, 1789. Those are probably archival records burning in the background.  Public domain Image via Wikimedia Commons. Artist unknown.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image1-300x237.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"237\" /></a> Figure 1. Storming of the Bastille and arrest of the Governor M. de Launay, July 14, 1789. Those are probably archival records burning in the background. Public domain Image via Wikimedia Commons. Artist unknown.[/caption]\r\n\r\nYet the revolutionaries’ also scrupulously preserved the record of their own activities. The <i>Archives Nationales</i> was established in 1790, with a head archivist, hours designated for the general public, and a centralized administration tasked both with preserving the legacy of the new government and managing select records of the Old Regime. Those tasks, however, were segregated in ways that impacted how each class of documents was handled. Records of the National Assembly were to be scrupulously maintained, while feudal titles were widely destroyed. As one Minster put it, “all the old documents with gothic script are … only legal titles of feudalism, of the subjection of the feeble to the strong.” ((As cited in Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development since the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 3, no. 3 (1940): 162.))\r\n\r\nThe management of archives during this time was chaotic. Property records were sent to one administrative body within the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, legal records to another, and documents of historical interest went to the <i>Bibliotheque Nationales</i>. At the same time, archivists were tasked with maintaining a distinction between records documenting pre- and post-Revolutionary activities. In addition, the first two administrative heads of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>, Armand-Gaston Camus and Pierre Daunou, were both trained as librarians and had, by the early 1800s, established twenty-four “groupings” of records into which future accessions were to be integrated. Within these groups, additional classifications and intellectual methods of ordering existed. The archives, then, were “arranged in accordance with an arbitrarily devised ‘methodical’ scheme that was derived from library experience.” ((T. R Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archive : Principles and Techniques</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 169.)) As well, political tumult and instability of governance continued to have an impact on the arrangement of the archives, and “decisions about preservation, classification, inventory, and access were therefore the result not just of practical considerations or the opinions of individual archivists and librarians, but also of key shifts in national politics.” ((Lara Moore, <i>Restoring Order: The Ecole Des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870</i> (Duluth, Minnesota: Litwin Books, 2008), 17.))\r\n\r\n<b>The Origins of <i>Respect des Fonds</i></b>\r\n\r\nWhile the true extent of records destruction during the post-Revolutionary years is disputed, ((Carl Lokke, “Archives and the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 31, no. 1 (January 1968): 30-31.)) as Judith Panitch notes, “this chaotic episode of archival history reveals much about archives themselves, suggesting specifically their fundamental fragility and malleability.” ((Judith Panitch, “Liberty, equality, posterity? Some Archival Lessons from the Case of the French Revolution,” <i>The American Archivist</i> 59, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 33.)) That malleability is evident in the conflicting approaches to archival arrangement and description that characterized this era, practices that lead up to the declaration of the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Records of the time were arranged primarily by sometimes-quixotic methods of classification, by schema idiosyncratic in origin and inconsistent in application. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 167.))\r\n\r\nA number of developments in the next few decades pushed this lack of uniformity to its breaking point and helped impel the conceptualization of <i>respect des fonds</i> as an archival principle, if, as I will show, less of an actual practice. The establishment of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> in 1821 created a formal institution to train archivists to staff both the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and the over 2500 provincial archives across France. Laws passed in the 1830s also drastically expanded the number of archivists mandated to work both in the <i>Archives Nationales</i> and in the provincial archives. Formal training and new positions, however, when combined with lax oversight and inconsistent guidance on practices, led, predictably, to a near-comic proliferation of methods of classification and arrangement. (See Figure 2.) Due to the proliferation of classification systems and schema, change was inevitable.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4725\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image2.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4725\" alt=\"Figure 2. The many arrangement methods of some Ecole des Chartes graduates prior to the emergence of respect des fonds as a methodology. Image from Lara Moore\'s &quot;Restoring Order,&quot; 114.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image2-300x239.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"239\" /></a> Figure 2. The many arrangement methods of some Ecole des Chartes graduates prior to the emergence of respect des fonds as a methodology. Image from Lara Moore\'s \"Restoring Order,\" 114.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThat change came in the form of the infamous “Circular no. 14,” released in 1841 by Natalis de Wailly, Administrative Head of the <i>Archives Nationales</i>. This document is recognized as the first articulation of the fonds as the fundamental method of archival arrangement, the purpose of which was “to form a collection of all the documents which originate from a body, an organization, a family or an individual, and to arrange the different fonds according to a certain order.” ((As quoted in Nancy Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 107.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> made creatorship the organizing principle of archival records and espoused the formation of collections according to the organization, entity, family, or individual responsible for their creation. Such an arrangement would ensure, as one writer later put it, the essential need “to know where it [the archival document] was created, in the framework of what process, to what end, for whom, when and how it was received by the addressee, and how it came into our hands.” ((Michael Duchein, “Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des fonds in Archival Science,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 67.))\r\n\r\nHowever, as Nancy Bartlett has explicated, this “watershed” moment was less momentous than contemporary evocations suggest. For one, de Wailly’s circular dictated “that <i>respect des fonds</i> was prescribed only for archival records created prior to 1789.” More contemporary fonds were to continue to be arranged categorically. In addition, minutes from subsequent meetings of the commission overseeing the work of archivists—a commission on which de Wailly served—reveal that “<i>respect des fonds</i> was if nothing more a preliminary standard for archival arrangement and description in departmental archives, a means of insuring that beginning archivists without the benefit of direct supervision might not cause too much intellectual damage to vulnerable records in their care.” ((Bartlett, “The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance,” 111.))\r\n\r\nThe principle was, in fact, a practical exigency, a method to simplify archival arrangement seen as more easily implemented by novice archivists than the more rigorous arrangement by classification. Bartlett also notes that <i>respect des fonds</i> remained absent from both the curriculum of the <i>Ecole des Chartes</i> as well as the publications of the professional society of its graduates. Lastly, the principle was, at the time, not applied to accessions into the <i>Archive Nationales</i> itself, as it operated under a different administrative department than de Wailly’s Interior Ministry.\r\n\r\n<i>Respect des fonds</i>, then, was never a perfectly realized theory. Its formation was a contingency of a unique historical moment; its conception depended upon practical necessities and its implementation was inconsistent and disputed. What today seems near dogma—that archives be arranged by fonds—was at the time novel and simplistic, more the product of utility and political manipulation than a grand inspiration regarding the functional authenticity of fonds or evidential purity towards their arrangement.\r\n\r\n<b>The Original Original Order</b>\r\n\r\nThough implemented inconsistently in its home country, the principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained a wide acceptance across Europe. In Prussia, the theory (known as <i>Provenienzprinzip,</i> the principle of provenance) mandated that “official papers are to be maintained in the order and with the designations which they received in the course of the official activity of the agency concerned.” ((Schellenberg, <i>Modern Archives</i>, 175.)) <i>Respect des fonds</i> received its most elaborate and sustained justification, and expansion, however, in the Netherlands, where the Dutch archivists Muller, Feith, and Fruin produced their famous <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> in 1898. Often referred to colloquially as the “Dutch Manual” and seen as the “starting point of archival theory and methodology,” ((Peter Horsman, Eric Ketelaar, and Theo Thomassen, “New Respect for the Old Order: The Context of the Dutch Manual,” <i>The American Archivist </i>66, no. 2 (2003): 249.)) the work provided a detailed set of guidelines for the arrangement of records. The principle of <i>respect des fonds</i> gained even wider acceptance and popularity after its ratification at the First International Congress of Archivists meeting in Brussels in 1910. ((Lawrence D. Geller, “Joseph Cuvelier, Belgian Archival Education, and the First International Congress of Archivists, Brussels, 1910,” <i>Archivaria</i> 16 (Summer 1983): 16. Proceedings from the 1910 meeting can be found online at <a href=\"http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/\">http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/</a>.)) (See Figure 3.)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4726\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"183\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image3.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4726\" alt=\"Figure 3. Front page of the proceedings of the 1910 Congres de Bruxelles, the First International Congress of Archivists and Librarians. The full proceedings are available online at http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/menu.html. Google Translate does a passable job of translating.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image3-183x300.jpg\" width=\"183\" height=\"300\" /></a> Figure 3. Front page of the proceedings of the 1910 Congres de Bruxelles, the First International Congress of Archivists and Librarians. The full proceedings are available online at http://extranet.arch.be/congres1910/menu.html. Google Translate does a passable job of translating.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThe Dutch Manual, and the methodologies implemented in its wake, not only forbid the intermingling of the fonds of one agency with those of another—in keeping with the French conception of <i>respect des fonds</i>—but also expanded the theory to apply to the records within each fond—the internal arrangement of the archival collection. Or as the Dutch Manual put it, “the system of arrangement must be based on the original organization of the archival collection.” ((Samuel Muller, Johan Adriaan Feith, and Robert Fruin, <i>Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives</i> (H.W. Wilson Co., 1968), 52.)) This concept has come to be known as the “principle of original order,” an intra-fonds corollary to the external means of arrangement associated with the principle of provenance; <i>respect des fonds</i> encompasses both principles.\r\n\r\nA closer examination of the Dutch Manual, however, reveals certain methodological impracticalities that even its authors admit. First, they claim that the original order within a fonds may be modified or “restored” to account for multiple transfers from an agency, not all of which may truly represent the idealized “original order.” As well, records may be reorganized to account for “inconsequential irregularities attributable to record-keeping officials.” The authors also note that reconstituting the original order may be avoided when “the trouble which would have to be taken in order to reconstruct the old organization is out of proportion to the result to be obtained.” ((Muller et al., <i>Manual</i>, 83.)) Needless to say, the simple idea of “restoring original order” seems itself problematic, fraught with subjective decision-making likely far removed from whatever idealized “organic” origin archivists may discover within fonds. The complicated approach to “restoration” and “reconstruction” that the Dutch Manual advises often borders on, as one writer put it, “abandoning entirely their carefully developed ethic of conservation.” ((Frank Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” <i>The American Archivist </i>45, no. 1 (1982): 28.))\r\n\r\n<b>Critique des Fonds</b>\r\n\r\nThe widespread adoption <i>of respect des fonds</i> did not proceed unquestioned, however. As early as the 1930s, some archivists were taking issue with the methodology of arranging collections according to original order. In his survey of the development of archival theory, Ernst Posner points to the German Max Bar and two Swedish archivists who demonstrated “that slavish preservation of the original arrangement of a fonds is often insufficient,” the principle of provenance “is subject to certain restrictions” that make blanket adoption impractical, and adherence to <i>respect des fonds</i> often impedes use of archival materials. ((Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development,” 169.))\r\n\r\nSome Australian and American archivists in the 1960s, primarily Peter Scott and Mario Fenyo, challenged the definition of fonds even further. The problems with the traditional concept of the fonds were manifold. Defining fonds as the records of a “transferring or controlling agency” was problematic since the agent of transfer was not always the creating agency. Fonds could also be mixed or “broken” into multiple transfers to an archive, making reconstitution difficult. Fonds could also be the result of “a succession of agencies,” blurring true creatorship. Ordering series within fonds was difficult since future accessions may need to be inserted at different places in the existing organizational system, leading to physical disorder or the constant revision of finding aids or inventories. After reviewing minutes of early NARA meetings in an attempt to define what, exactly, constitutes a fonds, Fenyo succinctly pointed out, “no one knows what the word fonds means, not even the French who invented it.” ((Mario D. Fenyo, “The Record Group Concept: A Critique,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 2 (April 1966): 230.)) For Scott, his belief that “the very arbitrariness of the concept [of the fonds] is sufficient to make one question its usefulness,” ((Peter Scott, “The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,” <i>The American Archivist </i>29, no. 4 (October 1966): 497.)) led him to develop the “series system” (See Figure 4) which sought to orient arrangement and description according to function and use instead of agent or material type—a theory that, Terry Cook noted, “shifted the entire archival description enterprise from a static cataloging mode to a dynamic system of multiple interrelationships.” ((Terry Cook, “What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift,” <i>Archivaria</i> 43 (1999): 38.))\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4747\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image4.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4747\" alt=\"Figure 4. Peter Scott\'s diagram depicting his system of archival arrangement based on grouping records at the series level. From Scott, &quot;The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,&quot; 1966. \" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image4-300x177.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"177\" /></a> Figure 4. Peter Scott\'s diagram depicting his system of archival arrangement based on grouping records at the series level. From Scott, \"The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,\" 1966.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThe principle of original order underwent a similar critique. A lack of clarity on the custodianship of records prior to their delivery to an archive, the problem of multiple and ongoing accessions, and the potential for incoherent or unknown methods of ordering or classification by creating bodies all led Fenyo to proclaim, “archivists generally believe that the arrangement of series within a record group reflects to some extent the organization and even history of the agency that created those records.… But the records in the National Archives reflect no such thing.” ((Fenyo, \"The Record Group Concept,\" 236.)) For archives consisting of personal papers, original order is seen as particularly problematic, since a chronological arrangement seemingly provides the greatest meaning and value to the records of an individual, but is unlikely to be the order of records upon accession. Restoration of original order also risks destroying the contextual information accrued by collections that have passed through multiple states of custodianship prior to their acceptance into the archive. ((Debra Barr, “Protecting Provenance: Response to the Report of the Working Group on Description at the Fonds Level,” <i>Archivaria</i> 28 (Summer 1989): 141-145. See also Robert Edwards, “‘With Respect to Original Order’: Changing Values in Archival Arrangement,” <i>Archives Association of British Columbia</i> 11, no. 1 (Winter 2001).)) Lastly, the principle of original order prioritizes filing systems of unknown or dubious legitimacy over the principle of use or accessibility. As Frank Boles states, “usability acknowledges the evidential superiority of documents over filing systems by placing primary emphasis on access to documents.” ((Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” 31.)) In this critique, usability and original order are often in conflict.\r\n\r\n<b>Of Bonds and Parallels</b>\r\n\r\nOther conceptual models besides the series system have attempted to address these critiques by forming new ideas about how order or grouping can evidence archival authenticity, identity, and meaning. One theory to articulate the interrelations of individual records can be found in Luciana Duranti’s notion of the archival bond, which she defines as the “network of relations that each record has with the records belonging in the same aggregation.” ((Luciana Duranti, “The Archival Bond,” <i>Archives and Museum Informatics</i> 11 (1997): 213-18.)) Not to be confused with context, which exists outside the record, the archival bond, for Duranti, is core to the identity of the record. As she states, “documents that are expressions of a transaction are not records until they are put into relation with other records.” ((Ibid., 216.)) Emerging from research into the authenticity of electronic records (including the InterPARES project), the archival bond identifies a web of documentary co-dependencies that presumes an inheritance and relationship between records based on functional proximity. ((“The InterPARES Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://www.interpares.org\">www.interpares.org</a>.))\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most exhaustive attempt to deal with many difficulties that exist within the gulf between <i>respect des fonds</i> as principle and practice was undertaken by Michel Duchein in 1983. ((Duchein, \"Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems,\" 64–82.)) While Duchein proposes solutions to the many problems of the fonds concept, the reader cannot help but be overwhelmed by the fact that his cataloging of the “theoretical problems” and “practical difficulties” far outnumber, and begin to drown out, his proposed solutions. For Duchein, within fonds there can be all sorts of nebulous, arbitrary, and forgotten methods of classification “from which all imaginable disorders flow.” He calls these, in a poetic moment, “brutal manipulations.” ((Ibid., 77.)) But after this disquisition, on the last page of his article Duchein mentions one idea that seems if not prescient, then at least transitive in the way it conceives of context: the <i>parallelismus membrorum</i>, “the similarity of parallel files.” <i>Parallelismus membrorum</i> is a rhetorical term referring to the patterns within a text formed by the utilization of repeated grammatical structures. (“I came. I saw. I conquered,” is a brief example). Duchein here employs the motif to refer to the contextual relations that exist between records of different fonds, the network of meanings that stretch across the archive.\r\n\r\nChris Hurley explored an idea similar to <i>parallelismus membrorum</i> in his delineation of “parallel provenance” a concept built around “composing different things from the same particles—combining things in different ways to produce a variety of views of what they look like in the aggregate … not so much about identifying a different creator as recognizing manifold context.” ((Chris Hurley, “Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?,” <i>Archives and Manuscripts</i> 33, no. 1 (2005): 126.)) (See Figure 5.) Other contemporary writers, such as Laura Millar and Geoffrey Yeo, have sought to stretch the meaning of the fonds even further, arguing it exists purely at the conceptual level. ((Geoffrey Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds and the Physical Collection,” <i>Archivaria</i> 73 (Spring 2012): 43-91; Laura Millar, “The Death of the Fonds and the Resurrection of Provenance: Archival Context in Space and Time,” <i>Archivaria</i> 53 (Spring 2002): 1-15.)) But as the definition of the fonds becomes more distant, more abstract, its privileging as a form of aggregation seems less certain, especially in a digital environment in which creatorship is but one of many means of grouping records.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4728\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image5.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4728\" alt=\"Figure 5. Chris Hurly\'s diagram of parallel provenance, &quot;The Little Truck.&quot; The little truck is a metaphor for archival description. From Hurley, &quot;Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?”\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image5-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" /></a> Figure 5. Chris Hurly\'s diagram of parallel provenance, \"The Little Truck.\" The little truck is a metaphor for archival description. From Hurley, \"Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?”[/caption]\r\n\r\nThe archival bond, the series system, <i>parallelismus membrorum, </i>and parallel provenance all mark attempts to theorize relationships between records and collections in ways that can elide the practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. Equally, these ideas represent a continued expansion of context beyond the limitations of grouping by creatorship or creator-derived order. In each case, similarities and dependencies emerge out of cross-collection networks or semantically derived principles. As the models gain distance from the vagaries of the individual records, one starts to recognize a familiar pattern of removal—not a disjunction, exactly, but a subtle passage from the material trace to the abstract representation. The familiarity is borne of the similar movement from item to representation that characterizes electronic records and their attendant phenomenological tension between the physical inscription on a drive and the symbolic interface on a screen.\r\n\r\n<b>Bit Level Processing</b>\r\n\r\nBut enough of models. Consider instead the bit, the binary, the magnetic flux reversal of the spinning disk that is the origin of the digital object. Material inscription offers a good point to segue into an examination of digital records and how they both complicate or even circumvent historical notions of <i>respect des fonds </i> while at the same time enabling realization of a more expansive notion of context and interrelation.\r\n\r\nStarting at the bit level, the characteristics of inscription (how digital information is written onto storage media) call into question the idea of original order. When data is written to a storage device, it has a material, physical trace, but that trace is far from the legibility or interpretability we associate with analog documents. As Matt Kirschenbaum has noted in his study of new media and digital forensics, “we write <i>on</i> paper, but we write <i>to</i> a magnetic disk (or tape)”; the semantic difference signifies that the act of inscription is “logically distinct” from the act of creation and intellectual manipulation. ((Matt Kirschenbaum, <i>Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination</i> (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 87. Emphasis in original.)) (See Figure 6.) In addition, a key component of storage media is that it is random access; that means the bits composing a record are inscribed to available clusters across the platter of a drive depending on which tracks and sectors are available for inscription. That is, the component bits of a digital object are non-sequential in their material physical arrangement. Aggregated, they can create an interpretable object, but their component location is nonlinear. Here, even at the bit level of a single item, there is no original order. Furthermore, each time these bits are reconstructed, each time the file is accessed and translated into an interpretable, editable representation, the file will be altered in minute ways (for instance, a file’s “last opened” date) and thus be composed of a new order as new bits are assigned to other available areas of the disk. As Kirschenbaum notes, quoting a dictum of forensic science, “every contact leaves a trace.” The act of interpreting a digital object, thus, continually alters its material order.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4729\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image6.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4729\" alt=\"Figure 6. Close-up of a disk drive at the Computer History Museum, showing arms and a read/write head. Processing Born-Digital Materials Using AccessData FTK at Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, 2011.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image6-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" /></a> Figure 6. Close-up of a disk drive at the Computer History Museum, showing arms and a read/write head.<br />Processing Born-Digital Materials Using AccessData FTK at Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, 2011.[/caption]\r\n\r\nMoving beyond the non-sequential arrangement of bits of individual records, but remaining at the forensic level, other features of the digital environment challenge long-standing presumptions of authenticity and uniqueness that are dependent upon physical arrangement or description. Temporary files, such as those stored by auto-save or recovery programs, mean that a drive can contain multiple versions of identical files, many of them beyond the management (or even awareness) of their creator. This “ambient data” is matched by other features of data dispersal throughout a storage system, such as “swap space” (disk space sometimes allocated for use by RAM) and “disk slack” (which accounts for the difference between the actual file size and the disk space used for storage) that themselves complicate ideas of order and linearity. Storage becomes a hidden, dynamic world in which physical arrangement on a spinning drive consists of the equivalent of dispersed crevices, hidey-holes, and secret areas where data proliferates. Kirschenbaum asserts, “there is, in short, no simple way to know how many instances of a single file are residing in how many states, in how many different locations, at any given moment in the operating system.” ((Ibid., 52.)) As well, digital objects themselves have the potential to contain trace data that, while possibly not achieving the singular identity of a record, can have evidential value or help establish provenance.\r\n\r\nTake, for instance, Kirschenbaum’s exploration of a floppy disk image, in which he finds evidence of how the storage media was used over time and what its hidden and partially deleted data can manifest about its user: “[W]e discover on the original diskette the incompletely overwritten remains of previous software … a piece of 1980s software culture frozen in allographic amber.” ((Ibid., 140.)) Discovering this legacy information reveals multiple levels of creatorship and a trail of ownership and social and cultural meaning that extend beyond the object, the creator, or the fonds. In this case, the unintentionally preserved (by the user, at least) data provides a testament to its origins that is not visible in the individual files themselves. Here provenance is not a result of aggregation or description but a characteristic of how digital information is created and transmitted. Context is not just relational, implied, or conceptualized, but can be a part of the very media itself, like secret, half-formed barnacles clinging to the vessel of the digital record. Incomplete but decipherable. Fragmentary but meaningful. Allographic amber.\r\n\r\n<b>Fonds Essentialism</b>\r\n\r\nNeedless to say, most people do not interact with digital information at the forensic level. In Kenneth Thibodeau’s useful model, digital objects are compounds, composed of a physical, logical, and conceptual object. Respectively, those adjectives refer to the physical inscription on storage media; the logical suite of translational software and processes that access and “read” that inscription; and the conceptual object the user interacts with, such as the text, image, or interface on a screen. ((Kenneth Thibodeau, “Overview of Technological Approaches to Digital Preservation and Challenges in Coming Years,” in <i>The State of Digital Preservation: An International Perspective</i> (Washington D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2002).)) The conceptual object—the representational environment of the screen as experienced in the word processing program, the image editor, the social media app—inculcates its own affordances and logic on the creation or use of records. In fact, given the hidden, inscrutable nature of storage and inscription, the formal representation of digital objects on a screen can have an outsized influence on their creation, management, and perception—an interpretive tendency that Nick Montford calls “screen essentialism.” Considering the extensive influence that the theory of <i>respect des fonds</i> has had, historically, on how archival collections are arranged and described, a similar predilection may characterize the archival enterprise—call it <i>fonds essentialism</i>.\r\n\r\nThe conceptual object—the screen—presents its own challenges to the implied narrative of current modes of archival description. The way that a user interacts with an aggregation of digital materials is fundamentally different from how a user would interact with a set of document boxes or a finding aid. The screen imposes its own logic, its own “formal regimen,” in Kirschenbaum’s terms, on how digital objects are interpreted or accessed, but also how they are described. Traditional archival representation for analog materials emerges from a narrative: a story about what a collection is, what it holds, and the order and location of its contents. It moves through a descriptive summary of contextual detail and administrative information and on to a hierarchy of series and subseries often arranged by type, function, chronology, or other broad categories. Papers, folders, boxes, and series must be arranged in physical space, after all, and that comes to shape how they are arranged in the intellectual space of description. A finding aid is a narrative to be read and its intellectual availability is largely linear and structural. The conceptual object of the digital record and the interface to an aggregation of digital records offer quite a different type of interaction.\r\n\r\nText mining and hyperlinks are simple examples of ways to navigate large groups of materials absent a singular narrative sequence. Lev Manovich, in theorizing new media, has noted that the database (or, the database logic) has supplanted narrative as the method of interacting with digital information. In new media, “narrative becomes just one method of accessing data among others,” and digital information assumes “the projection of the ontology of a computer onto culture itself.” ((Lev Manovich, “Database as a Genre of New Media,” <i>Journal of A&amp;I Society</i> 14, no. 2 (May 2000): 176-77.)) In a database, objects are related but not ordered. The database logic is nonlinear and there is no original order because order is dependent upon query. Search and navigation become algorithm-dependent and not predetermined by a creator, an archivist, or a static finding aid—though all of those organizations are themselves available. Digital objects will have an identifier, yes, but where they “rest” in intellectual space is contingent, mutable. The key point is that, even at the level of representation, arrangement is dynamic: access and representation need not depend on the fonds. Description becomes relational as well and can extend beyond individual aggregations of records. The logic of physical space no longer drives retrieval or predominates in description. Original order and provenance are not lost or obviated in this model, but they are not the exclusive means of access, either.\r\n\r\n<b>Recent Practices</b>\r\n\r\nCase studies from projects handling significant amounts of born-digital records provide insight into the theoretical and practical problems of <i>respect des fonds</i>. As the Emory University project asked of the born-digital content in its Salmon Rushdie acquisition, “Would we treat the born-digital files the same as print material? Would we impose any sort of arrangement on the materials? How much added description could we provide? As the following discussion will reveal, the application of archival theory and principles may shift to accommodate the differences between paper and born-digital archives.” ((Laura Carroll et al., “A Comprehensive Approach to Born-Digital Archives,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 72.)) Or, as the large-scale, born-digital Vancouver Olympics project team put it, “core archival activities may diverge from long-established practices when moving into the digital environment.” ((Courtney C. Mumma, Glenn Dingwall, and Sue Bigelow, “A First Look at the Acquisition and Appraisal of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Fonds: Or, SELECT * FROM VANOC_Records AS Archives WHERE Value=‘true’;,” <i>Archivaria</i> 72 (Fall 2011): 93.)) Along with the multi-institutional AIMS project and the PARADIGM (Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media) project in the UK, these case studies detail the practical issues involved in rethinking arrangement and description in born-digital archives. ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/</a>; Paradigm project, “Workbook on Digital Private Papers,” The Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (Paradigm) Project, accessed October 2012,  <a href=\"http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html\">http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/index.html</a>.))\r\n\r\nTaken together, the projects provide an overview of how arrangement may look in entirely born-digital collections. All note the difficulty in parsing user-generated description and the often quixotic or meaningless nature of directory structures and naming. The projects largely employed filtering, text mining, and other cross-record queries to determine the content of most files. The sheer volume of files contained in accessions precluded any item-level content review or hierarchical rearrangement; yet, at the same time, “the creation of file and item descriptions and inventories is not only easier and faster, it yields much richer information.… What takes hours or days to perform in the paper environment takes mere seconds to accomplish in the digital environment, and is done to a greater level of detail.” ((Mumma et al., \"A First Look,\" 115-16.))\r\n\r\nThough the many technical processes necessary for format validation, emulation, automated metadata extraction, and other methods of processing born-digital archives are too complex to be fully recounted here, these case studies point to their key characteristics. [VIDEO 1] Arrangement, as we think of it, is no longer a process of imposing intellectualized hierarchies or physical relocation; instead, it becomes largely automated, algorithmic, and batch processed. At the same time, archival representation will build upon the affordances of the digital objects themselves to extract and compile metadata that can then be repurposed to bridge and augment a wealth of contextual relations far beyond the order of their creation and their agency of origin.\r\n\r\n<b>Visual Descriptions</b>\r\n\r\nAs the “logical associations of records extend beyond the records themselves and embrace relations with other entities in the wider world,” as Geoffrey Yeo puts it, archivists will be tasked with building interfaces that draw upon these aforementioned possibilities and linking them to the online interfaces through which records will be made available. ((Yeo, “The Conceptual Fonds,” 71.)) The interface thus becomes the “critical element in the interaction between documentary evidence and its consumers.” ((Margaret Hedstrom, “Archives, Memory, and Interfaces with the Past,” <i>Archival Science</i> 2, no. 1-2 (2002): 24.))\r\n\r\nSince few archives are accessioning entirely born-digital collections, it is difficult to find archival examples of a description for such a collection. Born-digital content that is currently being processed is usually a small portion of a larger physical collection and, as such, is integrated in a hybrid fashion into traditional finding aids; see, for instance, \"<a href=\"http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt9p3038mq/\">Series 8: Born digital files</a>,\" \"<a href=\"http://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/rushdie1000/\">Series 11: Computers and related devices</a>,\" or \"<a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">Series 13: Computer files</a>.\"\r\n\r\nThere are, however, some archival projects, as well as work in the digital humanities, that offer a window into how researchers and scholars are making using of large sets of digital data. While the data sets and digital records being utilized are not necessarily archival collections, the tools, methods of inquiry, and cross-collection, multi-institutional repositories that emerge from these projects presage both how entirely born-digital archives may come to be used and what digital archival collection interfaces may look like in the future.\r\n\r\nTwo projects taking an innovative, insightful approach to exploring archival collections through the mining of large archival corpora are The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online and Cameron Blevins’s work text mining and topic modeling Martha Ballard’s diary. ((The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online can be found at <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/\">http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/</a>, and the associated Criminal Intent project can be found at <a href=\"http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/\">http://criminalintent.org/category/old-bailey-online/</a>. Cameron Blevin’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary can be found online at <a href=\"http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/\">http://historying.org/martha-ballards-diary/</a> and at <a href=\"http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml\">http://dh2011abstracts.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=tei/ab-173.xml</a>.)) The Old Bailey Proceedings provides access to nearly 200,000 digitized trial records from London’s criminal courts, spans almost 250 years, allows full text searching, and has an API through which users can query the archive. The With Criminal Intent project has built a suite of related tools that can help perform data-mining projects using this archive. (See Figure 7.) This project measures and visualizes trends over time as a means of revealing historical themes, building and revealing new narratives, and providing insights into the past through data-driven analysis.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4730\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image7.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4730\" alt=\"Figure 7. Image from &quot;Data Mining with Criminal Intent&quot; presentation by Briquet et al. at Digging into Data Challenge, Washington D.C., 2009. Slides available at http://criminalintent.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/criminal_intent_digging_into_data_meeting_10jun2011.pdf.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image7-300x179.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"179\" /></a> Figure 7. Image from \"Data Mining with Criminal Intent\" presentation by Briquet et al. at Digging into Data Challenge, Washington D.C., 2009. Slides available at http://criminalintent.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/criminal_intent_digging_into_data_meeting_10jun2011.pdf.[/caption]\r\n\r\nBlevins’s work with Martha Ballard’s diary features a different collection, a single diary by an eighteenth-century housewife composed of almost 10,000 entries from 1785 to 1812. This project aspires to a similar goal of revealing novel insights into, and interpretations of, historical material through the ability of digital tools to mine vast sets of information. Blevins uses topic modeling—an algorithmic method that searches word patterns and groupings throughout large collections of texts (for Ballard’s diary, each entry was treated as a different “text”)—to chart and track thematic trends across the diary. A similar approach has been taken by the Mining the Dispatch project, which examines changing sentiments toward the Civil War over the course of six years (over 112,000 items) in the Richmond, Virginia <i>Daily Dispatch</i> newspaper. ((“Mining the Dispatch,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/\">http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/</a>.)) (See Figure 8.)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4731\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image8.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4731\" alt=\"Figure 8. Screenshot from &quot;Mining the Dispatch&quot; website, http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/Topics/view/27.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image8-300x210.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"210\" /></a> Figure 8. Screenshot from \"Mining the Dispatch\" website, http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/Topics/view/27.[/caption]\r\n\r\nThese projects may fall under the broader rubric of the digital humanities, and the collections they are working with may not be archival collections in the traditional sense, but they offer a glimpse of the discovery, navigation, exploration, and analytic tools that foreshadow uses of digital archival collections. Other initiatives have sought to build upon the network of social relations that influence records creation. The SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context) Project “provides access to the socio-historical contexts ([including] people, families, and corporate bodies) in which the records were created” through the use of the EAC-CPF standard that describes corporate bodies, persons, and families. ((“SNAC: The Social Networks and Archival Context Project,” accessed October 2012, <a href=\"http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/\">http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/</a>.)) Early results show a promising method for using social context for discovery and interpretation.  (See Figure 9.) The archivists at Stanford University who are managing the Robert Creeley collection, which contains a significant quantity of born-digital content, especially emails, have used the custom-built MUSE tool for exploring semantic patterns in email archives. ((The Robert Creeley collection can be found at <a href=\"http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html\">http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/creeley.html</a>. For more information on the MUSE tool visit <a href=\"http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/\">http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse/</a>.)) (See Figure 10.) Similarly, other projects have explored building unique visual interfaces to archival collections that extend contextual relations across collections, archives, and disciplines. [VIDEO 2]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4732\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image9.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4732\" alt=\"Figure 9. Image from &quot;Historic Social Networks&quot; presentation by Brian Tingle at SAA 2012 Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA. Slides available at http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/images/NAAC-dc-2012_SAA2012_Tingle.pdf.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image9-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" /></a> Figure 9. Image from \"Historic Social Networks\" presentation by Brian Tingle at SAA 2012 Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA. Slides available at http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/images/NAAC-dc-2012_SAA2012_Tingle.pdf.[/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4727\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image10.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4727\" alt=\"Figure 10. Network analysis of Robert Creeley email archive. Image by Elijah Meeks, captured from https://dhs.stanford.edu/visualization/robert-creeley-e-mail-correspodence-network/.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bailey_archivejournal_image10-300x265.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"265\" /></a> Figure 10. Network analysis of Robert Creeley email archive. Image by Elijah Meeks, captured from https://dhs.stanford.edu/visualization/robert-creeley-e-mail-correspodence-network/.[/caption]\r\n\r\nWhat distinguishes these projects from archival representations of old is that context and meaning are not exclusively provided through descriptive, narrative details that precede an arrangement and location list, but instead through networks, inter-linkages, modeling, and content analysis. Users can move dynamically within a collection and laterally across collections. Search, query, and tools like topic modeling also allow the user to build their own patterns and hierarchies for discovery. In this view, archival description still plays a crucial role in providing information on what something is or how it came to be created, but no longer is the fonds or idea of original order the sole determinant of representation.\r\n\r\n<b>Conclusion</b>\r\n\r\nAs Luciana Duranti has noted, archival description “has been carried out or not carried out depending on specific needs and conditions, attitudes and requirements, and its products have consistently reflected the conceptions about archives held by the society of the time.” ((Duranti, “Origin and Development,” 53.)) In the physical world of items, folders, boxes, and shelves, the archive must be sorted, ordered, and stored sequentially in space. Those properties, along with social, cultural, and political attitudes have driven how archival arrangement and description are theorized and practiced. Indeed, description itself has always had to serve multiple purposes: to provide historical or biographical information, scope and content detail, physical location for retrieval, administrative information for ongoing management, and restrictions and material types governing use. In a sense, description itself is a compound object, tugged between the needs of physical arrangement, intellectual representation, and user expectation. The properties of digital records allow archivists to revisit that negotiation. At the same time, other qualities of digital information, like the forensic disk image, have the potential to preserve both a mechanical version of “order” as well as provenancial and contextual information that formerly were provided through description. File fixity, forensic imaging, directory manifests, and auto-generated metadata may all come to play a larger role in defining provenance.\r\n\r\nWe disrespect des fonds, then, not as an act of elimination or insubordination, but in order to bring other contextual relations to its same level of privilege. Consider it less a disrespect, perhaps, than a humbling; or, instead, consider it a reaffirmation that the multiplicity of meanings possible with digital records can be better realized through an ongoing interrogation of archival traditions of arrangement and description. In rethinking <i>respect des fonds</i>, we gain a better awareness of the extent to which the material affordances of paper records have had an undue influence on how we conceptualize and practice grouping and describing collections. Bits, however, are fundamentally different at the material and symbolic levels. The use of digital objects is different as well, influenced by computational processing, algorithmic query, automation, and dynamism, not to mention social conditions, user expectations, technology dependencies, storage requirements, and a host of other characteristics of how we create and use technology.\r\n\r\nParallels and bonds, series and topics, models and paradigms; at times these concepts have collided and resulted in a seeming antagonism between ideas like original order and random access, historical contingency and abstract principle, finding aid and dynamic query. But there have been similarities too: how the tension between record and representation mirrors that of inscription and screen; and how the component nature of digital objects resembles the component purpose of traditional archival description. To entrench methods of arrangement and description borne of the qualities of physical collections is to disregard the potential expansion of context that digital information can support. In recognizing how historically and socially contingent traditional practices (and the theories spawning those practices) were, we better recognize their potential dysfunction in a time of born-digital records. This is not to say that we should discard the idea of the fonds or the utility of original order, but perhaps it is time to revoke their privileged place in archival discourse and revisit the true goals of arrangement and description in light of the capabilities of digital records. Maybe then we can begin to understand what is possible when we think of collections as mutually contextual and interrelated instead of cloistered and static. And perhaps then other bonds, other parallels, other contexts, meanings, and interpretations can receive the same amount of respect that we have, for too long now, granted the fonds.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nWikipedia articles created as part of this work:\r\n\r\nRespect des fonds: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_des_fonds</a>\r\n\r\nOriginal Order: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_order</a>\r\n\r\nArchival Bond: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_bond</a>','Disrespect des Fonds: Rethinking Arrangement and Description in Born-Digital Archives','','inherit','open','open','','4722-revision-16','','','2013-06-18 02:00:34','2013-06-18 02:00:34','',4722,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4722-revision-16/',0,'revision','',0),(4752,3,'2013-07-09 19:18:27','2013-07-09 19:18:27','<h3><a name=\"mission\"></a>Mission</h3>\n<em>Archive</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education.\n<p class=\"textblock\">The academic community has invested deeply in the preservation, use, and digitization of materials in special collections, and <em>Archive</em> provides the space to reflect on this investment. The objects and texts in special collections and archives are the focus of this journal, just as they are the focus of the many projects from and in archives that have been executed and continue with great success. Digitization efforts large and small have freed archives from the bounds of brick and mortar by bringing a wealth of texts and objects into virtual circulation. Teachers and librarians have increasingly emphasized work with original materials for students at all levels as a way to enrich student experience and position students as researchers. The use of materials in special collections as the objects of scholarly study continues to be a key methodology of humanities disciplines even as new technologies, from data mining to visualizations, open up possibilities for what scholars learn from these objects. Recent archival projects have involved multiple institutions (universities and colleges, independent libraries and archives, and non-profit organizations) and multiple constituencies (including librarians, archivists, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, university press directors, and information technologists). In this moment when archival projects, both virtual and real, have become the norm rather than the exception, <em>Archive</em> offers a way to forge connections among the projects and the communities producing them.</p>\n\n<h3><a name=\"content\"></a>Journal Content</h3>\n<p class=\"textblock\">The journal consists of three content areas:</p>\n\n<ul>\n	<li><em>360°: Analysis and Discussion in the Round</em> features an asynchronous “discussion” among contributors from various backgrounds — in the form of several individual, linked essays — on a single archive or archival topic.</li>\n	<li><em>Archives, Remixed: Critical Perspectives and Pathways</em> invites analytical and creative pieces that reflect on meaning-making in and through archives. The format is open to both traditional research or theoretical essays, as well as multi-modal, alternate, or experimental formats. Contributions that analyze, use, theorize, create, find ways through, or reconstitute particular archives, objects or exhibits are invited. Only original work that has not been published elsewhere will be accepted for publication.</li>\n	<li><em>Notes + Queries</em> consists of short essays that share best practices, archival finds, reports from the field, and thoughts on current work in the field.</li>\n</ul>\n&nbsp;\n<h3><a name=\"editors\"></a>Editorial &amp; Advisory Boards</h3>\n<h5>Editorial Team</h5>\n<h6>Founding Editor</h6>\nLauren Coats, Assistant Professor of English – LSU\n<h6>Managing Editor</h6>\nGabrielle Dean, Curator of Modern Literary Rare Books and Manuscripts, Librarian for English and the Writing Seminars – Johns Hopkins University\n<h6>Contributing Editor</h6>\nLaurie N. Taylor, Digital Humanities Librarian, Digital Library Center – University of Florida\n<h6>Social Media Editor</h6>\nJane Carr, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow – NYU\n<h6>Technical Editor</h6>\nDaniel Chamberlain, Director, Center for Digital Learning and Research – Occidental College\n<h5>Editorial Board</h5>\nWendy Hui Kyong Chun, Professor of Modern Culture and Media – Brown University\nLisa Darms, Senior Archivist, Fales Library &amp; Special Collections – NYU\nKate Eichorn, Assistant Professor of Culture and Media Studies – The New School University\nJulia Flanders, Director, Women Writers Project; Associate Director for Textbase Development, Center for Digital Scholarship – Brown University\nPatricia Hswe, Digital Collections Curator – Penn State University\nKorey Jackson, ACLS Public Fellow and Project Analyst &amp; Coordinator – Anvil Academic\nCecily Marcus, Curator in Archives and Special Collections – University of Minnesota\nKenneth M. Price, University Professor and Hillegass Chair of American Literature; Co-Director, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities – University of Nebraska-Lincoln\nRichard Szary, Director, Louis Round Wilson Library; Associate University Librarian for Special Collections – UNC-Chapel Hill\nEd Whitley, Associate Professor of English – Lehigh University\nPeter Wosh, Clinical Associate Professor of History; Director, Archives and Public History Program – NYU\n<h5>Advisory Board</h5>\nDan Cohen, Executive Director – Digital Public Library of America\nSharon Farb, Associate University Librarian – UCLA\nKathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communications – MLA and Professor of Media Studies – Pomona College\nAmanda French, THATCamp Coordinator, Center for History and New Media – George Mason University\nChuck Henry, President – Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)\nTara McPherson, Associate Professor of Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts – University of Southern California\nElliott Shore, Executive Director – Association of Research Libraries\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3><a name=\"submissions\"></a>Submissions</h3>\nPlease review our <a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/home/submit-to-archive-journal/\">submit page</a>, if you are interested in submitting to the journal. <a name=\"review\"></a>Peer ReviewAll materials in <em>Archive Journal</em> are peer-reviewed.Peer review is central to scholarly communication by providing feedback for improvement, ensuring the quality of published materials, and validating the scholarly merit and proper credentialing of published materials. <em>Archive Journal</em>’s peer review policy is designed to achieve these goals, while also using emerging forms of peer review. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education, offering a way to forge connections among diverse projects and the communities producing them, the review process is structured to support building connections while retaining the scholarly rigor inherent in peer review.Our review process consists of editorial and open review in the following stages:\n<ul>\n	<li>Every submission is read by the Editorial Team to determine suitability for publication. The Editorial Team declines materials that are not appropriate at this stage; gives detailed feedback and the opportunity to resubmit for appropriate materials that need substantial revision; and gives feedback and facilitates the process towards publication for appropriate materials that need minor or no revisions. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> is an interdisciplinary space to forge connections and because the online format continues to evolve, this stage may include a series of back and forth feedback from the Editorial Team in order to ensure scholarly rigor, communicability across scholarly fields, and appropriateness of online display.</li>\n	<li>If deemed necessary by the Editorial Team, submissions within specialized subject areas that the Editorial Team cannot assess will be sent to reviewers with the appropriate expertise. Reviewers are encouraged to provide guidance to the Editorial Team and constructive feedback for the authors.</li>\n	<li>Revised submissions are reviewed after revision for final approval by the Editorial Team before publication. <em>Archive Journal</em> reserves the right to reject revised materials that are deemed not suitable for publication.</li>\n	<li>Following peer review and before publication, all accepted materials are copyedited for style and consistency.</li>\n	<li>All submissions will be subject to open review via reader comments. After an appropriate open review period has passed, the author(s) will have the opportunity to revise the submission. The final version will be posted and marked as such, with a clear link to the original version and associated open review comments.</li>\n</ul>\n<h3><a name=\"copyright\"></a>Copyright &amp; Licenses</h3>\nAuthors published in <em>Archive Journal</em> retain permanent ownership of their work via an open-access license. In order to facilitate access and preservation, <em>Archive Journal</em> retains a perpetual, non-exclusive right to publish accepted work and to include it in other aggregations and indexes. Authors are free to deposit a pre-publication version in an institutional repository, individual webpage, or similar site, as well as to reprint, reuse, or republish their work in any venue after one year.The <em>Archive Jour</em><em>nal</em> site is made available under the terms of a <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License</a>. The license grants permission for non-commercial, attributed re-use<a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\" rel=\"license\"><img style=\"border-width: 0px;\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" src=\"http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/88x31.png\" /></a> of content that is produced by <em>Archive Journal</em>.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n<em>Archive</em><em>Journal </em>has made every effort to ensure that third-party materials used in this journal and on this site follows all copyright and other restrictions. If you have any more information about an item you\'ve seen on our website or if you are the copyright owner and believe our website has not properly attributed your work to you or has used it without permission, we want to hear from you. Please email us at <a href=\"mailto:contact@archivejournal.net\">contact@archivejournal.net</a> with your contact information and a link to the relevant content. <a name=\"publication\"></a>PublicationPermanent access and preservation for citation and reproducible research are core components of scholarly communication. <em>Archive Journal</em> provides permanent open, online access for all journal issues.ISSN 2166-1189\n<h3><a name=\"support\"></a>Support</h3>\n<em>Archive Journal </em>is currently supported in part by funds from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).  <em><a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone  wp-image-4839\" alt=\"CLIR Logo 5.27\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\" /></a></em><em></em>\n\n<em>Archive Journal</em> has been generously supported with grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.','About','','inherit','open','open','','3549-autosave','','','2013-07-09 19:18:27','2013-07-09 19:18:27','',3549,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/3549-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4754,3,'2013-05-30 00:26:14','2013-05-30 00:26:14','<h3><a name=\"welcome\"></a>Welcome</h3>\r\n<p class=\"textblock\">What you see on this site is Issue 2 (Fall 2012).  Work is underway on Issue 3,  a special issue focused on data curation.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3><a name=\"mission\"></a>Mission</h3>\r\n<em>Archive</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education.\r\n<p class=\"textblock\">The academic community has invested deeply in the preservation, use, and digitization of materials in special collections, and <em>Archive</em> provides the space to reflect on this investment. The objects and texts in special collections and archives are the focus of this journal, just as they are the focus of the many projects from and in archives that have been executed and continue with great success. Digitization efforts large and small have freed archives from the bounds of brick and mortar by bringing a wealth of texts and objects into virtual circulation. Teachers and librarians have increasingly emphasized work with original materials for students at all levels as a way to enrich student experience and position students as researchers. The use of materials in special collections as the objects of scholarly study continues to be a key methodology of humanities disciplines even as new technologies, from data mining to visualizations, open up possibilities for what scholars learn from these objects. Recent archival projects have involved multiple institutions (universities and colleges, independent libraries and archives, and non-profit organizations) and multiple constituencies (including librarians, archivists, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, university press directors, and information technologists). In this moment when archival projects, both virtual and real, have become the norm rather than the exception, <em>Archive</em> offers a way to forge connections among the projects and the communities producing them.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3><a name=\"content\"></a>Journal Content</h3>\r\n<p class=\"textblock\">The journal consists of three content areas:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><em>360°: Analysis and Discussion in the Round</em> features an asynchronous “discussion” among contributors from various backgrounds — in the form of several individual, linked essays — on a single archive or archival topic.</li>\r\n	<li><em>Archives, Remixed: Critical Perspectives and Pathways</em> invites analytical and creative pieces that reflect on meaning-making in and through archives. The format is open to both traditional research or theoretical essays, as well as multi-modal, alternate, or experimental formats. Contributions that analyze, use, theorize, create, find ways through, or reconstitute particular archives, objects or exhibits are invited. Only original work that has not been published elsewhere will be accepted for publication.</li>\r\n	<li>Notes + Queriesserves as a community space for people to share best practices, archival finds, reports from the field, and thoughts on current work in the field.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"editors\"></a>Editorial Team</h3>\r\n<table>\r\n<thead>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"160px\"></td>\r\n<td></td>\r\n<td></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Lauren Coats</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Assistant Professor of English (LSU)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Managing Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Gabrielle Dean</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Curator of Modern Literary Rare Books and Manuscripts, Librarian for English and the Writing Seminars (Johns Hopkins University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Technical Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Daniel Chamberlain</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Center for Digital Learning and Research (Occidental College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Contributing Editors</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Cecily Marcus</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Curator in Archives and Special Collections (University of Minnesota)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Laurie N. Taylor</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Digital Humanities Librarian, Digital Library Center (University of Florida)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Editorial Board</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Wendy Hui Kyong Chun</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Professor of Modern Culture and Media (Brown University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Dan Cohen</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor, Department of History and Art History; Director, Center for History and New Media (George Mason University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Sharon Farb</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate University Librarian (UCLA)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Kathleen Fitzpatrick</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director of Scholarly Communications (MLA) and Professor of Media Studies (Pomona College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Julia Flanders</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Women Writers Project; Associate Director for Textbase Development, Center for Digital Scholarship (Brown University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Amanda French</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>THATCamp Coordinator, Center for History and New Media (George Mason University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Chuck Henry</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>President, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Patricia Hswe</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Digital Collections Curator (Penn State University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Tara McPherson</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor of Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts (University of Southern California)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Kenneth M. Price</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>University Professor and Hillegass Chair of American Literature; Co-Director, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Elliott Shore</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>CIO, Director of Libraries, and Professor of History (Bryn Mawr College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Richard Szary</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Louis Round Wilson Library; Associate University Librarian for Special Collections (UNC-Chapel Hill)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Ed Whitley</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor of English (Lehigh University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">John Willinsky</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Khosla Family Professor of Education (Stanford University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</thead>\r\n</table>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"submissions\"></a>Submissions</h3>\r\nPlease review our <a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/home/submit-to-archive-journal/\">submit page</a>, if you are interested in submitting to the journal, or have any suggestions for or comments about the journal.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"review\"></a>Peer Review</h3>\r\nAll materials in <em>Archive Journal</em> are peer-reviewed.\r\n\r\nPeer review is central to scholarly communication by providing feedback for improvement, ensuring the quality of published materials, and validating the scholarly merit and proper credentialing of published materials. <em>Archive Journal</em>’s peer review policy is designed to achieve these goals, while also using emerging forms of peer review. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education, offering a way to forge connections among diverse projects and the communities producing them, the review process is structured to support building connections while retaining the scholarly rigor inherent in peer review.\r\n\r\nOur review process consists of editorial and open review in the following stages:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>Every submission is read by the Editorial Team to determine suitability for publication. The Editorial Team declines materials that are not appropriate at this stage; gives detailed feedback and the opportunity to resubmit for appropriate materials that need substantial revision; and gives feedback and facilitates the process towards publication for appropriate materials that need minor or no revisions. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> is an interdisciplinary space to forge connections and because the online format continues to evolve, this stage may include a series of back and forth feedback from the Editorial Team in order to ensure scholarly rigor, communicability across scholarly fields, and appropriateness of online display.</li>\r\n	<li>If deemed necessary by the Editorial Team, submissions within specialized subject areas that the Editorial Team cannot assess will be sent to reviewers with the appropriate expertise. Reviewers are encouraged to provide guidance to the Editorial Team and constructive feedback for the authors.</li>\r\n	<li>Revised submissions are reviewed after revision for final approval by the Editorial Team before publication. <em>Archive Journal</em> reserves the right to reject revised materials that are deemed not suitable for publication.</li>\r\n	<li>Following peer review and before publication, all accepted materials are copyedited for style and consistency.</li>\r\n	<li>All submissions will be subject to open review via reader comments. After an appropriate open review period has passed, the author(s) will have the opportunity to revise the submission. The final version will be posted and marked as such, with a clear link to the original version and associated open review comments.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"copyright\"></a>Copyright &amp; Licenses</h3>\r\nAuthors published in <em>Archive Journal</em> retain permanent ownership of their work via an open-access license. In order to facilitate access and preservation, <em>Archive Journal</em> retains a perpetual, non-exclusive right to publish accepted work and to include it in other aggregations and indexes. Authors are free to deposit a pre-publication version in an institutional repository, individual webpage, or similar site, as well as to reprint, reuse, or republish their work in any venue after one year.\r\n\r\nThe <em>Archive Journal</em> site is made available under the terms of a <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License</a>. The license grants permission for non-commercial, attributed re-use of content that is produced by <em>Archive Journal</em>.\r\n<a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\" rel=\"license\"><img style=\"border-width: 0;\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" src=\"http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/88x31.png\" /></a>\r\n<em>Archive</em> has made every effort to ensure that third-party materials used in this journal and on this site follows all copyright and other restrictions. If you have any more information about an item you\'ve seen on our website or if you are the copyright owner and believe our website has not properly attributed your work to you or has used it without permission, we want to hear from you. Please email us at <a href=\"mailto:contact@archivejournal.net\">contact@archivejournal.net</a> with your contact information and a link to the relevant content.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"publication\"></a>Publication</h3>\r\nPermanent access and preservation for citation and reproducible research are core components of scholarly communication. <em>Archive Journal</em> provides permanent open, online access for all journal issues.\r\n\r\nISSN 2166-1189\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"support\"></a>Support</h3>\r\nThe project has been generously supported with grant funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.','About','','inherit','open','open','','3549-revision-8','','','2013-05-30 00:26:14','2013-05-30 00:26:14','',3549,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/3549-revision-8/',0,'revision','',0),(4839,3,'2013-06-24 16:33:24','2013-06-24 16:33:24','','CLIR Logo 5.27','','inherit','open','open','','clir-logo-5-27','','','2013-06-24 16:33:24','2013-06-24 16:33:24','',3549,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(4755,3,'2013-06-18 05:20:56','2013-06-18 05:20:56','<h3><a name=\"mission\"></a>Mission</h3>\r\n<em>Archive</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education.\r\n<p class=\"textblock\">The academic community has invested deeply in the preservation, use, and digitization of materials in special collections, and <em>Archive</em> provides the space to reflect on this investment. The objects and texts in special collections and archives are the focus of this journal, just as they are the focus of the many projects from and in archives that have been executed and continue with great success. Digitization efforts large and small have freed archives from the bounds of brick and mortar by bringing a wealth of texts and objects into virtual circulation. Teachers and librarians have increasingly emphasized work with original materials for students at all levels as a way to enrich student experience and position students as researchers. The use of materials in special collections as the objects of scholarly study continues to be a key methodology of humanities disciplines even as new technologies, from data mining to visualizations, open up possibilities for what scholars learn from these objects. Recent archival projects have involved multiple institutions (universities and colleges, independent libraries and archives, and non-profit organizations) and multiple constituencies (including librarians, archivists, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, university press directors, and information technologists). In this moment when archival projects, both virtual and real, have become the norm rather than the exception, <em>Archive</em> offers a way to forge connections among the projects and the communities producing them.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3><a name=\"content\"></a>Journal Content</h3>\r\n<p class=\"textblock\">The journal consists of three content areas:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><em>360°: Analysis and Discussion in the Round</em> features an asynchronous “discussion” among contributors from various backgrounds — in the form of several individual, linked essays — on a single archive or archival topic.</li>\r\n	<li><em>Archives, Remixed: Critical Perspectives and Pathways</em> invites analytical and creative pieces that reflect on meaning-making in and through archives. The format is open to both traditional research or theoretical essays, as well as multi-modal, alternate, or experimental formats. Contributions that analyze, use, theorize, create, find ways through, or reconstitute particular archives, objects or exhibits are invited. Only original work that has not been published elsewhere will be accepted for publication.</li>\r\n	<li><em>Notes + Queries</em> consists of short essays that share best practices, archival finds, reports from the field, and thoughts on current work in the field.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"editors\"></a>Editorial Team</h3>\r\n<table>\r\n<thead>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"160px\"></td>\r\n<td></td>\r\n<td></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Lauren Coats</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Assistant Professor of English (LSU)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Managing Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Gabrielle Dean</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Curator of Modern Literary Rare Books and Manuscripts, Librarian for English and the Writing Seminars (Johns Hopkins University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Technical Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Daniel Chamberlain</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Center for Digital Learning and Research (Occidental College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Contributing Editors</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Cecily Marcus</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Curator in Archives and Special Collections (University of Minnesota)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Laurie N. Taylor</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Digital Humanities Librarian, Digital Library Center (University of Florida)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Editorial Board</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Wendy Hui Kyong Chun</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Professor of Modern Culture and Media (Brown University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Dan Cohen</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor, Department of History and Art History; Director, Center for History and New Media (George Mason University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Sharon Farb</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate University Librarian (UCLA)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Kathleen Fitzpatrick</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director of Scholarly Communications (MLA) and Professor of Media Studies (Pomona College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Julia Flanders</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Women Writers Project; Associate Director for Textbase Development, Center for Digital Scholarship (Brown University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Amanda French</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>THATCamp Coordinator, Center for History and New Media (George Mason University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Chuck Henry</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>President, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Patricia Hswe</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Digital Collections Curator (Penn State University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Tara McPherson</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor of Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts (University of Southern California)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Kenneth M. Price</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>University Professor and Hillegass Chair of American Literature; Co-Director, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Elliott Shore</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>CIO, Director of Libraries, and Professor of History (Bryn Mawr College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Richard Szary</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Louis Round Wilson Library; Associate University Librarian for Special Collections (UNC-Chapel Hill)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Ed Whitley</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor of English (Lehigh University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">John Willinsky</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Khosla Family Professor of Education (Stanford University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</thead>\r\n</table>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"submissions\"></a>Submissions</h3>\r\nPlease review our <a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/home/submit-to-archive-journal/\">submit page</a>, if you are interested in submitting to the journal, or have any suggestions for or comments about the journal.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"review\"></a>Peer Review</h3>\r\nAll materials in <em>Archive Journal</em> are peer-reviewed.\r\n\r\nPeer review is central to scholarly communication by providing feedback for improvement, ensuring the quality of published materials, and validating the scholarly merit and proper credentialing of published materials. <em>Archive Journal</em>’s peer review policy is designed to achieve these goals, while also using emerging forms of peer review. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education, offering a way to forge connections among diverse projects and the communities producing them, the review process is structured to support building connections while retaining the scholarly rigor inherent in peer review.\r\n\r\nOur review process consists of editorial and open review in the following stages:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>Every submission is read by the Editorial Team to determine suitability for publication. The Editorial Team declines materials that are not appropriate at this stage; gives detailed feedback and the opportunity to resubmit for appropriate materials that need substantial revision; and gives feedback and facilitates the process towards publication for appropriate materials that need minor or no revisions. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> is an interdisciplinary space to forge connections and because the online format continues to evolve, this stage may include a series of back and forth feedback from the Editorial Team in order to ensure scholarly rigor, communicability across scholarly fields, and appropriateness of online display.</li>\r\n	<li>If deemed necessary by the Editorial Team, submissions within specialized subject areas that the Editorial Team cannot assess will be sent to reviewers with the appropriate expertise. Reviewers are encouraged to provide guidance to the Editorial Team and constructive feedback for the authors.</li>\r\n	<li>Revised submissions are reviewed after revision for final approval by the Editorial Team before publication. <em>Archive Journal</em> reserves the right to reject revised materials that are deemed not suitable for publication.</li>\r\n	<li>Following peer review and before publication, all accepted materials are copyedited for style and consistency.</li>\r\n	<li>All submissions will be subject to open review via reader comments. After an appropriate open review period has passed, the author(s) will have the opportunity to revise the submission. The final version will be posted and marked as such, with a clear link to the original version and associated open review comments.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"copyright\"></a>Copyright &amp; Licenses</h3>\r\nAuthors published in <em>Archive Journal</em> retain permanent ownership of their work via an open-access license. In order to facilitate access and preservation, <em>Archive Journal</em> retains a perpetual, non-exclusive right to publish accepted work and to include it in other aggregations and indexes. Authors are free to deposit a pre-publication version in an institutional repository, individual webpage, or similar site, as well as to reprint, reuse, or republish their work in any venue after one year.\r\n\r\nThe <em>Archive Journal</em> site is made available under the terms of a <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License</a>. The license grants permission for non-commercial, attributed re-use of content that is produced by <em>Archive Journal</em>.<a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\" rel=\"license\"><img style=\"border-width: 0;\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" src=\"http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/88x31.png\" /></a>\r\n\r\n<em>Archive</em> has made every effort to ensure that third-party materials used in this journal and on this site follows all copyright and other restrictions. If you have any more information about an item you\'ve seen on our website or if you are the copyright owner and believe our website has not properly attributed your work to you or has used it without permission, we want to hear from you. Please email us at <a href=\"mailto:contact@archivejournal.net\">contact@archivejournal.net</a> with your contact information and a link to the relevant content.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"publication\"></a>Publication</h3>\r\nPermanent access and preservation for citation and reproducible research are core components of scholarly communication. <em>Archive Journal</em> provides permanent open, online access for all journal issues.\r\n\r\nISSN 2166-1189\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"support\"></a>Support</h3>\r\n<em>Archive Journal</em> has been generously supported with grant funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg\"><img class=\"wp-image-4753 alignleft\" alt=\"CLIR Logo 5.27\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg\" width=\"30\" height=\"30\" /></a><i>Archive</i> <em>Journal </em>is currently supported in part by funds from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).','About','','inherit','open','open','','3549-revision-9','','','2013-06-18 05:20:56','2013-06-18 05:20:56','',3549,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/3549-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4756,3,'2013-06-18 05:24:34','2013-06-18 05:24:34','<h3><a name=\"mission\"></a>Mission</h3>\r\n<em>Archive</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education.\r\n<p class=\"textblock\">The academic community has invested deeply in the preservation, use, and digitization of materials in special collections, and <em>Archive</em> provides the space to reflect on this investment. The objects and texts in special collections and archives are the focus of this journal, just as they are the focus of the many projects from and in archives that have been executed and continue with great success. Digitization efforts large and small have freed archives from the bounds of brick and mortar by bringing a wealth of texts and objects into virtual circulation. Teachers and librarians have increasingly emphasized work with original materials for students at all levels as a way to enrich student experience and position students as researchers. The use of materials in special collections as the objects of scholarly study continues to be a key methodology of humanities disciplines even as new technologies, from data mining to visualizations, open up possibilities for what scholars learn from these objects. Recent archival projects have involved multiple institutions (universities and colleges, independent libraries and archives, and non-profit organizations) and multiple constituencies (including librarians, archivists, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, university press directors, and information technologists). In this moment when archival projects, both virtual and real, have become the norm rather than the exception, <em>Archive</em> offers a way to forge connections among the projects and the communities producing them.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3><a name=\"content\"></a>Journal Content</h3>\r\n<p class=\"textblock\">The journal consists of three content areas:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><em>360°: Analysis and Discussion in the Round</em> features an asynchronous “discussion” among contributors from various backgrounds — in the form of several individual, linked essays — on a single archive or archival topic.</li>\r\n	<li><em>Archives, Remixed: Critical Perspectives and Pathways</em> invites analytical and creative pieces that reflect on meaning-making in and through archives. The format is open to both traditional research or theoretical essays, as well as multi-modal, alternate, or experimental formats. Contributions that analyze, use, theorize, create, find ways through, or reconstitute particular archives, objects or exhibits are invited. Only original work that has not been published elsewhere will be accepted for publication.</li>\r\n	<li><em>Notes + Queries</em> consists of short essays that share best practices, archival finds, reports from the field, and thoughts on current work in the field.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"editors\"></a>Editorial Team</h3>\r\n<table>\r\n<thead>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"160px\"></td>\r\n<td></td>\r\n<td></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Lauren Coats</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Assistant Professor of English (LSU)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Managing Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Gabrielle Dean</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Curator of Modern Literary Rare Books and Manuscripts, Librarian for English and the Writing Seminars (Johns Hopkins University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Technical Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Daniel Chamberlain</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Center for Digital Learning and Research (Occidental College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Contributing Editors</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Cecily Marcus</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Curator in Archives and Special Collections (University of Minnesota)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Laurie N. Taylor</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Digital Humanities Librarian, Digital Library Center (University of Florida)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Editorial Board</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Wendy Hui Kyong Chun</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Professor of Modern Culture and Media (Brown University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Dan Cohen</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor, Department of History and Art History; Director, Center for History and New Media (George Mason University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Sharon Farb</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate University Librarian (UCLA)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Kathleen Fitzpatrick</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director of Scholarly Communications (MLA) and Professor of Media Studies (Pomona College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Julia Flanders</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Women Writers Project; Associate Director for Textbase Development, Center for Digital Scholarship (Brown University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Amanda French</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>THATCamp Coordinator, Center for History and New Media (George Mason University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Chuck Henry</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>President, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Patricia Hswe</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Digital Collections Curator (Penn State University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Tara McPherson</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor of Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts (University of Southern California)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Kenneth M. Price</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>University Professor and Hillegass Chair of American Literature; Co-Director, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Elliott Shore</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>CIO, Director of Libraries, and Professor of History (Bryn Mawr College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Richard Szary</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Louis Round Wilson Library; Associate University Librarian for Special Collections (UNC-Chapel Hill)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Ed Whitley</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor of English (Lehigh University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">John Willinsky</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Khosla Family Professor of Education (Stanford University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</thead>\r\n</table>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"submissions\"></a>Submissions</h3>\r\nPlease review our <a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/home/submit-to-archive-journal/\">submit page</a>, if you are interested in submitting to the journal, or have any suggestions for or comments about the journal.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"review\"></a>Peer Review</h3>\r\nAll materials in <em>Archive Journal</em> are peer-reviewed.\r\n\r\nPeer review is central to scholarly communication by providing feedback for improvement, ensuring the quality of published materials, and validating the scholarly merit and proper credentialing of published materials. <em>Archive Journal</em>’s peer review policy is designed to achieve these goals, while also using emerging forms of peer review. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education, offering a way to forge connections among diverse projects and the communities producing them, the review process is structured to support building connections while retaining the scholarly rigor inherent in peer review.\r\n\r\nOur review process consists of editorial and open review in the following stages:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>Every submission is read by the Editorial Team to determine suitability for publication. The Editorial Team declines materials that are not appropriate at this stage; gives detailed feedback and the opportunity to resubmit for appropriate materials that need substantial revision; and gives feedback and facilitates the process towards publication for appropriate materials that need minor or no revisions. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> is an interdisciplinary space to forge connections and because the online format continues to evolve, this stage may include a series of back and forth feedback from the Editorial Team in order to ensure scholarly rigor, communicability across scholarly fields, and appropriateness of online display.</li>\r\n	<li>If deemed necessary by the Editorial Team, submissions within specialized subject areas that the Editorial Team cannot assess will be sent to reviewers with the appropriate expertise. Reviewers are encouraged to provide guidance to the Editorial Team and constructive feedback for the authors.</li>\r\n	<li>Revised submissions are reviewed after revision for final approval by the Editorial Team before publication. <em>Archive Journal</em> reserves the right to reject revised materials that are deemed not suitable for publication.</li>\r\n	<li>Following peer review and before publication, all accepted materials are copyedited for style and consistency.</li>\r\n	<li>All submissions will be subject to open review via reader comments. After an appropriate open review period has passed, the author(s) will have the opportunity to revise the submission. The final version will be posted and marked as such, with a clear link to the original version and associated open review comments.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"copyright\"></a>Copyright &amp; Licenses</h3>\r\nAuthors published in <em>Archive Journal</em> retain permanent ownership of their work via an open-access license. In order to facilitate access and preservation, <em>Archive Journal</em> retains a perpetual, non-exclusive right to publish accepted work and to include it in other aggregations and indexes. Authors are free to deposit a pre-publication version in an institutional repository, individual webpage, or similar site, as well as to reprint, reuse, or republish their work in any venue after one year.\r\n\r\nThe <em>Archive Journal</em> site is made available under the terms of a <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License</a>. The license grants permission for non-commercial, attributed re-use of content that is produced by <em>Archive Journal</em>.<a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\" rel=\"license\"><img style=\"border-width: 0;\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" src=\"http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/88x31.png\" /></a>\r\n\r\n<em>Archive</em> has made every effort to ensure that third-party materials used in this journal and on this site follows all copyright and other restrictions. If you have any more information about an item you\'ve seen on our website or if you are the copyright owner and believe our website has not properly attributed your work to you or has used it without permission, we want to hear from you. Please email us at <a href=\"mailto:contact@archivejournal.net\">contact@archivejournal.net</a> with your contact information and a link to the relevant content.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"publication\"></a>Publication</h3>\r\nPermanent access and preservation for citation and reproducible research are core components of scholarly communication. <em>Archive Journal</em> provides permanent open, online access for all journal issues.\r\n\r\nISSN 2166-1189\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"support\"></a>Support</h3>\r\n<em>Archive Journal</em> has been generously supported with grant funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg\"><img class=\"wp-image-4753 alignleft\" alt=\"CLIR Logo 5.27\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg\" width=\"39\" height=\"39\" /></a><i>Archive</i> <em>Journal </em>is currently supported in part by funds from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).','About','','inherit','open','open','','3549-revision-10','','','2013-06-18 05:24:34','2013-06-18 05:24:34','',3549,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/3549-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(4757,3,'2013-06-18 05:27:25','2013-06-18 05:27:25','<h3><a name=\"mission\"></a>Mission</h3>\r\n<em>Archive</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education.\r\n<p class=\"textblock\">The academic community has invested deeply in the preservation, use, and digitization of materials in special collections, and <em>Archive</em> provides the space to reflect on this investment. The objects and texts in special collections and archives are the focus of this journal, just as they are the focus of the many projects from and in archives that have been executed and continue with great success. Digitization efforts large and small have freed archives from the bounds of brick and mortar by bringing a wealth of texts and objects into virtual circulation. Teachers and librarians have increasingly emphasized work with original materials for students at all levels as a way to enrich student experience and position students as researchers. The use of materials in special collections as the objects of scholarly study continues to be a key methodology of humanities disciplines even as new technologies, from data mining to visualizations, open up possibilities for what scholars learn from these objects. Recent archival projects have involved multiple institutions (universities and colleges, independent libraries and archives, and non-profit organizations) and multiple constituencies (including librarians, archivists, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, university press directors, and information technologists). In this moment when archival projects, both virtual and real, have become the norm rather than the exception, <em>Archive</em> offers a way to forge connections among the projects and the communities producing them.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3><a name=\"content\"></a>Journal Content</h3>\r\n<p class=\"textblock\">The journal consists of three content areas:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><em>360°: Analysis and Discussion in the Round</em> features an asynchronous “discussion” among contributors from various backgrounds — in the form of several individual, linked essays — on a single archive or archival topic.</li>\r\n	<li><em>Archives, Remixed: Critical Perspectives and Pathways</em> invites analytical and creative pieces that reflect on meaning-making in and through archives. The format is open to both traditional research or theoretical essays, as well as multi-modal, alternate, or experimental formats. Contributions that analyze, use, theorize, create, find ways through, or reconstitute particular archives, objects or exhibits are invited. Only original work that has not been published elsewhere will be accepted for publication.</li>\r\n	<li><em>Notes + Queries</em> consists of short essays that share best practices, archival finds, reports from the field, and thoughts on current work in the field.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"editors\"></a>Editorial Team</h3>\r\n<table>\r\n<thead>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"160px\"></td>\r\n<td></td>\r\n<td></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Lauren Coats</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Assistant Professor of English (LSU)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Managing Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Gabrielle Dean</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Curator of Modern Literary Rare Books and Manuscripts, Librarian for English and the Writing Seminars (Johns Hopkins University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Technical Editor</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Daniel Chamberlain</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Center for Digital Learning and Research (Occidental College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Contributing Editors</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Cecily Marcus</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Curator in Archives and Special Collections (University of Minnesota)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Laurie N. Taylor</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Digital Humanities Librarian, Digital Library Center (University of Florida)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"3\">\r\n<h2>Editorial Board</h2>\r\n</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Wendy Hui Kyong Chun</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Professor of Modern Culture and Media (Brown University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Dan Cohen</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor, Department of History and Art History; Director, Center for History and New Media (George Mason University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Sharon Farb</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate University Librarian (UCLA)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Kathleen Fitzpatrick</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director of Scholarly Communications (MLA) and Professor of Media Studies (Pomona College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Julia Flanders</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Women Writers Project; Associate Director for Textbase Development, Center for Digital Scholarship (Brown University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Amanda French</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>THATCamp Coordinator, Center for History and New Media (George Mason University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Chuck Henry</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>President, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Patricia Hswe</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Digital Collections Curator (Penn State University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Tara McPherson</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor of Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts (University of Southern California)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Kenneth M. Price</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>University Professor and Hillegass Chair of American Literature; Co-Director, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Elliott Shore</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>CIO, Director of Libraries, and Professor of History (Bryn Mawr College)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Richard Szary</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Director, Louis Round Wilson Library; Associate University Librarian for Special Collections (UNC-Chapel Hill)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">Ed Whitley</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Associate Professor of English (Lehigh University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td class=\"name\">John Willinsky</td>\r\n<td>.......</td>\r\n<td>Khosla Family Professor of Education (Stanford University)</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</thead>\r\n</table>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"submissions\"></a>Submissions</h3>\r\nPlease review our <a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/home/submit-to-archive-journal/\">submit page</a>, if you are interested in submitting to the journal, or have any suggestions for or comments about the journal.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"review\"></a>Peer Review</h3>\r\nAll materials in <em>Archive Journal</em> are peer-reviewed.\r\n\r\nPeer review is central to scholarly communication by providing feedback for improvement, ensuring the quality of published materials, and validating the scholarly merit and proper credentialing of published materials. <em>Archive Journal</em>’s peer review policy is designed to achieve these goals, while also using emerging forms of peer review. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education, offering a way to forge connections among diverse projects and the communities producing them, the review process is structured to support building connections while retaining the scholarly rigor inherent in peer review.\r\n\r\nOur review process consists of editorial and open review in the following stages:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>Every submission is read by the Editorial Team to determine suitability for publication. The Editorial Team declines materials that are not appropriate at this stage; gives detailed feedback and the opportunity to resubmit for appropriate materials that need substantial revision; and gives feedback and facilitates the process towards publication for appropriate materials that need minor or no revisions. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> is an interdisciplinary space to forge connections and because the online format continues to evolve, this stage may include a series of back and forth feedback from the Editorial Team in order to ensure scholarly rigor, communicability across scholarly fields, and appropriateness of online display.</li>\r\n	<li>If deemed necessary by the Editorial Team, submissions within specialized subject areas that the Editorial Team cannot assess will be sent to reviewers with the appropriate expertise. Reviewers are encouraged to provide guidance to the Editorial Team and constructive feedback for the authors.</li>\r\n	<li>Revised submissions are reviewed after revision for final approval by the Editorial Team before publication. <em>Archive Journal</em> reserves the right to reject revised materials that are deemed not suitable for publication.</li>\r\n	<li>Following peer review and before publication, all accepted materials are copyedited for style and consistency.</li>\r\n	<li>All submissions will be subject to open review via reader comments. After an appropriate open review period has passed, the author(s) will have the opportunity to revise the submission. The final version will be posted and marked as such, with a clear link to the original version and associated open review comments.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"copyright\"></a>Copyright &amp; Licenses</h3>\r\nAuthors published in <em>Archive Journal</em> retain permanent ownership of their work via an open-access license. In order to facilitate access and preservation, <em>Archive Journal</em> retains a perpetual, non-exclusive right to publish accepted work and to include it in other aggregations and indexes. Authors are free to deposit a pre-publication version in an institutional repository, individual webpage, or similar site, as well as to reprint, reuse, or republish their work in any venue after one year.\r\n\r\nThe <em>Archive Journal</em> site is made available under the terms of a <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License</a>. The license grants permission for non-commercial, attributed re-use of content that is produced by <em>Archive Journal</em>.<a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\" rel=\"license\"><img style=\"border-width: 0;\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" src=\"http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/88x31.png\" /></a>\r\n\r\n<em>Archive</em> has made every effort to ensure that third-party materials used in this journal and on this site follows all copyright and other restrictions. If you have any more information about an item you\'ve seen on our website or if you are the copyright owner and believe our website has not properly attributed your work to you or has used it without permission, we want to hear from you. Please email us at <a href=\"mailto:contact@archivejournal.net\">contact@archivejournal.net</a> with your contact information and a link to the relevant content.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"publication\"></a>Publication</h3>\r\nPermanent access and preservation for citation and reproducible research are core components of scholarly communication. <em>Archive Journal</em> provides permanent open, online access for all journal issues.\r\n\r\nISSN 2166-1189\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3><a name=\"support\"></a>Support</h3>\r\n<em>Archive Journal</em> has been generously supported with grant funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg\"><img class=\"wp-image-4753 alignleft\" alt=\"CLIR Logo 5.27\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg\" width=\"39\" height=\"39\" /></a><i></i>\r\n\r\n<em>Archive Journal </em>is currently supported in part by funds from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).','About','','inherit','open','open','','3549-revision-11','','','2013-06-18 05:27:25','2013-06-18 05:27:25','',3549,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/3549-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(4841,3,'2013-06-24 16:35:52','2013-06-24 16:35:52','<h3><a name=\"mission\"></a>Mission</h3>\n<em>Archive</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education.\n<p class=\"textblock\">The academic community has invested deeply in the preservation, use, and digitization of materials in special collections, and <em>Archive</em> provides the space to reflect on this investment. The objects and texts in special collections and archives are the focus of this journal, just as they are the focus of the many projects from and in archives that have been executed and continue with great success. Digitization efforts large and small have freed archives from the bounds of brick and mortar by bringing a wealth of texts and objects into virtual circulation. Teachers and librarians have increasingly emphasized work with original materials for students at all levels as a way to enrich student experience and position students as researchers. The use of materials in special collections as the objects of scholarly study continues to be a key methodology of humanities disciplines even as new technologies, from data mining to visualizations, open up possibilities for what scholars learn from these objects. Recent archival projects have involved multiple institutions (universities and colleges, independent libraries and archives, and non-profit organizations) and multiple constituencies (including librarians, archivists, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, university press directors, and information technologists). In this moment when archival projects, both virtual and real, have become the norm rather than the exception, <em>Archive</em> offers a way to forge connections among the projects and the communities producing them.</p>\n\n<h3><a name=\"content\"></a>Journal Content</h3>\n<p class=\"textblock\">The journal consists of three content areas:</p>\n\n<ul>\n	<li><em>360°: Analysis and Discussion in the Round</em> features an asynchronous “discussion” among contributors from various backgrounds — in the form of several individual, linked essays — on a single archive or archival topic.</li>\n	<li><em>Archives, Remixed: Critical Perspectives and Pathways</em> invites analytical and creative pieces that reflect on meaning-making in and through archives. The format is open to both traditional research or theoretical essays, as well as multi-modal, alternate, or experimental formats. Contributions that analyze, use, theorize, create, find ways through, or reconstitute particular archives, objects or exhibits are invited. Only original work that has not been published elsewhere will be accepted for publication.</li>\n	<li><em>Notes + Queries</em> consists of short essays that share best practices, archival finds, reports from the field, and thoughts on current work in the field.</li>\n</ul>\n&nbsp;\n<h3><a name=\"editors\"></a>Editorial Team</h3>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"160px\"></td>\n<td></td>\n<td></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=\"3\">\n<h2>Editor</h2>\n</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Lauren Coats</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Assistant Professor of English (LSU)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=\"3\">\n<h2>Managing Editor</h2>\n</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Gabrielle Dean</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Curator of Modern Literary Rare Books and Manuscripts, Librarian for English and the Writing Seminars (Johns Hopkins University)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=\"3\">\n<h2>Technical Editor</h2>\n</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Daniel Chamberlain</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Director, Center for Digital Learning and Research (Occidental College)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=\"3\">\n<h2>Contributing Editors</h2>\n</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Cecily Marcus</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Curator in Archives and Special Collections (University of Minnesota)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Laurie N. Taylor</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Digital Humanities Librarian, Digital Library Center (University of Florida)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=\"3\">\n<h2>Editorial Board</h2>\n</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Wendy Hui Kyong Chun</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Professor of Modern Culture and Media (Brown University)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Dan Cohen</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Associate Professor, Department of History and Art History; Director, Center for History and New Media (George Mason University)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Sharon Farb</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Associate University Librarian (UCLA)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Kathleen Fitzpatrick</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Director of Scholarly Communications (MLA) and Professor of Media Studies (Pomona College)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Julia Flanders</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Director, Women Writers Project; Associate Director for Textbase Development, Center for Digital Scholarship (Brown University)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Amanda French</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>THATCamp Coordinator, Center for History and New Media (George Mason University)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Chuck Henry</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>President, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Patricia Hswe</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Digital Collections Curator (Penn State University)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Tara McPherson</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Associate Professor of Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts (University of Southern California)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Kenneth M. Price</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>University Professor and Hillegass Chair of American Literature; Co-Director, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Elliott Shore</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>CIO, Director of Libraries, and Professor of History (Bryn Mawr College)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Richard Szary</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Director, Louis Round Wilson Library; Associate University Librarian for Special Collections (UNC-Chapel Hill)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">Ed Whitley</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Associate Professor of English (Lehigh University)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"name\">John Willinsky</td>\n<td>.......</td>\n<td>Khosla Family Professor of Education (Stanford University)</td>\n</tr>\n</thead>\n</table>\n&nbsp;\n<h3><a name=\"submissions\"></a>Submissions</h3>\nPlease review our <a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/home/submit-to-archive-journal/\">submit page</a>, if you are interested in submitting to the journal, or have any suggestions for or comments about the journal.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3><a name=\"review\"></a>Peer Review</h3>\nAll materials in <em>Archive Journal</em> are peer-reviewed.\n\nPeer review is central to scholarly communication by providing feedback for improvement, ensuring the quality of published materials, and validating the scholarly merit and proper credentialing of published materials. <em>Archive Journal</em>’s peer review policy is designed to achieve these goals, while also using emerging forms of peer review. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education, offering a way to forge connections among diverse projects and the communities producing them, the review process is structured to support building connections while retaining the scholarly rigor inherent in peer review.\n\nOur review process consists of editorial and open review in the following stages:\n<ul>\n	<li>Every submission is read by the Editorial Team to determine suitability for publication. The Editorial Team declines materials that are not appropriate at this stage; gives detailed feedback and the opportunity to resubmit for appropriate materials that need substantial revision; and gives feedback and facilitates the process towards publication for appropriate materials that need minor or no revisions. Because <em>Archive Journal</em> is an interdisciplinary space to forge connections and because the online format continues to evolve, this stage may include a series of back and forth feedback from the Editorial Team in order to ensure scholarly rigor, communicability across scholarly fields, and appropriateness of online display.</li>\n	<li>If deemed necessary by the Editorial Team, submissions within specialized subject areas that the Editorial Team cannot assess will be sent to reviewers with the appropriate expertise. Reviewers are encouraged to provide guidance to the Editorial Team and constructive feedback for the authors.</li>\n	<li>Revised submissions are reviewed after revision for final approval by the Editorial Team before publication. <em>Archive Journal</em> reserves the right to reject revised materials that are deemed not suitable for publication.</li>\n	<li>Following peer review and before publication, all accepted materials are copyedited for style and consistency.</li>\n	<li>All submissions will be subject to open review via reader comments. After an appropriate open review period has passed, the author(s) will have the opportunity to revise the submission. The final version will be posted and marked as such, with a clear link to the original version and associated open review comments.</li>\n</ul>\n&nbsp;\n<h3><a name=\"copyright\"></a>Copyright &amp; Licenses</h3>\nAuthors published in <em>Archive Journal</em> retain permanent ownership of their work via an open-access license. In order to facilitate access and preservation, <em>Archive Journal</em> retains a perpetual, non-exclusive right to publish accepted work and to include it in other aggregations and indexes. Authors are free to deposit a pre-publication version in an institutional repository, individual webpage, or similar site, as well as to reprint, reuse, or republish their work in any venue after one year.\n\nThe <em>Archive Journal</em> site is made available under the terms of a <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License</a>. The license grants permission for non-commercial, attributed re-use of content that is produced by <em>Archive Journal</em>.<a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/\" rel=\"license\"><img style=\"border-width: 0;\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" src=\"http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/88x31.png\" /></a>\n\n<em>Archive</em> has made every effort to ensure that third-party materials used in this journal and on this site follows all copyright and other restrictions. If you have any more information about an item you\'ve seen on our website or if you are the copyright owner and believe our website has not properly attributed your work to you or has used it without permission, we want to hear from you. Please email us at <a href=\"mailto:contact@archivejournal.net\">contact@archivejournal.net</a> with your contact information and a link to the relevant content.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3><a name=\"publication\"></a>Publication</h3>\nPermanent access and preservation for citation and reproducible research are core components of scholarly communication. <em>Archive Journal</em> provides permanent open, online access for all journal issues.\n\nISSN 2166-1189\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3><a name=\"support\"></a>Support</h3>\n&nbsp;\n\n<em>Archive Journal </em>is currently supported in part by funds from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).<em><a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg\">        <img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4839\" alt=\"CLIR Logo 5.27\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CLIR-Logo-5.27.jpg\" width=\"53\" height=\"53\" /></a></em>\n\n&nbsp;\n\n<em>Archive Journal</em> was founded and has been generously supported with grant funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.','About','','inherit','open','open','','3549-revision-13','','','2013-06-24 16:35:52','2013-06-24 16:35:52','',3549,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/3549-revision-13/',0,'revision','',0),(4759,3,'2013-06-21 22:23:07','2013-06-21 22:23:07','Librarians have long been critical collaborators with their faculty in higher-education classroom settings, teaching research-education principles and providing one-on-one help with students to locate and evaluate sources for research projects. Until recently, most of these student projects have been research papers of varying lengths; each writing experience is a solo project that leads students to monkish behavior in solitary library carrels and dorm rooms. Today\'s students have new opportunities to apply critical thinking and research skills in transformative digital and collaborative projects. At Harvard, for example, students in an African and African American Studies course recently created digital stories about music, language, and digital media in former Portuguese colonies. ((Carla D. Martin, “Wikipedia, Storify, and Zeega in the Classroom,” <i>Storify</i>, n.d., <a href=\"http://storify.com/carladmartin/storify-the-classroom\">http://storify.com/carladmartin/storify-the-classroom</a>. This provides an overview of the work students undertook at Harvard University in Carla D. Martin’s fall 2012 course, African and African American Studies 114x: From Cesaria Evora to Dama do Bling: Language, Music, and Digital Media in the Former Portuguese Colonies. Martin reported that she met with librarians before the semester to discuss copyright issues and best practices for working with students on multimedia projects. The librarians also put Martin in touch with faculty who undertook similar projects.)) This type of venture requires a different level of support from and collaboration with librarians who work in classroom settings. The digital landscape demands new roles for teaching librarians and archivists as they shepherd and coordinate a range of projects, working with students and faculty from initial visions to implementation questions to final products.\n\nAs many courses begin to incorporate digital components, faculty must use course time to cover content <i>and</i> deal with the learning curve involved in utilizing new and unfamiliar digital tools. Faculty often do not have the time or capacity, for example, to teach students how to use blogging platforms or digital storytelling platforms. Teaching librarians and archivists are natural collaborators to facilitate digital learning in classrooms. Especially on liberal arts college campuses, it is increasingly common for teaching librarians to count among their responsibilities the teaching of digital tools and use of instructional technology. Librarians can provide one-stop support for faculty and students in classes with digital research and project components. ((Barbara A. Rockenbach, “Archives, Undergraduates, and Inquiry-Based Learning: Case Studies from Yale University Library,” <i>American Archivist</i> 74, no. 1 (2011): 297.)) Teaching librarians and archivists focus on process: how to use software, how to deploy archival sources, how to understand the finer points of copyright, and how to support and preserve projects and their accompanying data for the long term. We can leave the content to faculty; though we may be subject experts, one of our unsung strengths lies in project management, in the shepherding of student research from amorphous ideas to concrete sets of questions. We can collaborate with faculty to implement project guidelines that meet students’ learning goals and that can support digital projects on various platforms, including curated exhibits that engage a range of critical thinking skills.\n\n<b>Skills for Teaching Librarians &amp; Archivists in the Digital Age</b>\n\nTeaching librarians and archivists are no longer simply bibliographers or collections experts. Now they are research and technology sherpas, guiding faculty and students towards meaningful learning experiences and successful projects. The digital age requires us to have a new suite of skills that prepares us to support digital scholarship in classrooms or to communicate effectively with teams of technologists and information professionals—instructional technologists, reference archivists, GIS specialists, and visual resources librarians—on a range of projects. Teaching librarians and archivists may also be:\n<ul>\n	<li><b>Digital Humanists</b> who use the “methods of contemporary humanities in studying digital objects.” ((Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “The Humanities, Done Digitally,” <i>The Chronicle of Higher Education</i>, May 8, 2011, sec. The Digital Campus 2011, <a href=\"http://chronicle.com/article/The-Humanities-Done-Digitally/127382/\">http://chronicle.com/article/The-Humanities-Done-Digitally/127382/</a>.)) Projects like Around DH in 80 days provide an opportunity for seasoned DH practitioners and newbies alike to engage with the Digital Humanities in a global context. ((“Around DH in 80 Days,” <i>Global Outlook::Digital Humanities</i>, February 4, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/around-dh-in-80-days/\">http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/around-dh-in-80-days/</a>. This project grew out of an information-sharing project that Digital Scholarship Coordinator Alex Gill undertook in the Columbia University Libraries to showcase new digital humanities work around the world.)) Other recent examples of successful Digital Humanities projects include Jen Rajchel’s senior thesis on Marianne Moore’s Bryn Mawr poetry, Harvard\'s efforts to reimagine teaching, and the work of Emory University faculty, technologists, and librarians to build interactive maps to track lynchings in Georgia. ((Jen Rajchel, “Introduction,” <i>Mooring Gaps: Marianne Moore’s Bryn Mawr Poetry</i>, n.d., <a href=\"http://mooreandpoetry.blogs.brynmawr.edu/\">http://mooreandpoetry.blogs.brynmawr.edu</a>. Rajchel reported that the director of library collections, the head of special collections, and the curator for rare books and manuscripts supported the project in terms of exploring collections, learning to use microfilm, and navigating copyright. “Lynchings in Georgia (1875-1930),” n.d., <a href=\"http://web.library.emory.edu/disc/projects/lynchings-georgia-1875-1930\">http://web.library.emory.edu/disc/projects/lynchings-georgia-1875-1930</a>. “Projects | metaLAB (at) Harvard,” n.d., <a href=\"http://metalab.harvard.edu/projects/\">http://metalab.harvard.edu/projects/</a>.))</li>\n	<li><b>Trend spotters</b> who scan the horizon for emerging tools and technologies, evaluate them, and introduce them in projects and undergraduate classrooms. Should libraries buy 3-D printers? How can libraries support MOOCs? Communities of practice like <a href=\"https://sites.google.com/a/edu-isis.org/isis/\">ISIS</a> and THATCamp help support the continuous professional development of librarians and information technologists through online seminars and drop-in sessions, where they can discuss emerging trends and best practices.</li>\n	<li><b>Adjudicators </b>who understand comprehensively the copyrights of moving and still images and other archival materials in print and digital form. Using resources like the <i><a href=\"http://policynotes.arl.org/\">Association of Research Libraries’ Policy Notes blog</a></i> and Nancy Sims’ <a href=\"http://blog.lib.umn.edu/copyrightlibn/\">excellent copyright guide blog</a>, teaching librarians and archivists knowledgeable in this area can help faculty and students navigate the murky and shifting copyright landscape. These adjudicators can support exciting research and projects that blend old formats with new media.</li>\n	<li><b>Project Managers </b>who coordinate larger-scale projects and facilitate collaborative projects among groups of students in undergraduate settings. Exciting initiatives like the winter and summer Digital Humanities Institutes bring faculty, librarians, students, and museum professionals together to tackle project development and management through their curriculums. Project management encompasses far more than ensuring that timelines are met and workload evenly distributed among team members. Project management requires leadership and vision to empower teams and to deploy new tools for new goals.</li>\n</ul>\nWhile teaching librarians and archivists are uniquely positioned to help integrate student learning objectives with project outcomes and to create new opportunities for curriculum engagement, they are also facing a moment of creative destruction of some of the more traditional elements of librarianship. Embracing instructional work in the digital age means rethinking how teaching librarians and archivists spend their valuable time. For example, many teaching librarians are also selectors for library materials, so they could probably have more time for integrative teaching and digital project management if vendor-approval plans and patron-driven acquisitions automated collection-development work. While some might bemoan this as a loss of some of the “artisan” qualities of librarianship, it is an opportunity to reimagine public-facing positions to meet the needs of the rapidly changing higher-education landscape. As libraries move away from being simply content collectors to content creators, librarians and archivists must also make sometimes scary but necessary transitions. ((Brian Matthews, <i>“Think Like a Startup: </i><i>a white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism,” </i>April 2012, <a href=\"http://hdl.handle.net/10919/18649\">http://hdl.handle.net/10919/18649</a>.))\n\nTogether, faculty and librarians can collaborate to make meaningful assignments and learning experiences for undergraduate students within a new digital framework.  Such partnerships ensure that students\' first forays into this area are successful, but can also help more advanced practitioners on more complicated projects. No student or faculty member can complete successful digital projects on their own; such projects require a village of librarians, archivists, technologists, faculty, and students to build, implement, and sustain them.','Teaching Librarians & Project Management: New Expectations for the Digital Age','','inherit','open','open','','4689-autosave','','','2013-06-21 22:23:07','2013-06-21 22:23:07','',4689,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4689-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4760,3,'2013-06-22 04:13:55','2013-06-22 04:13:55','I am the Digital Archivist for the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. We collect materials in many areas, but primarily we are concerned with humanities and social sciences (broadly speaking). This means that I work with everything from 20-year-old floppy disks that might contain the work of a contemporary novelist, to hard drives of architectural design files created over the last 20 years, to the electronic “papers” of a modern local organization saved to Google Docs. The materials I work with generally have no unifying characteristics; they represent a wide variety of ages, types, formats, carrier media, and data size.\n\nData curation, to me, means ensuring that data is safely transferred from its original context (such as a disk, a hard drive, or an email account) into the archive. Since much of the material I get was created in the past and lives on obsolescent software or hardware, sometimes just figuring out how to read the disk is a challenge. With any type of material, I need to capture metadata about it, such as its size, data type, and other important details. Knowing these details at the beginning means that in the future I can verify that it has not corrupted. I also document the chain of custody and any preservation actions taken, which could potentially have an impact on future use. If I am lucky, I get the opportunity to work with donors who still have access to their data. In those cases I can gather information from them about their computer use: How do they organize files? How much do they use social media? Do they create things in electronic form, or do they use a combination of paper and electronic files to do their work? Knowing the answers to these questions helps me piece together the context of their collection so that it can be understood in the future.','Gueguen - Question1','','inherit','open','open','','4590-autosave','','','2013-06-22 04:13:55','2013-06-22 04:13:55','',4590,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4590-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4761,3,'2013-06-15 21:31:00','2013-06-15 21:31:00','I am the Digital Archivist for the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. We collect materials in many areas, but primarily we are concerned with humanities and social sciences (broadly speaking). This means that I work with everything from 20-year-old floppy disks that might contain the work of a contemporary novelist, to hard drives of architectural design files created over the last 20 years, to the electronic “papers” of a modern local organization saved to Google Docs. The materials I work with generally have no unifying characteristics; they represent a wide variety of ages, types, formats, carrier media, and data size.\r\n\r\nData curation, to me, means ensuring that data is safely transferred from its original context (such as a disk, a hard drive, or an email account) into the archive. Since much of the material I get was created in the past and lives on obsolescent software or hardware, sometimes just figuring out how to read the disk is a challenge. With any type of material, I need to capture metadata about it, such as its size, data type, and other important details. Knowing these details at the beginning means that in the future I can verify that it has not corrupted. I also document the chain of custody and any preservation actions taken, which could potentially have an impact on future use. If I am lucky, I get the opportunity to work with donors who still have access to their data. In those cases I can gather information from them about their computer use: How do they organize files? How much do they use social media? Do they create things in electronic form, or do they use a combination of paper and electronic files to do their work? Knowing the answers to these questions helps me piece together the context of their collection so that it can be understood in the future.','Gueguen - Question1','','inherit','open','open','','4590-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 21:31:00','2013-06-15 21:31:00','',4590,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4590-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4762,3,'2013-06-15 21:30:51','2013-06-15 21:30:51','I think that the answer is different if you look at pressures and needs separately. From my perspective in a research university, the sciences, social sciences, and humanities have similar needs, but to differing degrees. All three need to create infrastructure and standardization to make the data they are currently producing accessible in the future. If you look at the continuum of long-term use, the sciences have a much shorter lifespan for usable data, while the humanities have the longest (with the social sciences in between). On the other hand, the sciences are probably producing the greatest amount of data, while the humanities generate the smallest amount (again, social sciences fall somewhere in between). Because the humanities have a longer-term approach to research, additional issues of obsolescence come into play, like when a scholar is studying gaming in the 1980s or literature written on computers in the 1990s. In addition, the science data of today could become the historical data of tomorrow, so all of this data exists in a continuum, from my perspective.\r\n\r\nPressures, on the other hand, tend to be somewhat similar. Scholarly communication is undergoing a transformation in many respects. The traditional activities behind the creation of academic knowledge (research, writing, peer review, publishing) are being challenged by the open access movement and the emergence of big data. In addition, both science and humanities granting agencies are beginning to require data management plans. These pressures add up to changes in how data is created and managed. In the past, a scholar might have published a paper with the results of a study done using a large data set. Others could read the results, and perhaps do another study of a similar set in the future. All of this happened within the domain of academic publishing. Now, that scholar may have instead published his or her research paper in an open access journal that is only published on the web. The agency that funded that work may also expect the researcher to ensure the preservation and availability of the original dataset. This creates new information needs for both the scholar who needs help storing and providing access to his or her data, as well as the researcher who wants to find and use that data.\r\n\r\nIn this changing environment, the academic library can be a great ally to the community in helping ensure that the products of scholarship are secured for the future. More and more libraries, including UVa’s, are developing data consulting programs to help researchers develop data management plans, along with repositories to store data and provide access. The library needs to take these bold steps forward and let their academic colleagues know that we have the experience and ability to help with these monumental challenges.','Gueguen - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4592-revision-4','','','2013-06-15 21:30:51','2013-06-15 21:30:51','',4592,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4592-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4763,3,'2013-06-15 21:30:34','2013-06-15 21:30:34','Data curation is important to anyone who uses data or will be affected by the use of data, so everyone, really! The difficult part is to make the concept accessible and to convey the importance to those not working in a data curation setting. In academic circles the idea that a researcher’s valuable contribution to the field could be unreadable in as little as ten years makes an impression. Many of the activities that curators can use to ensure the preservation of data are not controversial, such as storing data in standard formats and creating preservation metadata. Another way that data curators try to minimize risk is by putting data into open repositories. Having the data accessible and usable ensures that it is not forgotten and continues to be migrated to accessible formats. (In addition, creating copies and storing them in multiple networks builds in redundancy that can provide an extra safeguard.) But there is some understandable resistance to making data open access. When researchers hear stories about data security risks or plagiarism, they can become concerned about participating in things like open archives.\r\n\r\nSimilarly, in the special collections and archives community I work in, donors are sometimes reluctant to allow open access to the electronic material in their collections. In many cases we can come up with compromises that are acceptable to all parties, but it usually involves a lot of discussion and calming of fears. In other cases, we have data that was gathered at some point in the past and does not have commercial value. But since we cannot find the creator in order to obtain permission (because he or she left the materials with the library many years ago and has since moved or even passed away), we must restrict access. In this scenario we need to adopt a risk-management approach, balancing the likelihood of copyright infringement with the value of access, and to state clearly that we will remove content from accessible spaces if copyright is proven. For these reasons it is important to us, as data curators, to make sure that everyone is aware of the impact of our copyright laws and curation activities. We must also attempt to clarify the rights the donor would like to retain when material is donated.','Gueguen - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4594-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 21:30:34','2013-06-15 21:30:34','',4594,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4594-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4764,3,'2013-06-15 21:30:28','2013-06-15 21:30:28','I can clearly remember the first time I realized the essential paradox in the kind of work I do with older data. A researcher working on a biography asked me if I could recover the data from 99 5.25” and 3.5” floppy disks created between the mid-1980s and early-1990s. I spent dozens of hours imaging the disks, exporting the contents, extracting metadata, and weeding out the file slack and deleted data. Altogether I spent a month working on the project. In the end, the amount of data on those 99 disks could be zipped up and emailed. It was less than 10 MB.\r\n\r\nAs time goes on, the amount of data we work with gets larger and larger. On the other hand, the older the data are the more time and effort it usually takes to make them accessible. The only way our work will scale to that challenge is if we practice good data curation techniques now; that means using technical and preservation metadata, adhering to standards, and checking for data fixity on a routine basis.','Gueguen - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4596-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 21:30:28','2013-06-15 21:30:28','',4596,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4596-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4765,3,'2013-06-15 21:30:20','2013-06-15 21:30:20','I would say that all of those factors are affecting data curation, and each is interrelated. The technology needs to be developed and available first so that infrastructure can be built on it. Libraries and archives have made a lot of progress in this area, especially in the realm of repository development. At UVa we were involved in the earliest stages of developing the Fedora digital repository, and we continue to develop this powerful tool. Fedora, and the offshoot, Hydra, provide the capacity to store digital objects of any kind. The repository can then interact with all kinds of tools that do things with those objects—index and search metadata, stream video, and display the pages of a book in order. The proliferation of data formats, operating systems, software, and media has been truly staggering in the last thirty years. Developing technology solutions like Fedora that will last and be interoperable is a huge task, but I think we are beginning to take on those challenges.\r\n\r\nWith technology in place, infrastructure—by which I mean a framework of standardization, organizational support, planning, and shared responsibilities—must follow in order to allow for successful adoption. If there is no infrastructure for using and supporting a certain technology, it can sometimes die out. For example UVa’s Fedora repository, is being developed using standard metadata schemes. Because these standards are widely used, the organization can trust that the digital object described with them will be understandable in the future. The organization can then feel confident investing staff resources in creating these objects and later will be able to share them with other repositories using similar standards. This sharing then increases the likelihood these objects will endure. Overall, the entire infrastructure supports the goals of long-term preservation. On the other hand, another example might be the adoption of a software tool that creates data in proprietary formats. If the infrastructure does not support that format (for example, other software cannot read it, or staff do not know how to use it), it will not be sustainable. Either the data in those formats will become obsolete and unrecoverable, or the infrastructure will have to adapt to support it.\r\n\r\nMany organizations, especially in the cultural heritage sector, lack this infrastructure, in part because they lack the staffing to develop and maintain it. Trends in higher education have seen library budgets plummet, and leaner staffing models are part of the fallout. These remaining staff members, in turn, are not always trained to keep up with cutting-edge developments in technology and standards. It makes sense that when your staff is busy on the reference desk, instructing classes, engaging in collection development, and meeting with faculty, learning an entirely new skill set will not get top priority. Libraries like UVa hire a staff with diverse talents and then find ways to help those employees work together. Digital Curators often tend to be “connectors” or “translators” helping bridge the divide between traditional data, archival practice, and modern technological tools. In turn, they help those on either side of the divide understand each other and work together better. Eventually, even the more traditional jobs begin to include more work with technology. Over time, this kind of savvy staffing translates into overall changes in the profession.','Gueguen - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4598-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 21:30:20','2013-06-15 21:30:20','',4598,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4598-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4766,3,'2013-06-15 22:23:26','2013-06-15 22:23:26','Three factors shape my perspective on data curation: my research interest in the changes in knowledge production over time and across domains; the goals of my CLIR/DLF postdoctoral fellowship; and the mission and activities of the research center where I work, the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu\">Data to Insight Center</a> (D2I) at Indiana University Bloomington.\r\n\r\nAs a data curation fellow at D2I, I help develop tools and best practices for data management, sharing, and preservation; I conduct research in the areas of data analytics and stewardship as well as digital humanities and digital libraries; and I advance data curation as both an important component of science and as a professional activity.\r\n\r\nMy primary involvement is with the <a href=\"http://sead-data.net\">Sustainable Environment, Actionable Data</a> (SEAD) project. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded SEAD to create national and global data research infrastructure via the program “Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet).” SEAD is a collaboration between the University of Michigan, Indiana University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that works to develop a digital environment that will support data curation and management workflows in sustainability science. D2I is developing Virtual Archive, a solution that provides federated deposit and access capabilities across multiple institutional repositories. A researcher or data curator can use Virtual Archive to automatically deposit data in one of the partner repositories or to search across those repositories and find the data that they need.\r\n\r\nFor SEAD Virtual Archive, I co-lead architectural, policy, and user-engagement activities and solutions. For example, I use my metadata and information organization expertise to improve the Virtual Archive data model and interface to support the dual needs of researchers and data curators. Currently, we are working on identifying layers of semantic information, such as the relationships between different data types within a dataset or the possible uses of data, which can help to describe heterogeneous or multi-variable datasets in sustainability science. I also use my expertise in social theory and the sociology of knowledge to identify barriers in data sharing and find suitable approaches to data sharing and preservation in relevant SEAD disciplines, such as ecology or hydrology.\r\n\r\nI am also involved in the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu/hathitrust-research-center\">HathiTrust Research Center</a> (HTRC) project. This project develops cyberinfrastructure to support the digital humanities in their work with massive amounts of texts derived from the HathiTrust Digital Library. My role in this project is primarily concerned with engagement and community development. If we want this project to succeed, it is crucial to let the community know about this environment and its capabilities, gather feedback so that we can continue improving it, and perhaps learn together about innovative research opportunities in text computations.\r\n\r\nEngagement and outreach are crucial for my data curation work. Many efforts to facilitate data sharing and preservation exist, yet it is still a relatively new component of scholarship and research. I work to help articulate the value of sharing and preserving data to research communities and to create opportunities to do so. We often talk about how important it is to ground our data tools in actual use cases, so I spend a significant amount of time thinking about how to connect to researchers and their data practices, how to find “data champions,” and how to create a framework to engage researchers in data exchanges. The latter is the focus of my efforts as an active member of the new global initiative called <a href=\"http://rd-alliance.org\">Research Data Alliance (</a>RDA), within which I, along with others, formed an engagement interest group. We had a successful planning meeting during the RDA plenary in March, and about 26 data practitioners and scientists attended. We shared many interesting ideas, such as creating a library of best practices and solutions. Our group is still in the early stages of development and we invite all who are interested to join. (The RDA-Engage forum thread can found <a href=\"http://forum.rd-alliance.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=26\">here</a>; to subscribe to the RDA-Engage mailing list visit <a href=\"http://lists.lists.rd-alliance.org/mailman/listinfo/rda-cwg-engage\">here.</a>)\r\n<div></div>','Kouper - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4601-revision-5','','','2013-06-15 22:23:26','2013-06-15 22:23:26','',4601,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4601-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4767,3,'2013-06-15 22:26:10','2013-06-15 22:26:10','From a data curation perspective, the distinctions between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are getting more and more blurred. Many of our projects at D2I aim to facilitate cross-disciplinarily and problem-based research. If someone is working on solving problems of food insecurity or flood management, they would benefit from using heterogeneous data gathered from satellites, sensors, interviews, surveys, and published documents. They could also benefit from a digital environment where they can combine methods, such as statistical analysis, data mining, and visualizations.\r\n\r\nObviously, data curation can be domain specific; for example, descriptions of geosciences data would be different from descriptions of sociological surveys. At the same time, it seems more useful to talk about the pressures on and need for curating various types of data, such as images; spatial, temporal, and textual data; audio and video; databases; heterogeneous datasets; and so on. Identifying differences and similarities in the curation of various types of data would allow us to create more integrated environments for sharing and analyzing data across disciplines, fields, and institutions.\r\n\r\nIn addition to data types, pressures and needs relating to data curation cluster around the size of datasets, data sensitivity, and researchers’ awareness of the need for data stewardship.\r\n\r\n<b>Size of data.</b> There are many discussions around so-called big data versus small or long-tail data. In the business world, big data are often defined along the dimensions of three Vs: volume, velocity, and variety. ((Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” <i>Gartner Blog Network</i>, February 6, 2001, <a href=\"Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” Gartner Blog Network, February 6, 2001, http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf.\">http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf</a>.)) Big data are the data that are so large, quickly accumulating, and complex that they require different approaches in storage, analysis, and curation, whether dealing with a massive amount of texts in a digital humanities database or high-resolution images in astronomy. Long-tail data have their own challenges. They may be easy to store on one computer, but because they are often collected for individual studies, they may be very heterogeneous in variables and observation points they cover. In data curation, it is hard to figure out how to integrate such data into a single environment. As Katherine Akers pointed out in her recent essay, small data are messy, but they are important; once they are meaningfully preserved and integrated, they can contribute as much if not more to our knowledge as big data. ((Katherine Akers, “Looking Out for the Little Guy: Small Data Curation,” <i>Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i>, February/March 2013, <a href=\"http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html\">http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html</a>.))\r\n\r\n<b>Data sensitivity.</b> This is related to the idea of open access to the products of scholarly activities. Proponents argue that open access is beneficial for the advancement of knowledge as well as for the existence of an informed and educated citizenry. Should the ideals and policies of open access be applied to data? Access to data might be more complicated than access to published materials, because knowledge about human subjects or certain areas of the planet can be harmful when widely shared. When thinking about data curation, it is important to develop a framework to address multiple levels of data sensitivity and promote research and education without causing more problems than solutions.\r\n\r\n<b>Researchers’ awareness.</b> Research communities vary by their awareness and acceptance of the need to share and curate data. For example, in some disciplines such as climatology or astronomy, the frameworks for data exchanges are much more developed. Climate models rely on the three-dimensional grid that represents and calculates atmospheric, oceanic, and chemical information from around the world. ((NOAA\'s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, “Modeling Climate,” last modified March 7, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html\">http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html</a>.)) No one—be it a person, a team, or an institution—can collect such data on his or her own. That is why climate-modeling efforts are coordinated on the local, national, and international levels and climate data are stored and documented quite well.\r\n\r\nIn other disciplines, data efforts are still much more localized. At D2I, we have been working with social-ecological data, particularly in one database that contains information from around the world and spans almost two decades. It is a single database and researchers add information using a standardized instrument. Nevertheless, the variation within this database is immense because researchers collect data for their individual projects and adapt the instrument accordingly. When other researchers consult this database to retrieve data for their individual projects, they do not know what is available to them based on their requirements. And we as data curators and tool developers do not necessarily know how to facilitate their queries and make the database better to navigate and share. Hopefully, as more and more researchers become aware of the importance of sharing their data, we will be able to engage them and create integrated solutions for various communities.','Kouper - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4603-revision-5','','','2013-06-15 22:26:10','2013-06-15 22:26:10','',4603,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4603-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4768,3,'2013-06-22 04:19:55','2013-06-22 04:19:55','From a data curation perspective, the distinctions between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are getting more and more blurred. Many of our projects at D2I aim to facilitate cross-disciplinarily and problem-based research. If someone is working on solving problems of food insecurity or flood management, they would benefit from using heterogeneous data gathered from satellites, sensors, interviews, surveys, and published documents. They could also benefit from a digital environment where they can combine methods, such as statistical analysis, data mining, and visualizations.\r\n\r\nObviously, data curation can be domain specific; for example, descriptions of geosciences data would be different from descriptions of sociological surveys. At the same time, it seems more useful to talk about the pressures on and need for curating various types of data, such as images; spatial, temporal, and textual data; audio and video; databases; heterogeneous datasets; and so on. Identifying differences and similarities in the curation of various types of data would allow us to create more integrated environments for sharing and analyzing data across disciplines, fields, and institutions.\r\n\r\nIn addition to data types, pressures and needs relating to data curation cluster around the size of datasets, data sensitivity, and researchers’ awareness of the need for data stewardship.\r\n\r\n<b>Size of data.</b> There are many discussions around so-called big data versus small or long-tail data. In the business world, big data are often defined along the dimensions of three Vs: volume, velocity, and variety. ((Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” <i>Gartner Blog Network</i>, February 6, 2001, <a href=\"Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” Gartner Blog Network, February 6, 2001, http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf.\">http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf</a>.)) Big data are the data that are so large, quickly accumulating, and complex that they require different approaches in storage, analysis, and curation, whether dealing with a massive amount of texts in a digital humanities database or high-resolution images in astronomy. Long-tail data have their own challenges. They may be easy to store on one computer, but because they are often collected for individual studies, they may be very heterogeneous in variables and observation points they cover. In data curation, it is hard to figure out how to integrate such data into a single environment. As Katherine Akers pointed out in her recent essay, small data are messy, but they are important; once they are meaningfully preserved and integrated, they can contribute as much if not more to our knowledge as big data. ((Katherine Akers, “Looking Out for the Little Guy: Small Data Curation,” <i>Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i>, February/March 2013, <a href=\"http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html\">http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html</a>.))\r\n\r\n<b>Data sensitivity.</b> This is related to the idea of open access to the products of scholarly activities. Proponents argue that open access is beneficial for the advancement of knowledge as well as for the existence of an informed and educated citizenry. Should the ideals and policies of open access be applied to data? Access to data might be more complicated than access to published materials, because knowledge about human subjects or certain areas of the planet can be harmful when widely shared. When thinking about data curation, it is important to develop a framework to address multiple levels of data sensitivity and promote research and education without causing more problems than solutions.\r\n\r\n<b>Researchers’ awareness.</b> Research communities vary by their awareness and acceptance of the need to share and curate data. For example, in some disciplines such as climatology or astronomy, the frameworks for data exchanges are much more developed. Climate models rely on the three-dimensional grid that represents and calculates atmospheric, oceanic, and chemical information from around the world. ((NOAA\'s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, “Modeling Climate,” last modified March 7, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html\">http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html</a>.)) No one—be it a person, a team, or an institution—can collect such data on his or her own. That is why climate-modeling efforts are coordinated on the local, national, and international levels and climate data are stored and documented quite well.\r\n\r\nIn other disciplines, data efforts are still much more localized. At D2I, we have been working with social-ecological data, particularly in one database that contains information from around the world and spans almost two decades. It is a single database and researchers add information using a standardized instrument. Nevertheless, the variation within this database is immense because researchers collect data for their individual projects and adapt the instrument accordingly. When other researchers consult this database to retrieve data for their individual projects, they do not know what is available to them based on their requirements. And we as data curators and tool developers do not necessarily know how to facilitate their queries and make the database better to navigate and share. Hopefully, as more and more researchers become aware of the importance of sharing their data, we will be able to engage them and create integrated solutions for various communities.','Kouper - Question 2','From a data curation perspective, the distinctions between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are getting more and more blurred. Many of our projects at D2I aim to facilitate cross-disciplinarily and problem-based research. If someone is working on solving problems of food insecurity or flood management, they would benefit from using heterogeneous data gathered from satellites, sensors, interviews, surveys, and published documents. They could also benefit from a digital environment where they can combine methods, such as statistical analysis, data mining, and visualizations.','inherit','open','open','','4603-revision-6','','','2013-06-22 04:19:55','2013-06-22 04:19:55','',4603,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4603-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(4769,3,'2013-06-15 22:27:16','2013-06-15 22:27:16','This question can apply to two groups: those who are involved in data collection, analysis, or storage, but who do not see curation as one of their primary activities (researchers, students, or librarians); or those who benefit from data availability, but who use it primarily to make decisions in their non-data-oriented work (administrators, policy makers, or the larger public).\r\n\r\nThe former group works with data at the earlier stages of the data life cycle. Curation is important for them because of the changes in the system and the relative value of epistemic products. We curate, or take care of, epistemic products and objects, such as publications or material samples, because they are valuable to the research community over time. Data are a crucial component of reproducible and trustworthy research, and when they are reused in other research they minimize the cost of data collection. Therefore, it is important to curate data at the earlier stages of the research life cycle if we want rigor and accountability in research. In this sense, data curation is just another component of the collective enterprise called science that builds upon prior work and constructs knowledge by testing, proving, and falsifying hypotheses and theories.\r\n\r\nHaving said that, I think that we still have a long way to go to recognize the collective value of research data. In many areas of inquiry, data are still rather private, intended for internal use not public communication. Patterns of private use are usually different from those of public use. We may pile up books and magazines in our bedroom, but we would probably put some thought into arranging them in the living room and probably make sure they fit with the overall décor. If we keep thinking about data as something for private use and try to curate them afterwards, we will always end up with “piles” that require a lot of effort to organize and incorporate into the overall ecology of research products. Such data will always be difficult to discover and use. That is why we need to find ways to make data open for public use and discussion; mandates from funding agencies are not sufficient in this regard.\r\n\r\nFor the latter group of decision makers and the public, the argument for data curation is similar to the argument about the importance of science: Having well-preserved data that are easy to discover and work with helps us join efforts and better explain and understand the world, which ultimately improves our lives and our future.','Kouper - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4605-revision-5','','','2013-06-15 22:27:16','2013-06-15 22:27:16','',4605,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4605-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4770,3,'2013-06-15 22:28:50','2013-06-15 22:28:50','I find all aspects of my work enlightening: working in large and small collaborations, interacting with diverse groups of people, building tools to address the needs of different communities, engaging with researchers, and trying to understand the similarities and differences in data practices across epistemic cultures.\r\n\r\nI value the diversity of opportunities that my work gives me. At the same time, it is hard to act on different opportunities and go outside of academic circles. So far I have been working mostly with researchers, other data curators, and managers at research institutions. I am looking forward to engaging more with the second group of data users that I mentioned above—those who benefit from data availability but do not necessarily collect or disseminate data. I am interested in such projects as citizen science or participatory data stewardship, but I recently realized that such projects may take more planning, time, energy, and so on.\r\n\r\nI had only a few preliminary encounters with non-academic data users, but as I try to get more information about possible ways of engagement, it is very interesting to see how channels and modes of communication as well as perspectives on data may differ. For example, I recently had a conversation with an executive director of the <a href=\"http://www.esipfed.org/\">Federation of Earth Science Information Partners</a> (ESIP) about the importance of sharing earth science data with users such as police offices, disaster management forces, and so on. She had a great idea of organizing an event within the ESIP annual meeting, where such users would come and work together on a shared set of data, using scenarios or something else. Possible outcomes could be a framework, a set of requirements, or even infrastructure modules that would help to use earth science data in non-research contexts. As we discussed this possible project, I realized that most of the existing recommendations of how to engage users in data stewardship are for working with researchers and addressing their needs. We need to address the needs of other user groups so that they become agents in data stewardship as well. One interesting example of that sort of project is a recent data management guide for citizen scientists. ((DataONE Public Participation in Scientific Research Working Group, “Data Management Guide for Citizen Scientists,” February, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf\">http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf</a>.))','Kouper - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4607-revision-5','','','2013-06-15 22:28:50','2013-06-15 22:28:50','',4607,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4607-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),