Archival collections offer unique challenges to their custodians. Each collection is intimately tied to the people, time, actions, and events that generated the collection, and therefore needs to be examined, organized, and described individually. Yet archivists recognize the imperative to standardize their procedures for consistency, especially with the increasing use of networked electronic environments.

This book serves as an introduction to the common organizational and descriptive practices that have developed in response to the particular requirements of archival collections. It serves as an orientation to fundamental archival principles for beginning and novice archivists, and includes such topics as the characteristics of archival materials and how these shape practices, the gathering and analyses of information that goes into descriptions, types of finding aids, and the deployment of information systems. Also included are a glossary and a list of Web resources.

Michael J. Fox is an archivist at the Minnesota Historical Society. Peter L. Wilkerson is an archivist at the South Carolina Historical Society. Suzanne R. Warren is an independent consultant. She coordinated the vocabulary training for the Art & Architecture Thesaurus.

This book is out of print. Please check your local library and/or used bookstores.