Custodial History, Provenance, and the Description of Personal Records.

Custodial History, Provenance, and the Description of Personal Records.

Archives

17th century English royalist and diplomat, Sir Richard Fanshawe, left a rich collection of letters and papers to his wife that during the next centuries became dispersed and scattered. The acquisition of these scattered documents by a 20th century local history museum neglected to include the equally rich historical context of each "collector" and their collections of these scattered remnants. This neglect of assigning provenance and misinterpreting the concept of the fonds provides Geoffrey Yeo a case study for defending traditional archival standards. Yeo argues that rather than ignore such concepts as "fonds" and "provenance" when building archival collections, including those digitally-based, these concepts should be used to distinguish the original context and creators of the collections.

Yeo explains the custodial history of a collection provides historical context and significant insight into the successive transfers of ownership. Collection descriptions should, therefore, include the custodial history, or provenance.

Yeo, Geoffrey

Libraries & the Cultural Record

2009

Polk, Victoria

The University of Texas Press

Journal Article

Yeo, Geoffrey. "Custodial History, Provenance, and the Description of Personal Records." Libraries & the Cultural Record 44, no.1 (2009): 50-64. Accessed April 20, 2013. doi:10.1353/lac.0.0062.

Yeo persuasively argues that traditional archival standards, particularly the fonds and provenance, should guide the development of contemporary archives. Despite the dynamic nature of digital collections and the potential for dispersing the original order of a collection, archivists provide historical context when they establish the provenance of a collection. This article identifies one of the key debates within the archiving profession.