Archival Word of the Week: Fonds
A noun, singular, most often pronounced ‘fonz’. This generally just means an archival collection, so when an archival description is at ‘fonds-level’, it’s an overview without details of each...
View ArticleArchival Word of the Week: Holograph
A holograph is a document written wholly in the author’s own handwriting. See also: Love letters. Link: Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us .
View ArticleArchival Word of the Week: fl.
Abbreviation for the word ‘flourit’, ‘fluorit’, or ‘floruit’. The Oxford English Dictionary says ‘floruit‘, but you will probably see these variations, even on the Archives Hub, very sorry about that....
View ArticleArchival Word of the Week: Muniment
There are lots of muniments described on the Archives Hub, sometimes within the records of universities themselves. An Anglo-Norman word, a muniment is a legal document, such as a title deed,...
View ArticleArchival Word of the Week: Provenance
Every archival collection is unique, and the individual documents within them are likely to be unique as well, so it’s essential to establish where a collection has come from, and what has happened to...
View ArticleArchival Word of the Week: Chit
Noun, Anglo-Indian. Alright, it’s not an archival term, but it might be useful for certain kinds of memo. Perhaps it just entered the lexicon at the wrong time! I hope this handy word won’t be killed...
View ArticleArchival Word of the Week: Ephemera
Generic name for published documents which are designed to perform a specific task at a specific time, and expected to be forgotten or thrown away after use – although they might be retained for a...
View ArticleArchival Word of the Week: Common-place book
Bit of a misnomer this one: common-place books are not printed books, they’re manuscript, and they are not commonplace – each one is unique.That’s why so many appear in archival collections described...
View ArticleArchival Word of the Week: Calendar
Not to be confused with calendar. Archivists use this word for an inventory of items in a collection listed chronologically. The items themselves haven’t been re-arranged this way – a calendar is a...
View ArticleArchival Word of the Week: Access Points
Also known as index terms or keywords. We make sure that each archival description on the Archives Hub includes at least one of these. Access points help our search engine, especially our Subject...
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