An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located.
Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of that person or organization. Professional archivists and historians generally understand archives to be records that have been naturally and necessarily generated as a product of regular legal, commercial, administrative, or social activities. They have been metaphorically defined as "the secretions of an organism", and are distinguished from documents that have been consciously written or created to communicate a particular message to posterity.
In general, archives consist of records that have been selected for permanent or long-term preservation on grounds of their enduring cultural, historical, or evidentiary value. Archival records are normally unpublished and almost always unique, unlike books or magazines of which many identical copies may exist. This means that archives are quite distinct from libraries with regard to their functions and organization, although archival collections can often be found within library buildings.
A person who works in archives is called an archivist. The study and practice of organizing, preserving, and providing access to information and materials in archives is called archival science. The physical place of storage can be referred to as an archive (more usual in the United Kingdom), an archives (more usual in the United States), or a repository.
The computing use of the term "archive" should not be confused with the record-keeping meaning of the term.
The English word archive ˈɑrkaɪv is derived from the French archives (plural), and in turn from Latin archīum or archīvum, the romanized form of the Greek ἀρχεῖον (arkheion). The Greek term originally referred to the home or dwelling of the Archon, a ruler or chief magistrate, in which important official state documents were filed and interpreted; from there its meaning broadened to encompass such concepts as "town hall" and "public records".
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A la lumière de l'histoire de la Guerre froide globale, ce cours familiarise les étudiant.e.s avec les méthodes d'histoire et avec l'analyse critique de sources primaires.
Ce cours s'inscrit dans une offre de cours interdisciplinaires et collaboratifs ouverts aux étudiant·e·s de l'UNIL et de l'EPFL.
Il s'oriente principalement vers la connaissance de l'histoire de Lausa
In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies, and it combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and "born-digital" content, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time.
Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, paleontology, archives, manuscripts, printed books, the circular economy, and science and computing.
A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin Documentum, which denotes a "teaching" or "lesson": the verb doceō denotes "to teach". In the past, the word was usually used to denote written proof useful as evidence of a truth or fact. In the Computer Age, "document" usually denotes a primarily textual , including its structure and format, e.g. fonts, colors, and .
The archive of science is a place where scientific practices are sedimented in the form of drafts, protocols of rejected hypotheses and failed experiments, obsolete instruments, outdated visualizations and other residues. Today, just as science goes more a ...
In a society that recognizes the urgency of safeguarding the environment and drastically limiting land transformations and energy-intensive activities like constructing new buildings, the protection of architectural and environmental heritage is no longer ...
2024
Purpose Recent archiving and curatorial practices took advantage of the advancement in digital technologies, creating immersive and interactive experiences to emphasize the plurality of memory materials, encourage personalized sense-making and extract, man ...