n. (also l’ordre primitif, respect de l’ordre intérieur)the organization and sequence of records established by the creator of the recordsPosner 1940a, 169It seems as if the future will bring a midway solution: The files and records will be arranged on the shelves and will be inventoried according to their original order; then the archivist will try to establish a more sensible arrangement, consistent with modern needs and likely to meet the questions of modern research work, by cataloguing and indexing the records and by preparing accurate and exhaustive descriptions of the contents of the different fonds and indicating the possible historical significance of their different series.Cappon 1956, 103If, however, the curator has developed a plan of collecting with a sound historical basis, his richest material consists of bodies of organic papers of persons or families, organizations, or institutions, in their original order of arrangement, as the hypothetical archivist of any one of them would have preserved them. If they are transferred to a research library in what is obviously their original state, the curator’s first guiding principle dictates that they be preserved in that system. Whatever modification he imposes after careful examination should not in substance violate this archival dictum.Schellenberg 1961, 20While the original order of record items in a series is not a sacrosanct thing—something to be preserved at all costs—it may nonetheless be one that reveals the significance of records and makes them usable.Boles 1982, 26Despite hesitancy and some opposition, a general trend among archivists exists to accept the principle of original order as the normative organizing method.Stielow 1992, 334Even the sacred precepts of original order and provenance must be reconsidered in light of “virtual records,” “multimedia documents,” and “groupware,” in which elements of a text may have been drawn from multiple data sources created by many authors at different times and places.
