Cataloguing and Archiving: The same, yet different.

Cataloguing is the process of taking note of the defining characteristics of a book, piece of music, sound recording, or other stored information source ('stored' as in captured in some medium or other and capable of being retrieved at a later date) so that it can be shelved securely and RETRIEVED at a future point in time with minimum extra effort.

In Libraries this process is focused on books, sound recordings, movies, and digital files with the intent of making them easily searchable - by staff and patron alike - and retrievable for the use and enjoyment of those who want them.
This is accomplished using information that the publisher, manufacturer, Recording Artist, or other bodies involved in making the item have already placed on it. Useful things like copyright numbers, ISBN and their equivalents are what make this type of cataloguing possible. No matter how confusing RDA and AACR2 sound, they depend on the item being at least partially catalogued before it gets to the library. Library of Congress, Dewey, private company cataloguing setups, they all depend on that too.


Archiving does not.

When materials arrive in the archives they rarely come with clearly defined titles or even clearly defined authors. Sometimes they don't even arrive with clearly defined material types. A donation to the Archive (any archive) may arrive with post-it notes, till-tapes, sales slips, hand-written letters, random scribbles, photographs (that may-or-may-not have the names of what is shown in them noted), slides, film reels, video tapes, audio cassettes, long (or short) play records, train tickets, undeveloped film, negatives, handkerchiefs, maps, fake flowers, pressed real flowers, etc... all jumbled up in a box or set of boxes that are shoved into the Archivist's arms with a "Thanks for taking this, I hope it finds a good home here" from the donor.
Then the fun begins.
The Archive, like any library, has a set of standards for the materials that it contains. This policy defines what is and is not going to remain on the shelves.
As an example, the archive may have a defined region that it covers. This region may be as small as a single company or as large as an entire country, but the defining region dictates that the donated materials must be sorted and anything that falls outside those boundaries be returned to the donor or disposed of properly.
If the policy defines the age of materials, then a donation may be too old or too new to remain.
The policy may even define types of materials that the archive will accept. Music perhaps, in sheet or recording. Photographs, as either print or negatives. Text, as either typed or hand-written.

Two-dimensional materials only, or three, or none because it's archiving only digital forms.
Whatever the policy reads, the donation still needs to be sorted. Often there is no instantly apparent link between materials - this link must be determined by the archivist doing the sorting.

This link is referred to as a "FONDS". In modern archival practice, the fonds is generally the highest level of arrangement, and is usually used to describe the whole of the archives of an organization or the papers of an individual. It may be divided into sub-fonds, generally the records of different branches of an organization or major themes within the papers of an individual. The sub-fonds will, in turn, contain files and sub-files that divide down to the individual photo or letter level. This range of division is dependent on the archivist's need for to search the files later.


Interestingly enough all this work really means that in the end the materials are filed in much the same way in both library types. 
It would not be inaccurate to compare a FONDS to a subject type, with sub-fonds being books in that subject and the files inside them as chapters in the books. All arranged by the archivist instead of the author and identified by the archive instead of the publisher and finally catalogued by the archivist as Librarian.
The result is that the archives can be searched and used like any library, there's just a LOT more work by the archive involved in accomplishing this.



Kudos to the Archivist! The most hands-on of all Librarians!