Registration

An up-to-date register or inventory of its collection is an essential administrative tool for an archive and the maintenance of such a register is therefore a high priority task, although it need not be a complex one. The process of registering an acquisition formally acknowledges - most tangibly by allotting the new item an accession number which gives it an identity within the archive - both that the collection has been augmented by a new item, and that the item is now part of the collection. The register thus provides a reflection of the archive's growth, and a starting point for all the other documentation which is likely to build up around the item.

The essential feature of an accessions register is its simplicity. Complexity invites delay or confusion, and in either of these cases the register fails to fulfill its purpose. Registers are commonly held in book form, the pages divided so that entries appear in columns under such headings as 'accession number', 'date received', 'source' (i.e. from whom received), 'method of acquisition' and 'identification' (i.e. title or description of item). Entries are obviously in accession number order. Some archives use the numbers themselves to convey information, for example by maintaining separate number runs, or reserving blocks of numbers for different types of material, or by recording each year's accessions in a new numerical run. Such practices are of dubious value they may break down (a sub-collection might grow beyond the block of numbers reserved for it) and in any case the information implied is generally available elsewhere in the documentation. A single, simple numerical sequence is on the whole the preferred approach to accessions numbering -among other benefits, it conveys a direct impression of the growth of the collection.

Individual archives will naturally vary the column headings used to register their own accessions. An archive whose material derives solely from its own staff in the field, for example, would have no need for entries under method of acquisition and source, but might substitute the name or initials of the field-worker responsible and other details such as place and date of recording. Some archives use the accessions register for additional purposes perhaps as a checklist of procedures to be followed in the acquisition/archiving/cataloguing process. Such usage does, or at least should, not violate the principle that the register is a simple document, intended as an aid to archive administration.