Numbering your archives: principles and examples

A fonds that is arranged but not numbered is a fonds nobody can find. Numbering gives each article an identifier that says both what it is within the fonds and where it is on the shelves. It is the last step of physical arrangement, right after housing, and the first on which description, access and, later, digitization depend.

What is a reference code?

A reference code is a string of letters and digits assigned to an article, that is, to the unit, both intellectual and physical, that is shelved and produced for consultation: usually a file, sometimes an item. It serves as a unique identifier, shows the article’s place in the fonds and makes it possible to locate it.

The reference code is labelled on the container, often written in pencil on the documents themselves, and entered in the finding aid or the database. One rule governs it:

One reference code per article, one article per reference code.

If an article takes up two boxes, it needs two reference codes. If two files share a reference code, one of them will end up lost.

Reference code or inventory number?

The two notions are close and often confused, especially in institutions that hold both works and archives.

In a ceramics studio, the same cutting template can thus receive an inventory number if it joins a collection of objects, or a reference code if it stays in the file of the piece it was used to make. The choice comes back to the question raised in What is an archive?: its primary function.

Which numbering system?

For public archives, the frameworks are set: French departmental, municipal and hospital archives have their regulatory classification schemes, and contemporary public records are numbered in series W, with continuous numbering by transfer.

For private archives, everyone chooses their own system. Common sense imposes one requirement: reading a reference code should tell you which fonds the article comes from, even if it has been taken out of its box. Take a fictional fonds, that of Hélène Varin, a ceramicist. Her reference codes can be built in two stages:

1. a prefix specific to the fonds, short and stable: here HVA, taken from the creator’s name. An institution that receives many fonds sometimes prefers an accession number (F27 for the twenty-seventh fonds received);
2. an article number, assigned in the order of the arrangement. If the fonds runs to more than a few dozen articles, pad it with zeros (HVA 0007 rather than HVA 7) so that files and spreadsheets sort them correctly.

A space, period or hyphen separates the parts: which one does not matter, as long as you stick to it from one end of the fonds to the other.

Nothing prevents you from inserting the series number. The reference code then becomes hierarchical and reflects the arrangement scheme:

HVA.1.001      series 1 (Life and career), first article
HVA.3.012      series 3 (Studios and firings), twelfth article
HVA.3.013      series 3, next article

This choice has an advantage — the reference code can be read — and a cost: moving a file from one series to another changes its reference code. Continuous numbering never changes, but says nothing about the arrangement. Both are defensible; what matters is to choose before you start.

Numbering part of an article

Sometimes part of an article cannot stay in the same container. In the file for one of Hélène Varin’s commissions, for example, there is a survey drawing of a wall to be decorated, rolled up and nearly two meters long, and a set of slides of the tiles once laid. The drawing fits in no box, and the slides need suitable sleeves. They are stored separately, under a derived reference code based on the file’s, completed with a suffix that says why they are elsewhere:

The choice of letters is free; what matters is to define them once, record them in the introduction to the finding aid and not change them.

The main reference code thus keeps track of the separated part, and you always know where to look.

At what level to number?

You always number at article level, that is, at the lowest level you handle: the file or the item. Series and sub-series do not receive a reference code of their own in the strict sense; they carry the extreme codes, the first and last of the articles they group (“Series 3: HVA.3.001-HVA.3.046”).

It is the reverse movement of description: description goes from the general to the particular, numbering works its way up from the particular to the general.

In Memory Atlas

Memory Atlas computes a composite reference code for each unit: the country code and the repository code (set in the repository identity), then the segments of all the ancestors, then the unit’s own segment, separated by a character of your choice (the slash by default). In Léa Martin’s fonds:

FR-STX/PH              Photographic fonds
FR-STX/PH/1            Series “Personal projects”
FR-STX/PH/1/A          Sub-series “Project A — Lisières”
FR-STX/PH/1/A/NEG      File “Negatives”
FR-STX/PH/1/A/TIR      File “Prints”

It is a hierarchical system, with one particularity: every level has a reference code, in line with ISAD(G) element 3.1.1, which requires a reference code at every level of description. The segments themselves are free: for the files of each project, Léa chose readable abbreviations (REC, NEG, SCN, TIR) rather than numbers.

A few safeguards follow from the “one reference code, one article” rule:

• a segment is unique among its siblings: two children of the same unit cannot carry the same segment;
• a move recomputes the reference codes of the branch, and Memory Atlas asks for confirmation, listing those that change, which prevents unknowingly renumbering articles that are already labelled;
• validation checks that each unit has a segment and that its full reference code is unique (rule V-03);
• search finds a unit by its reference code, whole or partial (cote:PH/1/A), and sorts the results by reference code (Search).

The segment suggested on creation is the first free number, but it can be changed in the Reference code(s) field: you can reuse the numbers already written on your boxes.

Further reading

• Direction des Archives de France, Dictionnaire de terminologie archivistique, 2002: entries “Cote”, “Cotation”, “Article”.
• International Council on Archives, ISAD(G), 2nd edition, 2000: element 3.1.1, Reference code(s).
• The glossary: reference code, extreme codes, suffix, inventory number.

• Reference codes
• Arrangement
• Memory Atlas