Workbook on Digital Private Papers > Glossary
Glossary - O
Original order
Like provenance, the principle of original order is a crucial one in archival practice. It stipulates that records should be maintained (as far as possible) in the order in which their creator arranged them, and that no artificial arrangement should be imposed on the material. This helps to preserve the evidential value and authenticity of the archive: it is only through a knowledge of the context in which a document was created that we can gain a true understanding of that document's meaning, and its relationship to other documents in the archive.
