When we think of archival repositories, we frequently think of academic archives or large historical societies. We often forget about business or institutional archives, because they are usually closed to the public.

Institutional archives fall into many categories: government at all levels, corporations, not-for-profit organizations, colleges and universities, and religious institutions. These organizations establish archives for several reasons and develop archival collection policies.

The Society of American Archives defines reappraisal as “the process of identifying materials that no longer merit preservation and that are candidates for deaccessioning”. Archivists continue to seek ways to accomplish responsible reappraisal and deaccessioning.

There are numerous articles, case studies, policies, and conference sessions on reappraisal and deaccessioning, yet despite the increasing amount of information, these practices remain controversial.

Along with reference and access, archivists perform several public service activities to bring collections to interested researchers. For novice users, archival repositories can be intimidating, with rules and policies which may not at first make sense. Helping patrons find archival holdings relevant to their search includes a review of a number of service responsibilities.

Security at archival repositories balances threats against assets and setting up protections that make materials accessible while protecting as much as possible. Overall, archives are safe places to work and research, yet issues exist.

Most archivists recognize that they need to plan for disasters, yet many repositories never conduct proper emergency and preservation planning. Even if they do develop a plan, it often is never updated or utilized.

Reference and access, two important areas of public services, are tied to all the activities that archivists perform.

Archivists prepare materials for use according to archival theory and practice; they treat materials like aggregates, arrange and describe them, and make finding aids. Archivists provide initial access through these surrogates, rather than sending researchers to the stacks to browse through the collections. Instead, archivists search within the descriptive tools themselves.

Archives exist to be used by researchers. Access is a set of activities that links primary source materials to the public. Archivists should be able to answer questions about specific collections, such as their sizes, date ranges, the existence of correspondence by individuals, research restrictions, and copyright status, among other issues.

A finding aid is a term used by archivists to describe the various kinds of written descriptions they produce about collections. An aid can be any descriptive tool: published or unpublished, manual or electronic, produced by the creator, the records management program, or the archival repository.

These guides were captured on paper for years, then were created in Word and Excel documents. Now, they’re frequently encoded using Encoded Archival Description (EAD), a standardized system that allows users to find primary sources more easily.

The purpose of archival description is to make accessible the information contained in the collection and maintain control over archival holdings.

Arrangement and description are the critical means by which archivists administer and control their holdings. Archivists view arrangement and description as an ongoing process, a series of linked activities that start with the decision to acquire materials.