Overview

Introduction

Managing containers and locations in ArchivesSpace (see footnote 1) provides many benefits to Bentley staff, including allowing archivists to exert physical control over material in the stacks as well as determine the amount and location of available space for newly accessioned and processed material. 

This section provides general information about container and location management at the Bentley, including how field and processing archivists should create and/or associate the appropriate top containers and locations with accessioned and processed physical archival material.

General Overview

Good location and container management in ArchivesSpace requires an understanding of the different components in the ArchivesSpace ecosystem and how these components "work" together (according to the Bentley's guidelines):

• Accession records and the lowest archival objects in resource records (e.g. archival objects that represent something with a tangible presence, such as a folder) have container instances (public link).

• Container instances link these accession records and lowest archival objects in resource records to top containers (public link), such as the actual container, such as a box, that holds the aforementioned tangible "thing" in the stacks. The combination of a container instance and top container defines where particular material can be found within a particular accession or collection.

• Top containers have container profiles (public link) and locations (public link). The container profile defines what the specific container actually is (e.g., a Hollinger box of particular dimensions), while the location defines exactly where in the Bentley's stacks that particular top container can be found. Locations are created using a location profile, which is to physical locations what container profiles are to top containers.

The specific combination of container instances, top containers, container profiles, and locations unequivocally define the location and housing of material.

Roles and Responsibilities

It is also important to understand who is involved in managing containers and locations at the Bentley. 

This section of the manual focuses primarily on the responsibilities of field archivists and processing archivists as it relates to physical material. However, many individuals at the Bentley are involved in container and location management for both physical and digital material. For a complete list of these roles and responsibilities, consult this the Roles and Responsibilities page of this website (public link).