This document provides definitions for over 50 archival and records management terms, including: - Archive: A set of documents accumulated from a person or organization's activities that are preserved for use as evidence or information. - Archivist: A professional with an archival science degree responsible for the theoretical, practical and technical aspects of archives. - Records Management: Organizational strategies for efficiently planning, directing and controlling physical and human resources for archives. - Document Lifecycle: The stages documents pass through from creation to final disposition.

1. ARCHIVAL GLOSSARY
PRESENTED BY:
MAIRA ALEJANDRA MUÑOZ BOLAÑOS
LISETH DANIELA GUACA CÁRDENAS
MAGYURY DANIELA CALDERÓN GARCÍA
INSTRUCTOR:
GERARDO PARRA
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2. CENTER FOR MANAGEMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
SURCOLOMBIANO SENA
TECHNOLOGIST IN ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT
FILE ID: 2322384
PITALITO HUILA
Access to archival documents: The right of citizens to consult the information
kept in public archives, under the terms established by law.
Documentary collection: A set of documents in an archive, preserved for their
substantive, historical or cultural value.
Records management: A set of organizational strategies aimed at planning,
directing and controlling physical, technical, technological, financial and human
resources for the efficient operation of the archives.
Document storage: The action of systematically storing archival documents in
appropriate storage space, furnishings and conservation units.
Archivist: Senior professional with a degree in archival science.
Archival science: Discipline that deals with the theoretical, practical and technical
aspects of archives.
Archive: Set of documents, whatever their date, form and material support,
accumulated in a natural process by a person or public or private entity, in the
course of its management, preserved respecting that order to serve as testimony

3. and information to the person or institution that produces them and to the citizens,
or as sources of history.
It can also be understood as the institution that is at the service of administrative
management, information, research and culture.
Central archive: Administrative unit that coordinates and controls the operation of
the management archives and gathers the documents transferred by them once
their processing has been completed and when they are constantly consulted.
Management archive: Archive of the producing office that gathers its documents
in process, subject to continuous use and administrative consultation.
Departmental archives: Archives made up of documents from departmental
agencies and those received in custody.
District archives: Archives made up of documents from district agencies and those
received in custody.
Municipal archives: Archives made up of documents from municipal agencies and
those received in custody.
National Archive: Archive composed of the documentary collections from the
national agencies and those received in custody.
Electronic archive: A set of electronic documents produced and processed in
accordance with archival principles and processes.
General Archive of the Nation: Public establishment in charge of formulating,

4. guiding and controlling the national archival policy. It directs and coordinates the
National Archive System and is responsible for the safeguarding of the nation's
documentary heritage and for the conservation and dissemination of the
documentary heritage that is part of it and that is entrusted to its custody.
Historical archive: Archive to which documentation is transferred from the central
archive or the management archive, which, by decision of the corresponding
Archive Committee, must be permanently preserved, given the value it acquires for
research, science and culture. This type of archive may also keep historical
documents received by donation, voluntary deposit, acquisition or expropriation.
Private archive: Set of documents produced or received by natural or legal persons
under private law in the course of their functions or activities.
Total archiving: Concept that refers to the integral process of documents in their
life cycle.
Folder: Conservation unit in the form of a cover that protects documents for their
storage and preservation.
Catalog: Consultation instrument that describes documentary units.
Document life cycle: The successive stages through which documents pass from
their production or receipt to their final disposition.
Documentary classification: Phase of the documentary organization process, in
which documentary groupings are identified and established according to the

5. organic-functional structure of the producing entity (fund, section, series and/or
subjects).
Code: Numeric or alphanumeric identification that is assigned to the document
producing units and to the respective series and subseries and that must respond
to the document classification system established in the entity.
Official communications: Communications received or produced in the
performance of the functions legally assigned to an entity, regardless of the medium
used. In the process of organizing accumulated funds, the use of the term
"correspondence" is relevant, until the definition of "official communications" was
adopted in Agreement 60 of 2001, issued by the General Archive of the Nation.
Preservation of documents: Set of preventive or corrective measures adopted to
ensure the physical and functional integrity of archival documents.
Preventive conservation of documents: Set of technical, political and
administrative strategies and measures aimed at avoiding or reducing the risk of
deterioration of archival documents, preserving their integrity and stability.
Backup copy: A copy of a document made to preserve the information contained
in the original in case it is lost or destroyed.
Custody of documents: Safekeeping or holding of documents by an institution or
a person, which implies legal responsibility for their administration and
conservation, regardless of their ownership.

6. Archival repository: Specially equipped and suitable premises for the storage
and preservation of archival documents.
Purification: Operation, given in the document organization phase, by which
documents that do not have primary or secondary values are removed for their
subsequent elimination.
Digitization: Technique that allows the reproduction of information that is stored
in an analog way (media: paper, video, cassettes, tape, film, microfilm and others)
in one that can only be read or interpreted by computer.
Final disposition of documents: Decision resulting from the valuation made at
any stage of the life cycle of the documents, recorded in the retention tables and/or
document valuation tables, with a view to their total preservation, elimination,
selection and/or reproduction. A reproduction system must guarantee the legality
and durability of the information.
Active document: A document with primary values whose use is frequent.
Support document: Document generated by the same office or by other offices
or institutions, which is not part of its documentary series, but is useful for the
fulfillment of its functions.
Archival document: Record of information produced or received by a public or
private entity due to its activities or functions.

7. End dates: Dates indicating the start and end times of a file, regardless of the
dates of the documents provided as background or evidence. The oldest and most
recent date of a set of documents.
Foliar: Action of numbering leaves.
Folio: Sheet.
Folio recto: First side of a folio, the one that is numbered.
Folio turned: Second side of a folio, which is not numbered.
Open fonds: Set of documents of natural or legal persons administratively in
force, which is systematically completed.
Accumulated fonds: A collection of documents arranged without any archival
organization criteria.
Closed fund: Set of documents whose series or matters have ceased to be
produced due to the definitive cessation of the functions or activities of the natural
or legal persons that generated them.
Documentary fonds: A set of documents produced by a natural or legal person
in the course of its functions or activities.
Documentary management: Set of administrative and technical activities aimed
at planning, handling and organizing the documentation produced and received by

8. the entities, from its origin to its final destination in order to facilitate its use and
conservation.
Documentary identification: The first stage of archival work, which consists of
researching, analyzing and systematizing the administrative and archival
categories that support the structure of a collection.
Legajo: Set of documents bound or bound together to facilitate their handling.
Archival legislation: Set of norms that regulate archival work in a country.
Manuscript: Document prepared by hand.
Watermark (Watermark): Transparent sign of the paper used as a
distinctive element of the manufacturer.
Microfilming: A technique for photographically recording documents as
small images on high-resolution film.
Sampling: Statistical technique applied in documentary selection, with
quantitative and qualitative criteria.
Documentary heritage: A set of documents preserved for their
historical or cultural value.
Principle of provenance: This is a fundamental principle of archival theory
which establishes that the documents produced by an institution and its
dependencies should not be mixed with those of other institutions.

9. Documentary production: Generation of documents made by the
institutions in compliance with their functions.
Document entry register: Instrument that controls the entry into a file,
following the chronological order of entry, of documents coming from
agencies, institutions or individuals.
Archival regulations: Instrument that establishes the administrative and
technical guidelines that regulate the archival function in an entity.
Reprography: A set of techniques, such as photography, photocopying,
microfilming and digitization, that make it possible to copy or duplicate documents
originally consigned on paper.
Document retention: The period of time that documents must remain in
the management file or central file, as set forth in the document retention
schedule.
Section: In the archival structure, administrative unit that produces
documents. Documentary selection: Final disposition indicated in the
retention or appraisal tables and carried out in the central archive with the
purpose of selecting a representative sample of documents for their
permanent preservation. Also known as "depuration" and "expurgation".
Documentary series: A set of documentary units of homogeneous
structure and content, emanating from the same producing body or
subject as a result of the exercise of its specific functions. Examples:
labor records, contracts, minutes and reports, among others.

10. National Archives System: A set of interrelated archival institutions that
make possible the homogenization and standardization of archival
processes.
Sub-series: A set of documentary units that are part of a series, identified
separately from the series by their content and specific characteristics.
Document retention table: List of series, with their corresponding document
types, to which the time of permanence is assigned at each stage of the
document's life cycle.
Documentary appraisal table: A list of document matters or series to
which a time of permanence in the central archive is assigned, as well as
a final disposition.
Document processing: A document's path from its production or receipt to
the fulfillment of its administrative function.
Administrative unit: Technical-operational unit of an institution.
Conservation unit: Body that contains a set of documents in such a way
as to guarantee their preservation and identification.
Conservation units may include, among other elements, folders, boxes,
books or volumes.
Documentary unit: Unit of analysis in the processes of identification and
characterization of documents. It can be simple, when it is made up of a
single type of document, or complex, when it is made up of several, forming
a file.

11. Accounting value: Utility or aptitude of the documents that support the set of
accounts and records of income, expenditures and economic movements of a
public or private entity.
Private.
Cultural value: Quality of the document that, due to its content, testifies,
among other things, facts, experiences, traditions, customs, habits, values,
ways of life or economic, social, political, religious or aesthetic developments
specific to a community and useful for the knowledge of its identity.
Historical value: Quality attributed to those documents that should be
permanently preserved as primary sources of information, useful for the
reconstruction of the memory of a community.

12. REFERENCES
Santander,U. I.(n.d.). Glossary of archivalterms. [PDFfile].
https://www.uis.edu.co/webUIS/es/administracion/secretariaGeneral/direccionCertificaci
onGestionDocumental/documentos/glosarioArchivistico.pdf