Understanding Archive Catalogues

Archive catalogues can seem a lot more confusing than library catalogues. Unlike books, which have recognisable, uniform attributes - titles, authors, publishers, etc - archive collections can hold all sorts of documents. Correspondence, receipts, ledgers, diaries and minute-books are just a few examples of frequently found records. They're all likely to have different layouts, depending on the individual, the organisation, the country or the century they come from. So even within the same collection, a business record or a personal note can take widely different forms.

Because no two archive collections are the same, neither are their catalogues. So just when you've got the hang of using one catalogue, you go to research a different collection and, despite all the standards and nice stuff we throw in (ISAD(g), we're looking at you!), it feels like you're starting all over again.

As archivists, we feel your pain. We really do. Step one of getting to grips with a recalcitrant archive cataloguer is making friends with the archivist. Or, you know, just asking us nicely. We've probably wrestled with exactly the same issues as you're facing. And we want to help.

Archives hold records. Every item in an archive collection documents some aspect of a specific event, transaction, relationship or occasion. And because life is messy, these events, etc, can be slippery to classify. So we start off by identifying the entity that gave rise to all of these records in the first place. It could be a person, an institution, a family, a historical moment. Whatever it is, we call this originating entity the fonds.

We then start to think about all the activities the fonds undertakes to keep itself going. Say your fonds is a school. It will provide lessons, of course. But it will also do a whole lot of other things - hire staff, register children, maintain a building, raise funds - each of which generates its own set of records. We refer to these different sets as series.

Within each series, we can have further groupings (subseries, subsubseries... you get the picture). Until you get to the most manageable unit of the catalogue: the file. Although we always show you the overall structure so that you can understand how it all fits together, the file is what you, as a researcher, will request to see.

To make material accessible, it needs to be catalogued to file level. And cataloguing, as you've probably guessed by now, is a complicated process that takes a long time. So most archives have cataloguing backlogs - but we're working on them!

In order to make the move from one catalogue to another feel a little less jarring, archivists often try to use similar catalogue structures for similar collections.

In the case of London Livery Companies, archivists at the Guildhall Library worked on collections from a lot of different Companies, and devised a system for classifying their records. So when archivists for other Livery Companies began arranging their own collections, it made sense for them to use that system. It's described in the Guildhall Library's book City of London Livery Companies and Related Organisations: A Guide to their Archives in Guildhall Library (City of London, 2010).

The Guildhall mapping identified seven series that all Livery Company archives have. These are:

A: Constitutional Records

- records such as charters, which establish the company as a legal entity

B: Governance records

- records of the company's executive body (usually called the Court of Assistants) and internal committees

C: Membership records

- Livery Companies are membership organisations, so these records are big hitters! Typically they reflect how people came to join a company by training or experience in a particular profession, and the different levels of membership that were available to them

D: Financial records

- if you want to understand history, follow the money

E: Trade records

- where each Livery Company gets to shine. Brewers gonna brew, right? For Stationers, it's all about the books. (And the paper. And the press.)

F: General administrative and other records

- all of the admin that goes into running a Livery Company. Plus all of the other stuff we wanted to keep, but couldn't find a place for.

G: Charities and property records

- Livery Companies have always been big into charity. And owning things.

We've used these reference codes in the Stationers' Company Archive catalogue, preceded by the code for the Stationers' Company Archive, TSC. Additionally, from the seventeenth century the Stationers' Company had its own joint stock company, the English Stock, for printing and publishing certain books and pamphlets. Although technically this falls under the Company's trade records (Series E), this collection is so big, and some of its activities were historically so important in the English print industry, that we felt it deserved its own subfonds, ref code TSC/STO. Currently, the arrangement of the English Stock mirrors the structure of the larger collection: i.e. TSC/STO/A: English Stock Constitutional records, TSC/STO/B: English Stock Governance records, etc. Useful repetition, or maddening mise en abyme? You tell us!

It's not just archives that are complicated. People are too (don't get us started on historians... ) So if you think of the archive catalogue as a conduit between two ridiculously over-complicated tangles of documents and neurons, you'll see why we keep having to re-shape and re-build it. Most archive catalogues you come across will have developed from legacy systems of some sort. Because publications will have used those legacy systems, we need to keep the old references alongside the new ones.

This catalogue hasn't had all that many reboots (yet). But there are still some you should be aware of. The Archive was previously arranged by Honorary Archivist Robin Myers, who published her arrangement and descriptions in The Stationers' Company Archive: An Account of the Records, 1554-1984 (Robin Myers, Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies, 1990). If you can get your hands on a copy, do - it's still the most comprehensive volume around. The reference numbers used in that book have been retained as alternative reference numbers in the current catalogue, so you can use them as search terms (see our page on How to Search).

In addition, you may be aware that the majority of historical records in the Stationers' Company Archive have been digitised and are available online in a digital resource called Literary Print Culture. Unfortunately, not everything had been fully catalogued while that project was underway, so there are discrepancies there. Again, see How to Search for details.

Although it mostly is. But there are a few additional collections held at the Stationers' Company Archive. The Worshipful Company of Newspaper Makers barely drew breath before amalgamating with the Stationers' Company to form the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, which is still the full and correct name of the Stationers' Company (though we hardly ever use it). So we don't have much documentation from the Newspaper Makers, but the records we do have occupy a tiny fonds all of their own. We also have collections of documents (mostly property transactions) which belonged to families closely associated with the Stationers' Company, and which were donated to or bought by the Stationers' Company over the years.

These collections are not all fully catalogued, but we'll be adding to their descriptions as and when we can. In the meantime, just get in touch if you want more information.