Resumo
Archivists have often assumed that there is a “correct” way to arrange archives, and the principle of original order demands a respect for particular orderings imposed in the past. In the digital world, however, we can order and reorder at will. Instead of predefining the groupings our users encounter, we can employ technologies that allow instant assembly of collections reflecting individual users’ interests. So why do we cling to the idea that some ways of arranging archives are better than others? Why not relinquish our power to control the ordering of archives and allow users to construct their own orderings across the boundaries of formal provenance? While arguing that we should develop systems that empower a range of users, this paper asserts that such systems must also be capable of providing evidential contexts. Original orders cannot represent the full richness of context, but they can indicate how past understandings of archives were translated into decisions about filing and enable us to make interferences about archival interrelationships that we can no longer reach in any other way. At the same time, we can and should take advantage of digital capabilities and multiple orderings, both to resolve issues of contextualization that seemed intractable in the paper world and to support the alternative perspectives of other communities. However, this will entail rethinking some of our traditional views about the immutability of archival aggregations.
