Michel Duchein, "Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des fonds in Archival Science," Archivaria 16 (Summer 1983): 64-82.

Duchein examines the problems associated with taking respect des fonds from the theoretical level to pratical application in the course of archival operations. He offers "solutions for actual cases without being distracted by considerations which are too theoretical."

HISTORICAL DEFINITION OF RESPECT DES FONDS

• Duchein defines respect des fonds as meaning "to group, without mixing them with others, the archives (documents of every kind) created by or coming from an administration, establishment, person, or corporate body."
• originated with a circular drafted by the head of the French archives and signed by the French Minister of the Interior in 1814.
• Duchein asserts that the principle is now universally accepted and will likely "never again be fundamentally questioned."

• Theoretical - The archival document must be considered as part of a whole; it cannot be appreciated outside the context of its creation and transmission.
• Practical - Respect des fonds offers the archivist a reliable base for the work of classification and description.

• Definition of fonds according to the hierarchy of creating agencies
• maximalist school - the whole of archives coming from all the agencies and establishments dependent on a single ministry form a single fonds.
• minimalist school - reduces the fonds to the level of the smallest possible functional cell
• proposed criterafor constituting a fonds:
• agency must possess its own name and judicial existence proclaimed in a dated act.
• agency must possess precise and stable powers defined by a text having a legal or regulatory status.
• its position in the line of authority of the administrative hierarchy must be exactly defined by the creating act.
• it must have a responsible head, possessing the power of decision to his hierarchical level.
• its internal organization must as far as possible be known and regulated by an organizational chart.

• Changes of jurisdiction of archival creating agencies and their repercussions on archival science
• The fonds of an abolished agency must always be considered as separate from that of an agency which received it, except when the mixture of the two fonds is so complete that the distinction of one from the other is impossible
• Duchein rejects proposals calling for record series that would create "sequences of documents independent of administrative context."

• What exactly is meant by the term "provenance" of a fonds?
• In most cases, the agency that created the fonds, even if it has been received by one or more intermediary agencies before being deposited at an archives.
• Exception is the case of a fonds that has been dismembered and/or integrated into the fonds of another agency, in which case its provenance is the agency that received and integrated the fonds.

• Fonds "open" and fonds "closed"
• Fonds of one agency remain open and incorporate the fonds of a succeeding agency when the function remains consistent and only the name changes.
• If one agency is abolished and its function is assumed by another, already existing agency, the fonds of the first agency must be closed.

• Does respect des fonds involve respect for their original internal arrangement?
• The theory has gradually come to incorporate respect for "original organization."
• But Duchein rejects the Dutch Manual's call for "reconstructing" original order of a collection that is received in obvious disarray.

THE ARCHIVAL FINDING AID AS A MEANS OF REMEDYING THE DIFFICULTIES OF RESPECT DES FONDS

• Finding aids should be used to reconstitute "the continuity of suites of documentation which were disturbed in the arrangement of fonds because of changes of structure and jurisdiction relating to the agencies."