What Is a Depositor?
A depositor is the person or organisation who gives, lends, or transfers material to your archive — the immediate source of acquisition (ISAD(G) 3.2.4). A depositor might be an individual donor, a family, a company, or another institution.
Depositor records are separate from accessions: one depositor can be linked to many accessions over the years, and one accession has at most one depositor. Keeping depositors as their own records means you can see everything a single donor has given you, correct a phone number once instead of on every accession, and handle data-protection requests properly.
Depositor records are core data hygiene, available on every plan — they are not gated behind a paid tier.
Depositor type
Every depositor is either:
- Individual — a named person or family
- Organisation — a company, society, institution, or other body
The type is shown as a small indicator next to the depositor's name throughout the app.
What a depositor record holds
- Name (required)
- Type — Individual or Organisation
- Contact email and phone
- Address
- Do not contact — a flag, not a note, so it's impossible to miss
- Notes — internal, free text
- Lawful basis for holding these details — recorded for GDPR accountability (e.g. "Consent", or "Legitimate interest (acquisition record)")
Depositor records don't carry an acquisition method or date — those belong to the accession, because the same depositor can give material by donation one year and by deposit the next.