What Is a Fonds?

A Fonds is the most important concept in archival organisation. It's the top-level grouping for a collection — named after the person, family, or organisation that created the records.

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The plain-English explanation

Imagine a large family donates their entire archive to a local history museum: letters, diaries, photographs, legal documents, business records. All of those materials — regardless of type, date, or subject — form a single Fonds: the Smith Family Fonds.

The key idea is provenance — records are grouped by who created them, not by what they're about. A letter and a photograph can be in the same Fonds because they both came from the same family, even though they look completely different.

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The archival hierarchy

Fonds sit at the top of a hierarchy:

Fonds                           ← top level (e.g. "Smith Family Fonds")
├── Sub-fonds (optional)        ← major divisions (e.g. "John Smith's Papers")
│   └── Series                  ← groups of related records (e.g. "Correspondence")
│       └── Sub-series          ← further divisions (e.g. "Personal Letters")
│           └── Accession       ← a batch of files
│               └── File        ← individual items

In practice, not every level is needed. A small, simple collection might just be:

Fonds
└── Series
    └── Accession

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Why does this matter?

Using proper archival structure:

• Makes your archive navigable to other researchers (who expect this structure)
• Enables export in standard formats (EAD3, ArchivesSpace) that other institutions can import
• Generates proper Finding Aids automatically
• Preserves the context of records — knowing who created something is often as important as what it contains

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Fonds vs. Dossiers

It's easy to confuse Fonds and Dossiers:

	Fonds	Dossier
What it is	Reflects where records came from	A thematic research folder you create
Principle	Provenance (origin-based)	Subject-based
Created by	The archive's structure	You, for a specific research question
Changes over time	Stable (reflects history)	Flexible (you add/remove items)

See What Is a Dossier? for more.

note

Fonds are available on paid plans (Pro, Team, Enterprise). Free users can use Accessions but cannot build a Fonds structure.