Page 19 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Information Analysis and Repackaging

Notes be placed first, followed by record groups representing the bureaus or other offices arranged in
some logical order.
This plan of arrangement is illustrated by the placement of the records of the Department of
Agriculture. These records are allocated to a number of record groups. The group established for
the general records of the Department, consisting of the records of the Office of the Secretary and
certain staff offices, was placed in first position, while the groups established for the records of
bureaus were arranged by name alphabetically.

Where record groups have been established for the field offices of an agency, they
should be placed near the groups covering records of the headquarters offices.

Where the organizational method of arrangement is impracticable, or for some good reasonless
desirable, a functional method should be used. Under this method of arrangement the relative
locations of the record groups will reflect the functional relations of the agencies or offices in which
they accumulated. Record groups established for a succession of agencies or offices related by
function should be arranged so as to show the development of the governmental organizations that
performed the function.
In the case of record groups created by independent agencies, those that relate to common or similar
functions should be placed near to each other, in alphabetical, chronological, or some other logical
order. As an example of this type of arrangement, reference may be made to record groups that
document the Government’s activities in relation to mining and minerals. Among them are Record
Group 89, Records of the Federal Fuel Distributor; Record Group 150, Records of the National
Bituminous Coal Commission; Record Group 194, Records of the War Minerals Relief Commission;
Record Group 222, Records of the Bituminous Coal Division; Record Group 223, Records of the
Bituminous Coal Consumers’ Counsel; and Record Group 57, Records of the Geological Survey.
Certain of these record groups that correspond to administrative units of the Department of the
Interior might be arranged according to the organizational positions of those units in the Department.
But the departmental arrangement might be modified to allow the records of the National Bituminous
Coal Commission, an independent agency, to be placed immediately before those of the Bituminous
Coal Division of the Department, which succeeded to its functions. The groups that are not directly
related to units of the Department might then be brought together in a colony of record groups near
those that are identified in some way with the Department.
Considerations of accessibility may be taken into account in determining the arrangement of record
groups in the stacks. The activity of a record group may be so great as to justify placing it out of its
normal position in relation to other record groups in order to bring it closer to the branch search
room. Similarly, the size of a record group may raise considerations that would make it desirable to
modify a strictly organizational or functional pattern. But only in exceptional circumstances should
consideration of activity and size be permitted to override the basic scheme of arrangement.
Record groups should be maintained as integral units.—The logic that underlies the creation of
record groups requires that the records in each record group should be kept together without
intermingling with them the records of other groups. Deviations from this rule should be permitted
only when parts of a record group require special equipment or are security classified, so that they
cannot be kept with the group to which they belong.

1.11 Arrangement of Subgroups

Once a plan has been chosen for the arrangement of record groups showing their relations to each
other, the next step is to provide for the arrangement within each record group of its subgroups.

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