Page 21 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Information Analysis and Repackaging

Notes there under numerically by draft board. Records of the navy yards may be arranged geographically,
as the yards are frequently listed in the order of their location from north to south along the Atlantic
Coast beginning with Portsmouth and ending with Key West.
Central files units, wherever they appear in the organization of an agency, constitute an exception
to the rules for the arrangement of subgroups along hierarchical lines. Such units are regarded as
record keeping rather than record-creating units. Of the records kept by them, those that are general
to the bureau or other administrative organization served by them or that are in an organized file
maintained for the organization as a whole should be placed before all other records of the
organization; those that are clearly identifiable is records of other single administrative units and
not incorporated in a systematic filing system should be reunited with the records of the units to
which they belonged.
The arrangement of subgroups may reflect the historical development of the creating agency. A
strictly hierarchical arrangement of subgroups will not be possible when the units that created
them passed through successive organizational changes. The chronological sequence of the creation
of the organizational units, other than their administrative status, will in such cases determine the
placement of the subgroups. If indistinguishable bodies of records were created by each of the
successive organizational units, they should be arranged in order of time. Thus the subgroups of a
predecessor unit should be placed before those of its successor.
Subgroups may be arranged in a functional relationship to each other. — Frequently agencies for
which record groups have been established have passed through so many organizational changes
that the records accumulated by many superseded or discontinued units within them have lost
their administrative identity.
The functions of the agencies may have remained unchanged though the units that performed them
may have been altered or abolished; and the records pertinent to the functions may span many such
units without any clear breaks to distinguish those that were produced by the successive units. In
such cases, the subgroups will naturally be arranged according to function.
This may be done in any one of several ways. The subgroups may lend themselves to a chronological
arrangement that will reflect the growth of functions; or they may lend themselves to an arrangement
that will reflect the order in which the different functions were performed; or they may lend
themselves to an arrangement that will place general subgroups relating to more than one function
before those relating to single functions.
Subgroups may be arranged according to the types of records involved. — Occasionally the natural
subgroups of records within a record group do not correspond either to organizational units or to
functions but correspond rather to types of records that cut across both functional and organizational
lines. In such cases it is the physical characteristics of the records that distinguish the subgroups
and largely determine their arrangement. The arrangement may reflect the chronological
development of the records, as in the Office of the Secretary of War, from the “book period” through
the “record card period” to the “modern period.” Or it may have regard to the content of different
record types, placing the types whose contents are general, such as correspondence, before the
types of specific content, such as contracts.

1.12 Arrangement by Series

Within the subgroups, series should be arranged according to some logical pattern that reflects the
interrelationships among series and where appropriate the relationships of series to organization,
functions, chronological periods, places, or subjects. The ultimate physical arrangement of series on
shelves should be anticipated as far as possible when records are initially stored, and this arrangement

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