Australian War Memorial - About the AJRP

What are Series, Sub-Series, Folder and Item forms?

The most basic element of the AJRP database is the form. There are four forms that serve as templates to display information, at several levels of description, about the actual historical records described within the scope of the project. They are the Series, Sub-Series, Folder and Item forms, and are an attempt to impose an intellectual structure on the organisation of the data. All of the above forms contain details of their position within the hierarchy.

The Series form in the database contains a description of a collection of archival items created and/or accumulated by a particular person or corporate body. In archivist terminology, this is a fond, and is the highest level of description in the database. However, it contains the least information about individual archival items.

The Sub-Series form describes a subset of documents contained within a particular Series. A Sub-Series can only exist in the database below a Series form in the hierarchy. This level of description includes all archival material within a particular Series, but does not contain details about individual archival items.

The Folder form describes smaller set of archival material that is related by either the collecting authority or thematically. For example, a set of soldier's paybooks captured in the same geographical region may be described at the Folder level. This level of description contains more detail about the individual items.

The Item form describes individual archival documents in detail. This form also includes Japanese text where appropriate.

In any view or search result, clicking on the title opens the appropriate form for that record. This form contains all the details contained in the database for the described archival document or set of documents.

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