Glossary
Archivist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential archivist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key archivist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in archivist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Accession
- Formally receiving materials.
- Acid-free
- Safe storage material.
- Appraisal
- Deciding what to keep.
- Born-digital
- Created digitally.
- DACS
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard.
- Deed of gift
- Legal donation document.
- Digital preservation
- Keeping files usable.
- EAD
- Encoded Archival Description.
- Finding aid
- Guide to a collection.
- MPLP
- More product, less process.
- Original order
- Keeping records as created.
- Processing
- Arranging and describing.
- Provenance
- Origin of records.
- Reading room
- Supervised research space.
- Retention schedule
- How long to keep records.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Archivist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Archivist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.