Archival Word of the Week: Fonds
A noun, singular, most often pronounced 'fonz'. This generally just means an archival collection, so when an archival description is at 'fonds-level', it's an overview without details of each individual item. Some archivists simply use the term 'collection', or treat the terms as interchangeable. But others reserve 'fonds' to distinguish a collection generated by a person, family, or organisation, as opposed to an 'artificial' collection, which has been gathered and arranged by a collector or a repository.
Sadly, the term 'fonds' does not seem to appear in this sense in the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED does include 'fond', meaning "source of supply, stock, store", which is apt in the sense of the archival collection providing a fund of data, which we can elaborate with metadata. But does anyone want to suggest some published examples to the OED for the archival use of the word? And can anybody guide us with the pronunciation?
See also: Archives Hub Guided Tour Level of DescriptionLabels: Archival Word of the Week
posted by Paddy at 10:58 am
4 Comments:
There is a Dutch word 'fonds' that has the meaning you describe. I imagine that that's the origin of the word. It's pronounced like 'fonts'.
In Spain, the usage of the term –fonds-, in archival world, it is for a "collection" generated by an Institution, person etc. And collection, as those ones made artificially by someone who compiles documental materials.
Thanks for the interesting information!
Laura
When I first learnt about mechanisms of archival description, almost all the archivists I spoke to used the pronunciation 'fon', some with a slightly nasal pronunciation of the vowel suggesting that the word was of French origin. Most acknowledged that there was some difference of opinion about the pronunciation, though.
I french and in the Archive world, the word fonds described a archival unit create by an archivist with differents materials from a person or institution. the french pronunciation is "fon". The orthography of this word is always : fonds with the final "s" (we say : "un fonds").
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