A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology

RICHARD PEARCE-MOSES

Corrections and Revisions

After three years of work, I realized that this glossary would never be finished. Not only are new words and meanings being added to the language, as I continued reading I found other words and senses. I wanted more time to research obscure words and how meanings shifted in Canada,Great Britain,Australia, and other anglophone cultures. I wanted better tools to build the syndetic structure. I bemoaned the lack of illustrations. I wish I had known when beginning ‘A’ all that I had learned when I had finished ‘Z.’

My greatest concern, however, is not what is missing, but that some definition or note I have written is just plain wrong. In his book on dictionaries, Sidney Landau noted, “Not the least value of lexicography is that one learns to be humble about one’s own knowledge of the language.”¹⁴ I would extend his observation by noting that writing a professional glossary greatly adds to one’s knowledge of the field.No one can know everything. Even a group of intelligent and diligent advisors has boundaries around their knowledge. Nor are any of us perfect. Editing and proofreading a glossary are exercises in somnambulism; after only a short while, the readers are mesmerized and wake to wonder when they stopped really reading and what they missed.

I offer this apology as an invitation. If you have comments on the glossary or its entries, believe a term or another sense for an existing term needs to be added, or find errors in this work, please report them to the Society of American Archivists (glossary@archivists.org or www.archivists.org/glossary). Those comments and suggestions will be used to make the next edition better and more complete.

If you can supply an illustration that might be used for a term in the next edition, please send a photocopy or digital photograph to SAA (Attn: Glossary Project, 17 N. State Street, Suite 1425, Chicago, IL 60602-3315). You will be contacted for camera-ready copy if it will be used in the next edition.

Richard Pearce-Moses
2005

Notes

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