From the biological classification to the digital classification: renovation perpectives in archival classification

Abstract

The Archival classification is rated as one of the most fundamental and most difficult activities to achieve in practice, since the area has no clear parameters for its execution. Always been linked, in some way, to the principles of provenance and original order. During its theoretical development, was initially linked to a naturalistic perspective and related to biological classification of the nineteenth century. Years later, it begins a long process of redefining and refutation of this view, with the creation of classification schemes, by  structural and functional perspectives with a relation with the institution administration, and at the present time, the  classifications based in the series system and in a glimpse of a item-level classification. In this sense, this article seeks to trace the historical and conceptual framework of archival classification, by analysis of the major theoretical contributions of the past and of present, especially the authors responsible for the enunciation and crystallization of the classification concepts. The aim is also to build a theoretical background of the authors who today seek to redefine and rearrange theoretical concepts and practices related to this activity. Signaling on theoretical and practical horizon the new approaches to classification.