Does DHP fund the arrangement and description of “artificial” collections?
A key characteristic of importance to an archivist, and which artificial collections don’t have, is provenance. That is, in a collection with provenance, there is a direct line back to the entity (person, organization, business, etc) which created, used and ultimately discarded the records. This connection allows the archivist and the researcher to understand the richness and complexity of the organization (or person) as it has been captured in the course of doing business (or living a life in the case of a personal collection), by those most closely involved. Provenance can never be created after-the-fact which explains the why an artificial collection is a less valuable historical record, and although eligible for funding, an artificial collection is less compelling as the focus of a DHP grant application.
