What is...Control?
Archives focus on two primary types of control: physical and intellectual. Physical control refers to knowing where documents are stored: their shelf, box number, folder, etc. Intellectual control is understanding how records are connected, regardless of where they are physically located.
For example, some collections have a group of boxes stored in one shelf, but another stored in a different shelf. Physical control is knowing where to find each of these boxes, but intellectual control is recording information about them in the same finding aid in ArchivesSpace. Similarly, some of the court cases have unique items that were pulled out and designated as special collections in their own right. however, where the original court name and docket number is preserved, the user can still intellectually connect the objects back to the rest of the court case.
Another example of physical vs intellectual control is a box in which the folders are intellectually described in a logical sequence of topics, but the folders are not filed in topical sequence. The archivist or researcher can still maintain physical control of the folders if they are numbered.
Discrepancies in order and storage may arise from a variety of reasons. For example, sometimes records of different formats (like photographs and paper documents) are stored separately to match the environmental conditions that offer the best preservation for each format. Records from one agency may also be delivered to the archives at different times, and it may be more efficient to unite the records intellectually than physically.
Learn More:
Society of American Archivists: Dictionary of Archives Terminology