<p>I have for my one year master's thesis worked on arranging and cataloging the archives from the missions stations of Musana, Congo-Brazzaville and Sundi-Lutete, Congo-Kinshasa, belonging to the Swedish Missions Church (Svenska Missionskyrkan). The archives contained records written in Swedish, French and Kikongo, from primarily the years 1910 until 1961. Records have though been found that adhere from both prior to and after these years. These archives are deposited at the Swedish National Archive and it was therefore important to take the opinions and regulations of both parties into consideration, as well as relying onto archival theory.</p><p>The archives were initially scattered and had in some parts been organized by an archivist without formal schooling. The major difficulties in this work has therefore been to establish the provenance – to which creator the documents belonged to, and also to decide to which degree the principle of the original order should play a part. After considering different theories, I decided to respect the secondary order for the correspondence, since rearranging it would disrupt the concordance in the work already done by researchers.</p><p>To still make the archives accessible for the users in its existing order it required me to be aware of whom the user of the archive is, probable areas of research and how these archives are used. This information was then used when writing the archival description and the scope notes in the inventory. I have also taken decisions based on what is practically possible; it has because of regulations not been possible to physically bring the archive to one unit. Also, the circumstances of a shared custody of the archives also determined, in practice, how the inventory could be written.</p><p>This is a one year master's thesis in Archival Science, at the university of Uppsala, Spring semester of 2010.</p>

I have for my one year master's thesis worked on arranging and cataloging the archives from the missions stations of Musana, Congo-Brazzaville and Sundi-Lutete, Congo-Kinshasa, belonging to the Swedish Missions Church (Svenska Missionskyrkan). The archives contained records written in Swedish, French and Kikongo, from primarily the years 1910 until 1961. Records have though been found that adhere from both prior to and after these years. These archives are deposited at the Swedish National Archive and it was therefore important to take the opinions and regulations of both parties into consideration, as well as relying onto archival theory. The archives were initially scattered and had in some parts been organized by an archivist without formal schooling. The major difficulties in this work has therefore been to establish the provenance – to which creator the documents belonged to, and also to decide to which degree the principle of the original order should play a part. After considering different theories, I decided to respect the secondary order for the correspondence, since rearranging it would disrupt the concordance in the work already done by researchers. To still make the archives accessible for the users in its existing order it required me to be aware of whom the user of the archive is, probable areas of research and how these archives are used. This information was then used when writing the archival description and the scope notes in the inventory. I have also taken decisions based on what is practically possible; it has because of regulations not been possible to physically bring the archive to one unit. Also, the circumstances of a shared custody of the archives also determined, in practice, how the inventory could be written. This is a one year master's thesis in Archival Science, at the university of Uppsala, Spring semester of 2010.