Context as a Core Concept in Archival Knowledge Organization

Abstract

Knowledge Organization has been consolidating its universe of research, acting as a mediation stance between the production and the further use of structured knowledge, with clear cultural references, intentionally produced and socialized through documents. These documents are institutionally preserved to ensure their portability in space and permanence in time. This work aims to analyze and discuss the context as a guiding element in the Archival Knowledge Organization – AKO, based on an analysis of the literature on the topic. It is concluded that the context in AKO is composed of juridical-administrative, provenancial, procedural, documentary, and technological dimensions, which act in an integrated way and cover the stages of production, organization, and use of recorded knowledge, to make it socially available. Thus, the archive, through its inherent contextual approach, can face the challenge of promoting glocal (global + local) access to knowledge using processes, tools, and products that primarily consider the context. Without this, the knowledge, which is its object, becomes isolated, anachronistic and deprived of the capacity for social continuity and utility.