Folders and archives
There are two levels of organisation, and it is important not to confuse them.
Folders
Inside an archive you can create folders and subfolders, just like in your computer's file manager: by fonds, by series, by year, by ongoing research. They make browsing comfortable.
You find them in the left panel, under the folder icon. Right-click a folder to create, rename or delete folders.
To move a folder, with everything in it, into another one you can drag it in the tree or use Move to… from the right-click menu and pick the destination from a list: no mouse needed.
What a record shows in the tree
In the tree every record is listed by its shelfmark. When the shelfmark alone is not enough to recognise it — "165, 579" tells you where the document is, not who it is about — you can add a second line underneath with the value of a field of your choice.
The button at the top right of the Folders panel, next to the "Structure" heading, opens the list:
- None: the shelfmark only. This is the starting setting.
- Automatic: the first name available among declarant, notary, author and people involved. Useful when different models live in the same archive.
- A specific field: the list holds every field used in the archive, including those belonging to a single record and key-value lists such as "People / Actors" (their first name is shown).
At the end of the same menu, Sort the tree by lines the records up by the label instead of by shelfmark, so that all the ones with the same declarant end up together. Records with that field empty stay at the bottom, ordered by shelfmark.
The choice is remembered per archive and applies to this computer only: it is not synchronised and changes nothing for colleagues working on the same shared archive. The same command is available from Ctrl+K → "label".
Archives (vaults)
An archive is a completely separate container, with its own records, models and tags. You can have as many as you like.
Use different archives when the materials have nothing to do with each other (two separate research projects, university work and work for a client). Use folders instead when they belong to the same corpus.
The switcher lets you move quickly from one archive to another, create new local ones, connect a remote one or join an archive shared with a working group.
Which one to choose?
| Situation | Solution |
|---|---|
| Same fonds, different series | Folders |
| Two projects that never overlap | Separate archives |
| Material to share with colleagues, the rest not | Separate archives (a whole archive is shared) |
| You want to search everything together | A single archive with folders |
Search and filters work inside the open archive: that is the main reason not to fragment too much.