One of the purposes of the Institute is to support religious communities in the management and maintenance of their archive collections. To that end we are developing a series of Advice Sheets, the first two of which are now available and can be freely downloaded from this page.

These sheets aim to provide a guide to the purpose and contents of archives. They will take the community through identification, creation and ongoing maintenance of its collection.

The process of building an archive can be summarised as follows:

• to search thoroughly and bring together all potential archive material and historical objects
• to note their containers and where they were found
• to number and describe roughly their contents; and
• to transfer them into more suitable and accessible boxes, noting their original containers
• to develop an ongoing policy of collecting records