O uso da classificação nos arquivos como instrumento de organização, representação e recuperação da informação

Abstract

This modest essay aims to discuss the interest and the use of classification in archives, either in what concerns intellectual organization of information, in a hierarchical structure of organic-functional or thematic type, or at information representation and retrieval level, regarding the informational content. Starting by an approach to the concept of 'classification', we keep on analyzing the information access tools relative to Portuguese archives. This enables to understand how classification has been used in order to establish organizational schedules, which provide context to the informational production of the organisms (persons, families, corporate bodies) that generate the archives and how such schedules represent (or not) with scientific objectivity the informational reality being considered. In complement, the utility of classification in archives is discussed as a tool for the representation, and afterwards the retrieval, of the informational content, making possible a transversal access to information, side by side with the access by creators/authors that the organic-functional schedules provide. Comparisons, analogies and differences in what respects the use of indexing languages in other information systems, namely libraries, where subject classifications have a generalized application since the last decades of 19th century, are also established.