The purpose of this rule is to insure that papers do not become misplaced in other folders and thus made more difficult to locate the next time. You must also be careful to maintain the order of the materials as they are presented to you. You will find that a specific study area has been set aside for you to conduct your research. Most archives will allow the use of a laptop computer, so long as its use does not disturb others. One key principle will unlock the organizational structure of most archives, namely the principle of provenance, or in other words, a respect for the source of a set of documents.
Organizational emphasis focuses upon the creator of any set of documents.
Materials arriving at the archive are not to be arbitrarily redistributed or rearranged. Whenever possible, the original order of the documents is preserved, since that order itself says something about the creator of the documents. Success in researching the archive depends upon recognition of this principle. The order that you might expect may not be present in a collection, and it may be necessary to read through an entire index in order to locate what you are looking for. Your best materials may even be located in seemingly unrelated collections.