He gives a good, illustrated description of series and series arrangement. This principle was made more precise by Prussian archivists in 1881 who issued regulations that public records should be grouped according to their origins in administrative bodies and became recognized as the principle of provenance .
Records have an organic character, unless they are an artificial collection.
As a product of organic activity, records have a value in revealing the actions that created them, or an evidential value. He goes on to say that records of organic bodies are normally arranged in relation to the actions that resulted in their production, and that the way they were brought together is therefore significant. Archive quality only survives unimpaired so long as their natural form and relationship are maintained. This evidential value is in contrast to the value of information contained in individual record items. A basic approach in evaluating records produced by public bodies is to retain those that show the functioning of such bodies.