Record Group
An archival unit grouping the records of a single agency or major organizational entity, used to arrange and describe holdings while preserving their provenance.
A record group is a body of organizationally related records established by an archives for control purposes — typically the records of a single agency or major entity. It is a core unit of archival arrangement and description, used (notably by the U.S. National Archives) to organize large holdings.
Record groups embody the archival principle of provenance (respect des fonds): records are kept and described according to their origin — the office that created them — rather than being intermixed by subject. Within a record group, records are further arranged into series (and the original order is preserved where possible). This structure keeps records understandable as evidence by maintaining the context of who created them and how they were used.