For Bastian, provenance and community areintertwined, such that "the content, context and structureof record creation [are] inextricably bound together in avision of provenance and community that seeks, weighs, andaccommodates all the voices of a society."

Our central professionalconcepts of respect des fonds, original order, and provenance were designedprecisely in order to preserve records as evidence of the functional-structuralcontext and actions that caused their creation. Following these core principles andrelated procedures, archivists hope to reflect or, where necessary, recreate, astransparently as possible, among records transferred to the control of an archives,the order and character of the records as they were with their original (andsubsequent) owners