In archival science, a collection of documents and records that have the same provenance or origin; plural of 'fond' in this context.
From French fonds meaning 'foundation' or 'stock,' derived from Latin fundus meaning 'bottom, foundation.' Adopted into English archival terminology in the 20th century to describe organic collections of records from the same source.
The word fonds reveals the beautiful precision of archival science - unlike a random collection of documents, a fonds represents the organic life of an institution or person preserved in paper. French archival theory gave us this term because they understood that records aren't just stored randomly but grow naturally from human activity, like sediment layers of institutional memory.
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