5.0 RESOURCES AREA

5.1 RESOURCES

DEFINITION:	Information about the people (e.g., staff, volunteers), funds, facilities, supplies, and equipment that an organization can use to pursue its objectives. Could/should this category be defined to include both assets and liabilities in the accounting sense?
DISCUSSION:
>>Purpose:	Information about an organization's resources
>>Nature:	Information about an organization's resources may exist in "atomic" or aggregated form. For example, a business organization must account for the amount of each fund expenditure transaction, and may also calculate and the aggregate total of all expenditures. Information about resources apears to contain the following subcategories (potentially applicable at the transaction and aggregate levels): Type of resource (e.g., personnel, equipment, funds) Type of source (e.g., donor, member, customer, vendor) Method of aquisition (e.g., gift, purchase, hire, grant-in-aid)
SOURCES:	Information about an organization's resources is created in the first instance by the organization, itself, as a result of its own activity. The organization may report some of this information (often in a standard aggregate form) to other organizations or persons, either on request or on a regular basis. Thus, information about an organization's resources may be available to an archives from primary or secondary sources.
USES:	Economics/business history: Aggregate information about oganizational resorces may be used to compare the organization with other similar organizations, or to classify it with respect to other organizations. Community business and social history:
ACCESS:
TERMINOLOGY:	Terminology relating to organizational resources probably should come from sources used by
EXAMPLES:
INTERCHANGE:
RELATIONSHIPS:	Information about offices and incumbents could represent an atomic form ofinformation about persons as organizational resorces.
PRACTICE:	Traditionally, if archives have compiled information about organizational resources at all, it has been in highly aggregated form (gross income or profit, total numbers of employees, total legislative appropriation); or it has been left implicit (i.e., facilities implied in information about the location of a businss).
ISSUES: