The relationship of complementarity between documents in archives and libraries

According to Archival Science and Library Science there is a clear difference between fonds and collection. While the fonds is the set of documents derived from the activities of a person or institution in the course of its management, its origin is considered a natural process, it is an “organic whole” and is the object of attention of archival science; the collection is opposite to the fonds, because its origin is subjective and arbitrary, so it cannot be treated with archival methods, but with librarianship methods. However, sometimes fonds and collections coexist in archives and libraries and should be managed indistinctly by archivists and librarians, although theoretically it is not their responsibility. The objective of this article is to provide a theoretical model to explain this anomaly. The result obtained is that the relationship of complementarity between concepts serves as an explanatory model for this apparent incoherence. The study is based on Archival Science, Library Science, Logic and Set Theory. The methods used are hermeneutic, analytical and deductive. As a corollary, it is proposed the need to carry out a deeper epistemological study, to review the object of study of the mentioned disciplines and their interrelation, wich leads to transdiscipline.