Manuscript material is usually organized based on the principle of provenance. Provenance refers to the source of a particular group or collection of manuscripts. Distinguishing between manuscript collections with provenance means that materials created or collected by one individual or institution from one source would form a discrete collection separate from a group of manuscripts that originated from another individual or institution. In other words, archivists group manuscripts into collections according to the persons or organizations responsible for creating or assembling the materials.

The arrangement of manuscripts by provenance is quite different from the arrangement of books in a library where items are organized by subject and not by the donor or book collector.

The Manuscripts Department has two collections that document the organizational histories of two textile mills in nineteenth-century Alamance County, North Carolina and owned by members of the same family-Glencoe Mill Records and Alamance Cotton Mill Records. Regardless of the obvious overlap in subject and content, the records from each mill form two distinct collections.

Employing the principle of provenance ensures that the intellectual or practical processes of the collection's creator are preserved and not disrupted by outside materials. Provenance also prevents records from one individual or institution from being scattered among many different collections.

Archivists who arrange and describe collections are aware that discrete collections may and often do share commonalities, and therefore, in a collection's description, archivists will make note of any related collections.