Archival science, or archival studies, is the study and theory of building and curating archives,which are collections of documents, recordings and data storage devices. To build and curate an archive, one must acquire and evaluate recorded materials, and be able to access them later. To this end, archival science seeks to improve methods for appraising, storing, preserving, and cataloging recorded materials. An archive curator is called an archivist; the curation of an archive is called archive administration.