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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Archival appraisal | 1/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_appraisal | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:07:46.545178+00:00 | kb-cron |
In archival science and archive administration, appraisal is a process usually conducted by members of the record-holding institution (often professional archivists) in which a body of records is examined to determine its value for that institution. It also involves determining how long this value will last. The activity is one of the central tasks of an archivist, to determine the archival value of specific records. When it occurs prior to acquisition, the appraisal process involves assessing records for inclusion in the archives. In connection with an institution's collecting policy, appraisal "represents a doorway into the archives through which all records must pass". Some considerations when conducting appraisal include how to meet the record-granting body's organizational needs, how to uphold requirements of organizational accountability (be they legal, institutional, or determined by archival ethics), and how to meet the expectations of the record-using community. While archival collecting is sometimes equated with appraisal, appraisal is still seen as a critical function of the modern archival profession, even though it has been argued that historical societies contribute to the "general randomness of collecting", which stands against rigorous appraisal standards even as many collecting programs still "acquire the collections of private collectors" and some aspects require partnerships between varied institutions. Appraisal is important in order to maintain cultural heritage for future generations and can provide a legal record for those concerned about their human rights.
== Overview == Appraisal is considered a core archival function, along with acquisition, arrangement and description, preservation and access. The official definition from the Society of American Archivists (SAA) is as follows:
In an archival context, appraisal is the process of determining whether records and other materials have permanent (archival) value. Appraisal may be done at the collection, creator, series, file, or item level. Appraisal can take place prior to donation and prior to physical transfer, at or after accessioning. The basis of appraisal decisions may include a number of factors, including the records' provenance and content, their authenticity and reliability, their order and completeness, their condition and costs to preserve them, and their intrinsic value. Appraisal often takes place within a larger institutional collecting policy and mission statement.
The SAA also says, in their "Guidelines for College and University Archives", that appraisal should be based on the mission statement of the archives and that archivists, using appraisal, will determine what records belong in the archives, based on the "long-term administrative, legal, fiscal, and research value" of the records themselves. They also note that archives will obtain the appropriate records that meet appraisal criteria, and that using the appraisal criteria, archives will develop a regularly updated, written acquisitions policy. Others have described appraisal as a unique skill that archivists bring to the table, especially when it comes to maintaining records and data, with problems when organizations have engaged in appraisal when they didn't have trained archivists on staff. Appraisal can be viewed as a balancing act between the demands of administrative and heritage objectives; between the context of creation and the use of records. Depending on the degree of her or his autonomy to make appraisal decisions, an archivist's role is more or less central to the memory of an institution or society. Jacques Grimard sees archivists as participating in the "management of the world's memory" in three ways, by developing, preserving and communicating memory. In Luciana Duranti's view, appraisal is an analogue for the archival profession as a whole. It is the duty of the profession to "act as a mediator between those who produce archives and those who use them, as a facilitator of public memory making and keeping". She is cautious in her use of the term value in the context of archives, if establishing value means compromising the relationships between documents and the "impartial societal evidence" they might convey to future generations. Other archivists have argued that appraisal is not only one of the acts of record creation, but it requires the impossible in that the archivist is looking into the future, making judgements "as to what information will be of value to researchers". Furthermore, other scholars have argued that appraisal allows for the real or perceived value of records to be determined, that value judgments are made by archivists, based on historical context and their personal beliefs, when they engage in appraisal, although the latter has been contested, and that seeing "naturalness" and "utility" in records upsets existing archival appraisal theory. Whether this argument is accepted or not, a professional assessment which constitutes appraisal, requires specific knowledge and careful planning. It cannot only can be linked with records management but with documents management as part of this analytical procedure. In the process, archival appraisal theories can be consulted, especially in the case of random sampling and elimination of records, which have short-term or routine uses, from consideration as possible records within an archival institution, since they are not inactive records.
== History of appraisal theory ==
=== Muller, Feith & Fruin: the Dutch Manual, 1898 === Mostly concerned with the records of government bodies, the Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives: Drawn up by the Netherlands Association of Archivists (1898), commonly referred to as the "Dutch Manual", assumed, generally, that the archives would keep each record it acquired. The authors articulated concepts of provenance and original order that privileged an "organic bond" in a collection that precedes its transfer to an archival repository. Appraisal decisions that involve selecting individual records or groups of records for exclusion would consequently lie outside the responsibilities of the archivist, in their view.