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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Archival appraisal | 2/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_appraisal | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:07:46.545178+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Sir Hilary Jenkinson, 1922 === Sir Hilary Jenkinson was a British archivist and Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office upon his retirement. His great contribution to appraisal theory is his Manual of Archive Administration (1922; revised 1937; reissued 1965) in which he argued that archives are "documents which formed part of an official transaction and were preserved for official reference". For Jenkinson, the records creator is responsible for determining which records should be transferred to the archives for preservation. Since in his view records are "impartial", the task of selection is merely a matter of choosing documents that best describe "what happened". Jenkinson staked out a limited role for the archivist, positioned between the administrative body transferring the records and the researcher who might seek to access them. The archivist, according to Jenkinson, is to act as a steward of the records in his or her custody. Neither the archivist nor the historian is competent to make appraisal decisions. That process should be left to the donor. Jenkinson deals directly with destruction of records, which he sees as solely the purview of the creator of those records. As long as destruction is done in accordance with the needs of its "practical business" and the agency of origin refrains "from thinking of itself as a body producing historical evidence", its actions should not, in Jenkinson's view, be considered illegitimate, even by succeeding generations. In 2010, scholar Richard J. Cox noted that many archivists still cling to Jenkinson's ideas on appraisal, which claims objectivity in appraisal because record creators engaged in “selection decisions” rather than archivists.
=== T. R. Schellenberg, 1956 === T. R. Schellenberg's work in Modern Archives (1956) represents a departure from Jenkinson's approach, necessitated by the advent of mass duplication and an overwhelming influx of documents into archives. In his work, he divides the value of records into primary values (the original value for the creator; for their administrative, fiscal, and operating uses) and secondary values (their lasting value after they are no longer in current use; for those other than the original creator). He defines evidential value as deriving from the "evidence records contain of the organization and functioning of the Government body that produced them", and informational value as related to the "information records contain on persons, corporate bodies, things, problems, conditions, and the like, with which the Government body dealt". After defining the terms, Schellenberg details the manner in which an archivist could perform appraisal based on these criteria, placing a stress in every case on the importance of research and analysis on the part of the archivist. According to Schellenberg, informational value is based on three criteria:
Uniqueness: The information in the record cannot be found anywhere else and must also be unique in form (i.e., not duplicated elsewhere). Form: An archivist must, according to Schellenberg, consider the form of the information (the degree to which the information is concentrated) as well as the form of the records itself (whether or not they can easily be read by others, e.g., punchcards and tape recordings would involve the use of expensive machinery to decipher). Importance: When appraising records, one must judge records first based on the needs of the government itself, then on the needs of historians/social scientists, as well as local historians and genealogists; he encourages archivists to be wary of records with sentimental value. Other scholars have added that evidence and information are among the goods that records provide underlines his appraisal model, since it emphasizes evidential and informational values, and that effective records management necessitates an appraisal process. Some have even said that new thinking on appraisal led some to see distinctions between Schellenberg's "evidential" and "informational" values as artificial, while others see the degree of use of records as the only means that acquisition or appraisal can be evaluated.