Transcription
Hello, and welcome to this lecture entitled "Appraisal and Selection." Let's begin with a couple of definitions.
Appraisal is the most important duty of the archist. It is judging the value of archival materials against the repository collecting policy. In appraisal, you decide what to retain permanently and what to discard or return. Consequently, the implications of your appro appraisal and of your retention decision are very high. In fact, appraisal defines your real repository rather than what's in your collecting policy. Appraisal is what defines what you are as an archival repository. It also defines the sources for history. Historians use archives and the material within archives to write histories about the era that the archive collected in. Consequently, then, if you keep something permanently, that becomes part of the potential historical record. If you throw stuff away or return it to a donor and never keep it in the archives, that also impacts the historical record. So, you must be mindful and analytical about why you retain materials awaiting your appraisal decision.
Appraisal goes beyond selecting materials. You appraise the material throughout the time that you hold them to determine how many resources you should devote to preserving and making them available. You also reselect many of your materials at a later date. Some materials you're not sure if you should really have them, and others outlive their usefulness when you run into practical problems of short space or reduced income or something like that.
Now, selection is a body of techniques for bringing in the correct materials. It's almost impossible to draw a bright distinction between appraisal and selection, and there are guidelines and best practices to aid you, buried in appraisal theory. Pay particular attention to Shellenberg's three tests of informational value when we get to those.
Now, there are extensions of the barebones appraisal theory that we will be talking about here. It, these extensions, ask, "What should we be appraising: the materials or something else?" This leads to a discussion of other appraisal ideas. One of these was called "documentation strategy," another is called "macro appraisal," yet another is called "the Minnesota method." We'll not discuss these at this time, as they're beyond the basic information required in this course, but they did spawn an idea called "functional analysis," which we will discuss in a moment.
What actually goes on when you're appraising for selection? What is it that you actually appraise? As I said a mere moment ago, you appraise the function of the organization or the community that you are documenting with your archal repository. You also appraise the donor of the specific material, and let me talk about that donor right now.
Is that donor competent to provide the information? Will they work with you? And are they likely to be the authentic holders of records, and do they hold authentic material? Let me give you an example from my own collections. In the Wiregrass archives, we have the "Robert and Nancy Murphy collection," a set of letters and other materials, beginning in World War II and going into the 1970s, about the nuclear family of Robert and Nancy Murphy in a town not far from the archives itself.
However, Robert Nancy Murphy were long dead, and a lady named Mrs. King had bought their house, and it was she who discovered all of this archal material in the house that she bought. Now, we asked ourselves the questions when we were appraising the donor: "Was Ms. King competent to provide the materials?" The answer is yes. She purchased the house and everything in it, so she had a legal right to make the donation. We asked ourselves, "Would she work with the archives?" Again, yes. She had contacted the archives to donate the collection and cooperated fully with all of our requests. This was, in fact, a particularly easy acquisition to make. She wanted to provide full access, and she required no restrictions on the materials that she donated on this archal collection.
Now, "Was she the authentic owner and holder of the records, and were they authentic records, or did she amass an inauthentic collection?" Well, it's hard to separate the materials from the donors in this question, but Miss King was not trying to, what you might say, "pull a fast one" in any sense of that phrase. She understood the Murphy collection to be an entity unto itself. She did not keep any of it behind that altered what was put into the archives, the context or the meaning of what was put into the archives. She provided every piece of material that she had, and she had not gathered other things to toss into this collection. So, she passed our test of donor appraisal.
Now, I speak about donor appraisal because I want to talk about the function. I want to talk about function, the functional analysis. I also want to talk about appraisal of the materials themselves, that is, the records themselves, and I want to do this backwards. Rather than talk about the function of functional appraisal and then materials appraisal, I want to talk about materials appraisal first. Again, that is appraising the records specifically, which is a much older mechanism, a much older way of American appraisal theory and mechanisms.
There are two bodies of American appraisal theory concerning archal records and historical manuscripts. One of these bodies emerged in the 1950s when institutional archives, particularly State archives and the National Archives, dominated archival practice. The second of these theories emerged in the 1970s with the rise of college and university archives that became the leading edge of the profession. And these two groups—the governmental archives on one hand in the from the 1950s on, and the rise of the college and university archives beginning in the 1970s—faced different challenges when they were looking at the kinds of situations they were in and dealing with records, and how they could develop their collections or if they even had to develop their collections. And consequently, these two schools are slightly different. Nevertheless, they both look principally at the records as if the archist is a gatekeeper hiding behind a door to the archives that when someone wants to give something to the archives, they either accept it or reject it. This is a little bit older conception of the archist job, and it is in the 1970s that University archists realized that they had to begin reaching out into the community and developing collections rather than appraising material that was already accumulated in a repository.
Let's talk about this first body of theory that developed in the 1970s and appraised the materials themselves. One of the most important archal theorists in the United States is the fellow you see here, Theodore Shellenberg. Shellenberg was a hen. He was born in 1903 and lived until 1970. Between 1950 and 1956, he was the director of archival management at the National Archives. His experience there and the book that he wrote on that experience, "Appraisal of Modern Public Records," published in 1954, elevated him to the position of assistant U.S. archist from 1957 until his retirement in 1963.
Now, what Shellenberg did in the 1950s as director of archival management at the National Archives, he oversaw a massive reappraisal of federal government records. So, he had to develop new appraisal ideas because the European ideas didn't work in the U.S. context. In addition, his staff was untrained, and they were reluctant to impose appraisal criteria uniform. And his staff is extremely important because these records are not a cubic foot here and 50 cubic feet here; they were in excess of 3,000 cubic feet per collection. And so, this is what Shellenberg faced: "How do you get people who are both reluctant and untrained to apply appraisal standards that don't really work?" See, consequently, he for the most part invented appraisal standards in the United States. His two foundational publications are really both reappraising records already in custody. He did not go out and develop these collections. They already existed and had been in Federal custody since the Civil War, primarily with a dramatic increase in materials because of World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. And all of this material had to be appraised. It's to whether it belonged in the archives permanently, subject to reelection later on, or whether it would be disposed of permanently in some way that was impossible to fix if you decided you made the wrong decision.
So, what did Shellenberg come up with? He came up with a schema of values for records in which he considered the records to have a primary value and a secondary value. Your readings this week talk about this primary and secondary value, and it might be a little confusing to you. The primary value of records are administrative value of current records. That is, the creator of the records finds the records to be important. That person, uh, is said to have a, uh, the records are primary value to that person. Some of these primary values might be administrative value—records that an administrator uses and must consult or creates and wants to refer back to in the course of administrating. There are fiscal records that are current. Your own fiscal records, for example, are current for the first year, and then the federal government demands that you retain those records for seven years after you have, uh, submitted your taxes. There are operating records that have primary value to the creator and the administrator who uses them, and of course, there are legal values, uh, to records in current records.
Now, eventually, records become non-current. That's a word that you should learn: current and non-current records. Non-current records are those that no one needs to access more than once a year or so for administrative purposes. They have become, for all intents and purposes, dead records, and they can then acquire secondary value.
Now, the secondary value is Aral value, and this is where Shellenberg comes into play. Shellenberg determined that these Aral records should be appraised for those not only that fit into the collecting policy, but for those that provided evidential value and informational value. Those are the two archal or secondary values of non-current records, according to Shellenberg: evidential value and informational value.
Now, there's no absolute determinant. There's no scoring system that says that you must have X amount of evidential value or Y amount of informational value in order to be accessioned into the archives, acquired by the archives. Appraisal of evidential and informational value is like dealing with a matrix, a calculus of overall value that you have to determine whether or not this body of records, whether it's a small body or a large body, should be retained permanently or dealt with in some other way.
Let's look at these two bodies of secondary value. Now, the first is evidential value. Shellenberg rejected the English Arville theory that evidential value meant legal evidence, meant it would be used in court or could be used in court. He said that historical records had evidential value in that they gave evidence. They documented the existence of the office that created them and how that office was organized, the entity. That is, evidential value also went to the, um, uh, the entity's purpose and how the office accomplished that purpose. That is, what were the significant programs of that office? So, existence, organization, purpose, and programs—these are evidential values that Shellenberg believed were exceptionally important.
Records also have informational value. That is, there is information on the records that goes beyond giving evidence of the entity and its organization or its programs. The information is about people, places, or things that is important in itself. And as you can see from the background picture here, I'm going to use the Census records as an example of this. If we looked strictly at the evidential value of the manuscript census—these handwritten sheets that a census enumerator took—then we would only need to keep a few examples of this manuscript census. That would be all of the evidence we needed to show how the process worked, to show how the office was organized, to show the work product of the office. But historians and genealogists demand that we keep all of the manuscript censuses, and in fact, they're still extremely unhappy that the 1890 census was all but destroyed in the 1921 Commerce Department fire because the information from 1890 was lost. And consequently, you only have a few counties, most of them in Alabama, that had any kind of census information recorded from 1880 to 1900. All of that information is lost, but we still have evidence of how the census was taken in 1890 and what the questions were. But we want to retain all of the census enumerations in order to satisfy informational value.
So, some of Shellenberg's concepts go not only to appraisal—what's important to keep or discard—but also selection criteria. And in fact, he has three tests of informational value for records. The first is the test of uniqueness. This asks, "Is there another copy? Is there a better copy?" It also asks, "Is this the most complete, usable version?" Obviously, you're looking directly at the records you are appraising for selection.
His second test has to do with the form of the record itself. "Is this the most comprehensive and summarized version? Is the information itself physically accessible from this version? And is the form itself preservable?" One of the examples that archist talk about when discussing this particular test of values are the old thermofax papers that that lose their print after just a few years. After about 10 years, the 1980 faxes are unreadable, illegible. You can't see the information anymore. Consequently, archists have taken a lot of that material and have photocopied it onto, um, acid-free paper, archal quality paper, uh, or they have also scanned that information, and they have discarded the original form because the information would be lost if the original form was the only available form.
Then we have to ask the question of importance. That's the final test for informational value of records: "Does the information crest a threshold of interest to potential users?" And a lot of this is guesswork on your part. Nevertheless, you will not be immediately asked to appraise material if you become a member of, uh, an archal crew because that's really a, a slightly higher order of business, business, and you need some experience with any particular repository in order to build up both the confidence and the knowledge of that repository in order to make good decisions.
Now, in addition to Shellenberg, we want to look at another examination of the records for appraisal purposes, and this is BS and Young's "Blackbox Theory." Now, Frank BS and Julia Marx Young are both University archists. Frank BS is still a University archist. Julia Marks Young has moved from University archives to the Mississippi Department of archives and history, where, where she is their, uh, director of arkville management. They maintained that Shellenberg was fine as far as he went, but that appraising records in colleges and universities, and by implication other institutions that work with private donors, had many other things that they had to consider when appraising records for selection.
BS and Young created an outline-like schema that they broke into modules, components, and subcomponents that contained all kinds of things to consider. What they really tried to do was to look at a hierarchy of components to think about when you were making an archal decision, and they went beyond merely the condition of the records themselves. They went beyond Shellenberg. When you read BS and Young's article, you'll probably be confused and overwhelmed with information, but rest assured that you can dig through it. Every word, every detail is not as important as understanding what it is that they're trying to do. They divide their work into three modules. Under each module are components, and under each component is subcomponents. Now, we're only going to look at the outline from module and component. You can look in your, uh, readings to find the subcomponents of each. You can take notes if you are using their schema to appraise a collection. You can actually take notes at the subcomponent level and begin to build your case to convince yourself and your resource allocators whether or not you need to keep a collection permanently or discard either all of it or parts of it.
Okay, the first module is "Value of Information." We look at circumstances of creation, which is looking kind of at the function that this body of records will document. We look at the analysis of the content, and that's what Shellenberg was doing. He was analyzing the content of the records that had already been brought into the National Archives. This, in fact, is the component 1.2, "Analysis of Content," in which we see Shellenberg ideas appear in BS and Young. Then, under "Value of the Information," they also look at the use of the records. This is like one of Shellenberg's tests for informational value, that is, the importance test: "Will people use these records?" That doesn't necessarily determine how you deal with the records, whether you keep them or discard them, but it is a factor you must consider.
Their second module is "Cost of Retention." What is the storage cost of keeping this body of records? What is the processing cost if you have to repair the records? What are the conservation costs? And finally, what are the reference costs? And if the cost is too steep, you might not be the right repository for this collection.
Finally, they look at the module "Implications of the Retention Decision." This module is a short module, but it's exceptionally important. One of the components is the political considerations, and this is particularly true in the University setting. The politics of everything that happens in the academy, um, is, is something you have to deal with. In fact, I believe it was Henry Kissinger that quipped that "academic politics were so vicious because the stakes were so small." Political considerations are important. Are you going to have to take a collection from a major donor? You might not be in a position, if you're in a University archives, to say, "We can't take this collection," because the donor may have hooks into people that have more power than you have, and you'll take the collection because that is in everyone's best interest. In addition, and one of the implications of your retention decision, is the precedent that the retention sets. If you refuse to take certain kinds of collections, can you suddenly take a version of that collection, and does it set a precedent? Vice versa, if you take a bunch of collection types and then refuse to take a particular collection because you've judged that the donor might be a problem, or there's something going on, or you just don't like the collection, it just doesn't, doesn't add to, um, what you believe you have acquired, then does that set a precedent, and does it trigger a political consideration? All of these things are parts of an analytical Matrix, a rubric, if you will, um, about selecting, appraising, and selecting archal materials by looking at the materials themselves.
Now, BS and Young have spread our knowledge of Arval appraisal a little bit further than Shellenberg did. He looked specifically at the material before him. BS and Young looked at the material, but also at the wider context of how this material made its way to the archives and what would happen with the material, uh, due to your appraisal decision. In addition, archist began discussing what it was that they were supposed to be looking at, based in large part on, uh, the profession moving a little bit further beyond, um, college and University archives into communities. So, some of the Arville theorists, um, that were working, working pretty heavily in appraisal started asking the question, "Do we just appraise records, or do we appraise the society from which the records came?" Some of them said, "Well, society might be too big, but what about the institutions from when the records came?" And so, some theorists began to move beyond appraising the records for the values that the records had and began appraising the collections, the records, based on what they documented, based on the functions that they documented. The answers that they came up with led them to develop these ideas that we were supposed to be applying appraisal standards to something bigger than that body of records themselves.
And indeed, functional analysis works in appraisal because it does not appraise the materials first, but appraises the functions in the institution or the society that generated the records. This is to say that functional analysis assumes that activities in an organization or activities in society in general generate records, and the records then are the detritus of these activities and the functions that even generate those activities. So, functional analysis asks these three questions: "What functions do the institutions or the communities perform? Which of these functions should we as archist docu doent? We should no longer stand at the door keeping the gate to our repository saying, 'Bring me your stuff if you feel like it.' We should actively go out into the communities, into our institutions, um, and gather records based on what the functions were that those records document. And then, which records adequately document ment those functions?"
This is not a particularly big change. Acquisition requires analysis of records costs and the implications of the appraisal decision, just like BS and Young talked about, just like Shellenberg talked about. When you select, you use tests of use, evidence that the records provide, and information that the records provide as well. Archists were already doing this, but functional analysis articulates these procedures in a much more thorough way.
There is not a particularly good body of basic information about functional analysis available for students to use as primers. Most of the functional analysis material is, is written at a substantial, more advanced level that in many cases is difficult to read unless you already know a lot of the jargon that archist use. Consequently, I have not provided you with a great deal of this information. This is a basic course, and so, though we will keep functional analysis in mind, you're more likely to apply the standards of the records before you. Again, your job as an entry-level archist, which this class we hope prepares you for, will be to process, arrange, and describe. Your project asks you to develop a collection, appraise it, acquire it, assession it, preserve it, process it, arrange it, describe it, create metadata for it, and then, uh, uh, do out reach, uh, with it. But in the back of your mind, always keep functional analysis churning because the Arc of a world in the United States is moving toward functional analysis rather than analysis of records. But like I've just said, this is not anything new in the world of Arvy. It is standing an older model on its head, and it's particularly useful for this third wave of Aral professionalism that reaches out into the community.
With that, we'll end the lecture, and as always, thank you for your attention.