"The surest proof ": A utilitarian approach to appraisal

Archivaria

Volumn 45, Issue , 1998, Pages 127-169

  Greene, Mark ^a  

^a CARLETON COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 18844389112     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (82)

1. Despite the vigorous (though to my mind not convincing) case being made by those who believe that the word "records" must or does refer only to "evidence of business transactions. " the word is used here and throughout this article, except when placed in quotes or part of a direct quotation, in its more common understanding: "documentary materials. regardless of physical format" (U.S.C. 3301). If placed in quotes, "records" (or the quality of "record) will refer to the narrower definition of documentation of a business transaction. The most notable and accessible writing urging this narrower definition of "record" can be found at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Sciences, Functional Requirements for Evidence in Record keeping website, at http://www.lis.pitt.edu/-nhprcl
2. David Bearman, Archival Methods: Archives & Museum Informalics Technical Report 9 (1991). pp. 7, 11. Let me note at the outset that while I applaud Bearman for targeting many real and important weaknesses in archival methodology, I disagree with virtually every solution he has proposed.
3. Timothy L. Ericson, "At the 'rim of creative dissatisfaction': Archivists and Acquisition Development, " Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-92). p. 72.
4. From the Mission Statement of the Minnesota Historical Society's "Collections Management Policy, " 1994.
5. The most enduring and influential testament of this conviction is the original SAA basic manual on appraisal and accessioning, which listed in an appendix those categories of records that were "usually valuable, " "often valuable, " "occasionally valuable, " and "usually without value. " Maynard J. Brichford, Archives and Manuscripts: Appraisal and Accessioning (Chicago, 1977). pp. 22-23.
6. Brichford's manual was only the most influential expression of this, a very common approach to evaluating records. For other examples relating to appraisal of business records see Maynard J. Brichford, "Preservation of Business Records, " History News 11, no. 10 (August 1956). p. 77.
7. To be sure, writing on functional analysis urges archivists to assess functions rather than records, but in the end merely substitutes one set of rigid assumptions for another: the literature of functional analysis implies, on the one hand, that it is necessary to document all functions of an institution, and on the other hand often resorts in the end to listing record types that contain documentation of the functions-lists that are remarkably similar to those in the old SAA manual. For expositions of functional analysis, see B N CB-m emmer and Sheldon Hochheiser, The High-Technology Company: An Historical Research and Archival Guide (Minneapolis, 1989).
8. This is different than the alacrity with which we pursue the papers of an organization favored by our governing board chair, because the need to please board members is practical and objective (though not necessarily palatable or a source of pride) while the necessity of documenting long-lived persons or institutions because of their age is quite suspect.
9. There is a similar issue created when we accept our billionth set of Civil War letters, caring little whether they tell society anything truly new or unique about the war, rather than spending the time trying to convince a potential donor to give us our first collection documenting a Latino businessperson. This is what Tim Ericson has labeled the "cow-shaped milk jugs" syndrome. As an example of archivists' tendency to thoughtlessly acquire endless sets of similar. though not strictly duplicate records, Ericson quoted a critic of museum collecting policies who referred to an institution with 200 eighteenth-century cow-shaped milk jugs "'ranged side by side on a shelf. like some huge herd on a farm. "' When paper records were scarce, and the possibilities for collecting were few, such choices were not perhaps as critical as they are now in the age of abundance (Ericson, "'At the rim of creative dissatisfaction,'" p. 70).
10. For example, we received inquiries about donations from three Fortune 500 companies in the space of one year.
11. It is important to note at the outset that neither the congressional project nor the business project was supported by grants or other external resources. The one minor exception was the first phase in implementing the reappraisal of congressional collections (consisting of reappraising two of an eventual total of six collections), which was undertaken by an NHPRCI Mellon Fellow during the summer of 1995. I I Some details of the congressional papers project are discussed just before this article's concluding section. For a complete account of that project, see Mark A. Greene, "Appraisal of Congressional Records at the Minnesota Historical Society: A Case Study, " Archival Issues 19 (1994). pp. 3143.
12. Bureau of the Census, "Minnesota, " County Business Patterns (Washington. 1992). p. 3.
13. One of the two curators is the author of this essay, two of seven professionals who staff the Society's Acquisition and Curatorial Department. Of the other five, only the Sound and Visual Curator (Bonnie Wilson) and the Department Head (James Fogerty) are involved in any way with business records or any other major manuscripts collections. (The other curators are responsible for art, maps. and books.) In addition, the staff of five curators in the Society's Museum Collections Department are involved in appraising three dimensional artifacts of various types. including business products, packaging, and advertising. The MHS also employs four manuscripts processors.
14. For the sake of convenience, we use the term "collecting repository" to denote those institutions that acquire archives and manuscripts collections through deed of gift, as opposed to "institutional archives" which are sub-units of the creating agency and acquire fonds and series either through administrative directive or statutory authority
15. Most of what follows is drawn directly or indirectly from Mark A. Greene and Todd 1. Daniels-Howell, "Appraisal with an Attitude: A Pragmatist's Guide to the Selection and Acquisition of Modem Business Records. " in James M. O'Toole, ed., The Records of American Business (Chicago, 1997). pp. 161-229.
16. Terry Cook, "Mind Over Matter: Toward a New Theory of Archival Appraisal. " in Barbara L. Craig, ed. The Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour Of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa, 1992) p. 53 (bold in original). On the other hand, macro appraisal presumes that a deep analysis of all individual records creating entities will emerge before prioritization takes place. In the Minnesota Method, preceding prioritization with such creator by creator analysis of the hundreds. thousands, and tens of thousands of businesses in a county, state, or region is impossible. A more plausible approach would be an intense analysis of every business sector or subsector, but this is likely a practical possibility only for special subject repositories. A repository dedicated to documenting the history of computing, for instance, would probably be able to insist that its staff develop a formidable understanding of the computer industry. But most regional, state, and local repositories, charged with documenting most or all the social, political, economic, and cultural facets of their geographic region would not have staff expertise, on any facet of business history. Staff within these repositories are jacks of all trades, masters of none. Again, this is not to say that a certain level of research and understanding is not absolutely necessary-only that the level of research and understanding envisioned by macro appraisal is not assumed by our method.
17. We consulted several internal and external sources, including the Standard Industrial Code (SIC), and finally settled on a hybrid based in large part on the SIC. We could not adopt the SIC sectors directly, because many sectors prominent in the Minnesota economy get grouped together in ways that are not meaningful to the MHS. For example, health care, hospitality and tourism, entertainment, and advertising were all grouped under the Services sector. Therefore, we chose to break out and rearrange some of these sectors to more appropriately define the Minnesota economy as we understood it from our sources. The internal sources used included the 1980 and 1993 MHS collection analyses and an early 1993 Manuscript section draft list of business collection priorities. Other external sources included the St. Paul Pioneer Press BTC (Business Twin Cities) 100 from 1994, and Corporate Report Minnesota from 1993. The final breakdown into eighteen sectors-each one further broken down into its various subsections as indicated by the SIC-does not claim to be scientific and made little or no reference to economic theory, but was tailored to the practical problems we faced in our state at this time.
18. The top priority sectors (what we now call "tier 1 sectors") are AgricultureFood Products, Health Care, and Medical Technology. Not only the particular results, but the very basis of the prioritization itself was peculiar to the MHS. This should be understood. Many different specific approaches to prioritization are not only possible but sensible. Florence Lathrop, in her article "Toward a National Collecting Policy for Business History: The View From Baker Library, " Business History Review 62 (Spring 1988), p. 142, has stated quite presciently that: "A number of criteria can be used to select industries [as the focus for a repository's collecting]: the centrality of an industry to the local or national economy in a particular time period.
19. Proceeding from the first to last question we ask about a firm, the "decision points" are: 1) Is it one of the state's top 25 employers? 2) Is it one of the five largest employers in its geographic region of the state? 3) Is it considered a leader in its particular industry (an industry being a subset of a sector such as health insurers and hospitals within the Health Care sector)? 4) Does it have a high degree of state or regional identification (one obvious example would be the late, lamented Hamm's brewery).
20. This decision does not necessarily bind other collecting units, such as Sound and Visual, or the Museum.
21. The published citation analyses of which I am aware are Jacqueline Goggin, "The Indirect Approach: A Study of Scholarly Users of Black and Women's Organizational Records in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, " Midwestern Archivist 1 I, no. 1 (1986). pp. 57-67.
22. The citation analysis is summarized in Michael Nash, "Business History and Archival Practice: Shifts in Sources and Paradigms, " The Records of American Business pp. 34-36. The Hagley was gracious enough to share the raw data from the study-done by Julie Kimmel and Christopher McKenna-with the MHS. The study used four journals-Journal of American History, Business History Review, Labor History, and Technology & Culture-looking through every issue within a year every five years starting in 1945 and running through to 1990. These accounted for over 12,000 citations. The study also analyzed forty-one monographs published between 1962 and 1994.
23. The study was undertaken by a volunteer, Don Gipple, under the direction of Mark Greene and Todd Daniels-Howell. Don reviewed all the reading room call slips for the months of April and July 1995. During those months, there were a total of 2,012 boxes of manuscripts retrieved, of which 784 were business-related (that is, records donated by businesses, papers of business people, and records of trade organizations).
24. Forty-seven corporate archives responded to a survey created by the MHS and distributed under the auspices of the Society and the Hagley as part of the Records of American Business Project. Respondents were asked to select from a list of thirty-nine record types and rank those used most heavily by both internal clients and external researchers. The record types were not identical to those used in the Hagley citation study, but have been correlated to the Hagley categories for ease of comparison. It should be noted that there were some variations in the ranking of most used sources by type of business, but though ranked differently, the top five sources were the same across all business types. Work remains to be done in analyzing how (if at all), use by internal clients changes depending upon the administrative placement of the archives. The corporate archives who responded to the survey were: Aetna Life and Casualty, Aid Association for Lutherans, Alabama Power Co., American Express, Ameritech Corporation, Amgen Inc., Aramco Services Co., Augsberg Fortress Publishers, Boston Edison Co., Cargill Inc., Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CIGNA Corp., Coming Inc., Deere and Co., Digital Equipment Corp., Duke Power Co., Equitable Life Assurance Society of the US, Ford Motor Co., Frito-Lay Inc., H.B. Fuller Co., Hallmark Cards Inc., King Ranch Inc., Kraft Foods, Inc., Lilly (Eli) and Co., Little Caesar Enterprises Inc., Merck and Co., MITRE Corp., Motorola, Nalco Chemical Co., New England Mutual Life Insurance Co., Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Nynex Corp., Pleasant Co., Procter and Gamble Co., Quaker Chemical Corp., Schlossberg (Edwin) Inc., Schwab (Charles), Sporting News, Stamford Hospital, State Farm Insurance CO., Texas Instruments, TIAA-CREF, Wells Fargo Bank NA, Weyerhaeuser, WGBH Educational Foundation, WIL Research Labs Inc., Wrigley (William, Jr.) Co. We are greatly indebted to the archivists at these companies for putting the time into answering the questionnaires. We are grateful, too, to MHS volunteer Don Gipple for doing the tallies.
25. Our advisors on the project were adamant that these questions would be useless to ask because most business archives would not know these figures and would be reluctant to spend the time to calculate them. For a moment we thought this was overly pessimistic, but we realized that at the MHS we had no easy means of reporting such figures for more than two of our business collections.
26. Jackson, "The 80120 Archives. "
27. Figures for the size of each record series and type were drawn from the "Grant Request to Burlington Northern Inc, for Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroad Historical Records Project, " May 1976, stored in the Grants folder of the Burlington Northern accession file at the MHS.
28. Margaret Cross Norton, Norton on Archives (Carbondale, 1975). p. 251.
29. Luciana Duranti. "The Concept of Appraisal and Archival Theory, " Hilary Jenkinson, A Manual of Archive Administration (London, 1937), pp. 123-28, 152-53.
30. Frank Boles and Mark Greene, "Et tu. Schellenberg? Thoughts on the Dagger of American Appraisal Theory, " American Archivist 56 (Summer 1996). pp. 176-88.
31. Maynard Brichford, Archives and Manuscripts: Appraisal and Accessioning, SAA Basic Manual Series (Chicago, 1977). pp. 22-23. The implication that inherent value was based on record type came only after the manual first went to great lengths to explain the many criteria other than record type (administrative, research, and archival "values, " including prospective use) that should be factors in appraisal. Unfortunately, it is the list at the end that seems to have become the most popular legacy of the manual.
32. For examples relating to the assignment of archival value to business records, see Maynard J. Brichford, "Preservation of Business Records, " History News 11, no. 10 (August 1956). p. 77.
33. See Joan D. Krizack, "Hospital Documentation Planning: The Concept and the Context," American Archivist 56 (Winter 1993). pp. 16-34. In Krizack, ed., Documentation Planning for the U.S. Health Care System (Baltimore, 1994). she defines extensive "core documentation" for a hospital: there are sixty-one series in her list (pp. 213-14). She refers to this as "the minimum documentation that should be preserved" (pp. 211-21 8) and thereby implies a universal objective criterion for defining archival value, linked to record type.
34. Terry Eastwood, "Nailing a Little Jelly to the Wall of Archival Studies, " Archivaria 35 (Spring 1993). p. 237. See also Richard Cox, "The Record: Is It Evolving? A Study in the Importance of the Long-View for Records Managers and Archivists, " 11111/95 and Wendy Duff, "Defining Transactions: To Identify Records and Assess Risk, " 6 December 1994, both at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Sciences, Functional Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping website, at http://www.lis.pitt.edu/-nhprc.
35. Terry Cook, "Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management and Archives in the Post-Custodial and Post-Modemist Era, " Archives and Manuscripts 22. no. 2 (November 1994), p. 304. Also see Teny Cook, "Documentation Strategy, " Archivaria 34 (Summer 1992). p. 184.
36. Macro appraisal is undergoing vigorous and thoughtful evolution, but seems to be based on a belief that evidence of certain government functions is essential and must be preserved, without asking whether or not anyone actually has recourse to that evidence. See Terry Cook, "Mind Over Matter, " pp. 38-70.
37. Cook, "Archives in the Post-Custodial World, ". Cook goes on to allow that "once acquired, however, their [archives'] description, reference, and diffusion should of course reflect client needs as far as possible. " I would suggest that acquiring archives that are not useful and then describing them in user-friendly ways is of arguable assistance.
38. Ham, "The Archival Edge, " American Archivist (January 1975), p. 8.
39. Karen Benedict, "Invitation to a Bonfire: Reappraisal and Deaccessioning of Records as Collection Management Tools in an Archives-A Reply to Leonard Rapport, " American Archivist 47, no. 1 (Winter 1984), pp. 4748. See also, Roy C. Turnbaugh: "Archival Mission and User Studies, " Midwestern Archivist 11, no. 1 (1986). pp. 27-33, and "Plowing the Sea: Appraising Public Records in an Ahistorical Culture, " American Archivist 53 (Fall 1990). pp. 562-65. Margaret Cross Norton, who argued against use primarily on the grounds that certain records were inherently archival, also insisted that lack of use in the past was no predictor of future use: "The fact that a document may not have been consulted for a century does not rule out the possibility of the fact that tomorrow some attorney may attach great significance to it. " Norton, Norton on Archives, p. 26.
40. Terry Eastwood, "Towards a Social Theory of Appraisal, " in Barbara L. Craig ed., The Archival Imagination: Essays in Honor of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa, 1992). pp. 78, 83. Eastwood presents two very similar forms of the same argument in, "Towards a Social Theory of Appraisal, " pp. 71-89, and "How Goes it with Appraisal?' Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993), pp. 1. 11-21. The quotes and analysis that follow are drawn equally from the two essays.
41. Roy Turnbagh, "Archival Mission and User Studies, " p. 28. Anyone who has worked in an institutional archives (government or private) will acknowledge this truth, though it applies to most collecting repositories as well.
42. Susan Steinwall, "Appraisal and the FBI Files Case: For Whom do Archivists Retain Records?, " American Archivist 49, no. 1 (Winter 1986), pp. 52-63.
43. Elizabeth Adkins' posting to the Busarch listserv (busarch@gla. ac. uk), 11 June 1998. The business archivists on this list also seem fairly united in the belief that the "stuff' of archives is and must be a combination of records, library material, and other "historical" material-just so long as it is "needed" by the company in some way. (See the postings on 1 and 2 July 1998.) Additional testimony, to the importance and utility of "non-record" information and data will be found in most of the essays comprising Seamus Ross and Edward Higgs, eds., Electronic Information Resources and Historians: European Perspectives (St. Katherinen, 1993).
44. Benedict, "Invitation to a Bonfire, " p. 49.
45. James M. O'Toole, "The Symbolic Significance of Archives, " American Archivist 56, no. 2 (Spring 1993). pp. 234-55.
46. Mary Jo Pugh, Archival Fundamentals Series: Providing Reference Services for Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago, 1992). pp. 56.6 (emphasis added).
47. See Mark A. Greene, "Moderation in Everything, Access in Nothing? Opinions About Access Restrictions on Personal Papers, " in Archival Issues 18, no. 1 (1993). pp. 3141, for a summary of the literature to that point. Since then there has been at least one session at every SAA meeting devoted to legal and ethical access issues.
48. Pugh. Providing Reference Services. pp. 65-74.
49. Ann D. Gordon, Using the Nation's Documentary Heritage: The Report of the Historical Documents Study (Washington, DC, 1992). pp. 39-41, 46. Some archivists do recognize this fact. Former SAA President Anne Kenney has written that "Archives are harder to use than other sources and not just because of their bulk. A researcher cannot check material out and take it home, cannot order it through interlibrary loan, and must use it during fairly limited office hours. The most meaningful distinction between library and archives may not be physical form or 'method and purpose of creation,'. but access. " (Anne R. Kenney, "Commentary" on Lawrence Dowler's "The Role of Use in Defining Archival Practice and Principles: A Research Agenda for the Availability and Use of Records, " American Archivist 51, nos. 1-2 [Winter and Spring 19881, pp. 94-95.)
50. For an academic researcher's similar perspective, see Robin Kolodny (Temple University), "Archival Research: A New Look at an Old Tool, " focus paper presented for a roundtable at the 1992 meeting of the American Political Science Association, pp. 5-6. While the possibilities of providing remote access to archival resources through digitized presentation on the Internet have begun to command a great deal of archival attention, much less expensive and resource intensive options have been ignored for years. As Tim Ericson has noted, "For some reason, the concept of. lending entire fonds for research purposes remains revolutionary and controversial-some would even say heretical. " The intra-state loan program practiced by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin with its Area Research Centers since 1962 has seen the successful completion of 10,000 loan transactions, "for the benefit of thousands of researchers who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to use archival materials. And we are in the habit of loaning precious documents for months at a time to institutions not only across the continent but across the world, for exhibits. " Yet the profession has never given serious consideration to the development of loan protocols (much less made it a professional priority of the archival community), and so far as I know only one institution has undertaken inter-state loans of original archival material for research purposes. This took place from Cornell to University of California, Santa Barbara, under recent RBMS guidelines for loaning rare and unique material (statement by Thomas H. Hickerson, Cornell University, during session entitled "Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be. " at the 1993 meeting of the Society of American Archivists.) The quotation is from Timothy L. Ericson, "At the 'rim of creative dissatisfaction': Archivist and Acquisition Development, " Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-92). pp. 74-75. Researchers using collections of congressional papers expressed remarkably similar suggestions. See Paul, The Documentation of Congress, p. 143. The Society of American Archivists study, Planning for the Archival Profession (Chicago, 1986). also urges "expanding the availability of archival records beyond the confines of an institution's reading room" (p. 28.
51. Gordon, Using the Nation's Documentary Heritage, p. 59. See also Jill Tatem, "Beyond USMARC AMC: The Context of a Data Exchange Format, " Midwestern Archivist 14, no. 1 (1989). pp. 43,45: "If. archivists are going to embark on the expensive process of developing online catalogs in order to assist end-users in discovering archival materials it is imperative to discover what users want to know. " Otherwise, "the USMARC AMC format will be both an irrelevance and a failed opportunity. " David Bearman's 1989 article on "Authority Control Issues and Prospects" did ask how researchers really use an on-line catalog to gain intellectual access, but few authors have followed his example. David Bearman, "Authority Control Issues and Prospects, " American Archivist 52, no. 3 (Summer 1989), pp. 286-99.
52. Elsie Freemen has charged that, "generally speaking, the archivists we produce believe that their clientele must be content with the product they offer-the body of records in the box accompanied by the standardized description, for example-not that they must have the skills to learn what the client needs and how to satisfy that need. " Elsie T. Freeman, "Soap and Education: Archival Training, Public Service and the Profession-an Essay, " Midwestern Archivist 16, no. 2 (1991). p. 89-90. John Roberts, "Archival Theory: Myth or Banality, "American Archivist 53, no. 1 (Winter 1990), p. 120, also rails against archivists "talking to ourselves about ourselves" rather than paying attention to what the public needs and wants from us. Also see Hugh Taylor, "Chip Monks at the Gate: The Impact of Technology on Archives, Libraries, and the User, " Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-92). pp. 174-75, 178. Taylor suggests, further, that over-reliance on automated finding aids and "expert systems" presents the "danger of diminishing both ourselves and the user in a lonely deadlock if our technologies become inappropriate and lacking in a human context" (p. 177). See, too, Beattie, "An Archival User Study, " p. 47: "archivists. tend to be too passive and bureaucratic when writing inventories. " As well, Beattie comments that, "to date, very few studies have focused on the information seeking behavior of researchers in archives. "
53. These statistics were gathered from three sources: Reuters story posted on ZDNet News Channel, http:Nwww.zdnet.comlzdnn/content/reut/l211/262406.html.
54. Bauer, The Appraisal of Current and Recent Records, Staff Information Paper 13 (National Archives and Records Service, 1946).
55. Theodore Schellenberg, Modem Archives: Principles and Techniques (Chicago, 1956), p. 224.
56. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
57. Society of American Archivists, Planning for the Archival Profession, p. 22.
58. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes in this paragraph are from Dowler, "The Role of Use. "
59. Bauer, The Appraisal of Current and Recent Records, p. 6.
60. Eastwood, "A Social Theory of Appraisal, " pp. 80,8485.
61. Leonard Rapport, "No Grandfather Clause: Reappraising Accessioned Records, " American Archivist 44 (Spring 1981). pp. 143-50.
62. Hans Booms, in his "Society and the Formation of the Documentary Heritage: Issues in the Appraisal of Archival Sources, " found in Hermina Joldersma and Richard Klumpenhouwer, trans., found in Archivaria 24 (Summer 1987). pp. 69-107, leaned toward exactly this danger in proposing that public opinion should both legitimize and dictate archival appraisal. One can agree that archivists have some obligation to be utilitarian without turning appraisal into a pure popularity contest. There are two things, in fact, that can mitigate against this majoritarian danger. One is that "minority" constituencies are not only the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population, but for most of us the fastest growing segment of our user populations-hence utilitarianism insists we nor ignore these communities. The other is that at the level of collection development (that is, deciding what records creators are going to be approached or whose records--accepted into a repository), rather than at the level of appraisal (what materials will actually be preserved from each of those creators) there is more room to assert archivists' notion of what "ought" to be documented.
63. Terry Cook, "'Another Brick in the Wall': Teny Eastwood's Masonry and Archival Walls, History, and Archival Appraisal, " Archivaria 37 (Spring 1994). p. 102.
64. Brichford, Appraisal and Accessioning, pp. 9-10.
65. Legal and engineering files might warrant preservation depending on the type of company.
66. See, for example, Henrik Fode and Jorgen Fink, "The Business Records of a Nation: The Case of Denmark, " American Archivist 60, no. 1 (Winter 1997). pp. 84-85, in which they acknowledge the lack of use of accounting records but insist that the answer is not to reappraise and destroy them but to convince historians to use them. See also the series of exchanges on the ARCHIVES list on just this topic, 5-8 May 1997. One has to wonder just how long archivists will feel compelled to wait for historians or other researchers to find utility in accounting records. Ledgers and journals prior to the late nineteenth century are sometimes used by researchers because there are few other sources for economic information in that era. Yet, as noted elsewhere, in the MHS call-slip analysis the only accounting records to receive use were from a mid-nineteenth-century fur trader. The Baker Library at Harvard also reports use of textile company accounting records from the same period. See Laura Linard and Brent M. Sverdloff, "Not Just Business as Usual: Evolving Trends in Historical Research at Baker Library, " American Archivist 60, no. 1 (Winter 1997), pp. 91-92.
67. See Greene and Daniels-Howell, "Appraisal with an Attitude, " pp. 185-93.
68. These include the issues of whether the minutes contain more than preemptory reporting of decisions taken, the relationship of the minutes to other series, and the ever-present "political considerations. "
69. It may be added, moreover, that the cost-benefit ratio may encompass more than the direct costs of storing and administering a series of records versus a valuation of use activity. A user group may provide other benefits to the repository that offset the direct costs of preserving a particular set of records despite the use of the records being too infrequent to justify retention: genealogists' well-deserved reputation as lobbyists and willingness to lobby funding sources on behalf of repositories is one example.
70. Timothy L. Ericson, "Beyond Business: External Documentation and Corporate Records, " pp. 297-326.
71. The most vocal advocate for a user-centred revision of archives administration has been Elsie Freeman Finch. See especially, Elsie Freeman, "Buying Quarter Inch Holes: Public Support Through Results, " Midwestern Archivist 10 (1985), pp. 89-97.
72. This accounting of the congressional collections does not include the Vice Presidential portions of the papers of Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey, broader public affairs collections such as the papers of U.S. ambassadors, state governors, and state legislators, the records of political parties and interest groups, or the official records of the state government in the state archives.
73. Patricia Aronsson, "Appraisal of Twentieth-Century Congressional Collections, " in Nancy Peace, ed., Archival Choices (Lexington, 1984). pp. 82-83.
74. Paul, The Documentation of Congress, p. 136.
75. In addition to Aronsson and Documentation of Congress, cited above, we used Richard A. Baker, ed., Proceedings of the Conference on Research Use and Disposition of Senators' Papers (Washington, 1978).
76. Aronsson, "Appraisal of Twentieth-Century Congressional Collections, " p. 83.
77. An additional result of the reappraisal has been the creation of a better finding aid for the remaining collection.
78. When necessary (under the terms of our donor agreements), we sought and in all cases received permission from the donors to destroy the reappraised material. Moreover, the staffs of our sitting delegation members are pleased to have clear and detailed guidelines from us that help them manage, store, and transfer records.
79. While our guidelines have encountered no resistance from our congressional delegation or-to date-from our researchers, they have had a decidedly mixed response from our archival colleagues. There is nothing close to an archival consensus that cases files and issue-related mail are not worth their bulk to preserve. Some archivists at repositories which exclusively collect congressional papers have been concerned that our guidelines will be seen as a universal standard. Not only have we not promulgated our guidelines as a broad standard, we specifically eschew such a goal. Each repository has its own mission and clientele, its own set of resources, and thus its own individual appraisal criteria. For more complete details of the congressional records project, see Greene, "Appraisal of Congressional Records at the Minnesota Historical Society: A Case Study, " pp. 3143.
80. Distinguished historian Arthur Cole asked fifty years ago whether it really made sense for the Baker Library to devote 324 feet of stack space to records of the Slater textile company that had been used nine times in fourteen years, as opposed to filling that space with books or other types of sources that would undoubtedly be used more frequently. Arthur H. Cole, "Business Manuscripts: A Pressing Problem, " Journal of Economic History 5 (May 1945), p. 50. 80 F. Gerald Ham, "Archival Choices: Managing the Historical Record in an Age of Abundance, " American Archivist 47, no. 1 (Winter 1984), p. 12.
81. Ian E. Wilson, "Commentary: Reflections on Archival Strategies, " American Archivist 58, no. 4 (Fall 1995), pp. 418-19, has made this point most recently. As he notes, there have been no studies undertaken specifically to explain the evident disparity in the support enjoyed by different archival institutions in the same nation.
82. Brichford, Appraisal and Accessioning, p. 1.