Macro-appraisal: From theory to practice

Archivaria

Volumn 48, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 154-198

  Beaven, Brian P N ^a  

^a National Archives of Canada   (Canada)

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EID: 2442560603     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. Ian E. Wilson, "Towards a Vision of Archival Services, " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 91-100.
2. See Terry Cook's extensive bibliographic notes on this subject in his article, "What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas Since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift, " Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997), pp. 7-63. The key writers from whom I have gained my understanding of the development of post-Schellenberg appraisal theory and methodology are F. Gerald Ham, Richard Cox, Helen Samuels, Frank Boles, David Bearman, Kenneth Thibodeau and, in Canada, Terry Cook, Richard Brown, Barbara L. Craig, Terry Eastwood, Luciana Duranti, and Heather MacNeil.
3. The focus for much of this discussion was the second plenary session, "The Profession of the Archivist in the Information Age. " The main contributions were by Hervé Bastien, Richard J. Cox, Sue Gavrel, and P. Manamperi. See Hervé Bastien, "Standardizing the Appraisal and Selection Process, " Richard J. Cox, "Standardizing Archival Practices: A Tool for the Information Age, " Sue Gavrel, "Information Technology Standards: Tools for the Archivist, " and P. Manamperi, "Ramp Studies: Their Present and Future Direction as a Tool to Foster the Standardization of Practices on the International Level, " Archivum XXXIX (Proceedings of the 12th International Congress on Archives, Montreal, September, 1992).
4. For the current purpose, I refer only to Bearman's seminal article, written in collaboration with Margaret Hedstrom, "Reinventing Archives for Electronic Records: Alternative Delivery Systems, " in Margaret Hedstrom, ed., Electronic Records Management Program Strategies: Archives and Museum Informatics Technical Report 18 (Pittsburgh, 1993), and his original formulation in David Bearman and Richard H. Lytle, "The Power of the Principle of Provenance, " Archivaria 21 (Winter 1985-86), pp. 14-27. The body of Bearman's discourse on the need to ensure "recordness" in electronic records systems through applying the principle of provenance and the implications that electronic records requirements have for archival prac tice at the theoretical level are fundamental to the whole contemporary discussion of appraisal theory and practice, regardless of whether a student agrees with his argument for the future repositioning of the profession.
5. Heather MacNeil, "Overview of the InterPARES Project" paper presented in a plenary session of the joint conference of the Association of Canadian Archivists and the Archives Association of Ontario, London, Ontario, 5 June 1999. "Appraisal criteria and Methods of Selection of Authentic Electronic Records" is one of the four major research areas of the project. There are five explicit questions to be addressed: What is the influence of digital technology on appraisal? When should electronic records be appraised? Should they be appraised more than once and if so, when? Who should be responsible for appraisal? What are the criteria, methods, and strategies that satisfy the conceptual requirements pertaining to the assurance of authenticity?
6. International Organization for Standardization, Technical Committee 46: Information and Documentation, Sub-committee 11: Archives/records management, otherwise expressed in the acronym, ISO/TC 46/SC11.
7. I am indebted to Terry Cook for reminding me of this aspect of the Australian initiative at the advanced training "Institute" on archival appraisal held in London, Ontario in June 1999. The emphasis of the current ISO project is on achieving consensus on records management and leaving archival appraisal for later, but it is significant that the original Australian initiative incorporated archival appraisal.
8. The most recent articulation of this theme occurred at the Joint AAO/ACA Conference in London, Ontario in June 1999 in a paper presented under the rubric of "Standards for Canadian Archival Practice: Current and Future Issues, " but defence of rigorous professional standards has informed Haworth's leadership throughout the development and adoption of the Rules for Archival Description.
9. Terry Eastwood, "Towards a Social Theory of Appraisal, " in Barbara L. Craig, ed., The Archival Imagination. Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa, 1992). Also see Eastwood, "How Goes It with Appraisal?" Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993), pp. 111-21.
10. Terry Cook, "Mind Over Matter: Towards a New Theory of Archival Appraisal, " in Barbara L. Craig, ed., The Archival Imagination. Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa, 1992), pp. 38-70.
11. Bruce Wilson, "Systematic Appraisal of the Records of the Government of Canada at the National Archives of Canada, " Archivaria 38 (Fall 1994), p. 220, emphasis added. Cook's version is found in Cook, "Mind Over Matter, " p. 47.
12. This understanding is often associated with post-modern approaches to the philosophy of history. Cook, "Mind Over Matter, " pp. 43-46. Richard Brown is even more rigorous in placing macro-appraisal theory within the context of post-modern theories of knowledge and in distinguishing appraisal from empiricism. See Brown, "Records Acquisition Strategy and its Theoretical Foundation: The Case for a Concept of Archival Hermeneutics, " Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-92), pp. 34-56.
13. F. Gerald Ham, "The Archival Edge, " American Archivist 38 (January 1975), p. 8.
14. Hans Booms, "Society and the Formation of a Documentary Heritage: Issues in the Appraisal of Archival Sources, " in Hermina Joldersma and Richard Klumpenhouwer, eds. and trans., Archivaria 24 (Summer 1987), pp. 69-107.
15. Richard Brown, "Macro-Appraisal Theory and the Context of the Public Records Creator, " Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995), p. 152 and note 53.
16. Wilson, "Systematic Appraisal, " pp. 218-31. While this treatment could be described as a somewhat idealized account, it is on the whole an accurate and comprehensive analysis of the program in its first three years of activity, incorporating a fair sense of the ambiguities and limits imposed by actual implementation.
17. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
18. Terry Cook, "Macroappraisal: The New Theory and Strategy For Records Disposition at the National Archives of Canada, " Records Disposition Division, National Archives of Canada, paper originally presented to the Society of American Archivists (revised typescript, September 1995), p. 4.
19. Eastwood, "How Goes It with Appraisal?" p. 112. Eastwood fails, however, to explore fully the implications of his observation or the interconnections between an approach to appraisal based on function and an appraisal based on "use, " on which he expounds in detail.
20. Jean-Stéphen Piché, "Macro-Appraisal and Duplication of Information: Federal Real Property Management Records, " Archivaria 39 (Spring 1995), pp. 39-50.
21. Bruce Wilson's formulation quoted earlier confirms that micro-appraisal is, in fact, considered both optional and subordinate within the larger micro-appraisal methodology.
22. The two archivists responsible for the Privy Council Office over the last twenty years estimate informally that the proportion of PCO hardcopy records having archival value is approximately seventy-five per cent but that the estimate is considerably lower for electronic systems. These figures exclude common administrative records. (Interviews with James Whalen and David Smith, March-April 1999.)
23. Notwithstanding popular notions of government inefficiency, the case for duplication and functional overlap may have been greatly overstated by macro-appraisal theorists. Cross-institutional functional analyses conducted by the National Archives since 1991 have coincided, ironically, with the rationalization of the post-war liberal welfare state bureaucracy around the world. The principles and criteria for accountability that have been created through the reformed expenditure management system mean that government departments themselves produce high level macro-appraisals of their activities, updated annually. We archivists belatedly (and ironically) discovered the virtues of an appraisal methodology promising huge operational efficiencies for archival acquisition just when government reforms rationalized most of the real duplication out of the system.
24. Government of Canada, National Archives of Canada, Multi-Institutional Disposition Authorities and Supporting Documents, 1st edition (1998), published for internal circulation within the Government of Canada. The appraisal of the financial management function is reviewed in some detail in Section 4 of this paper.
25. Piché, "Macro-Appraisal, " p. 48.
26. In the interests of brevity, may I refer the reader to articles cited elsewhere in the notes by Brien Brothman, Richard Brown, Terry Cook, Richard Cox, Barbara Craig, Luciana Duranti, Terry Eastwood, Mark Greene, Gerald Ham, Chris Hurley, Heather MacNeil, and Helen Samuels.
27. Cook, "What is Past is Prologue, " p. 32.
28. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
29. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
30. The prolific David Bearman is obviously the key theorist in this regard. His published work is extensive but the article written in collaboration with Margaret Hedstrom, "Reinventing Archives for Electronic Records: Alternative Service Delivery Options, " in Margaret Hedstrom, ed., Electronic Records Management Program Strategies (Pittsburgh, 1993), pp. 82-98, is representative. Hedstrom is accessible through the same work. Peter Scott's main early contribution to archival thinking is the Australian Series System which is predicated on the notion that adopting the concept of the records continuum is fundamental to the paradigm shift and professional repositioning necessary to cope with the electronic record. Electronic records media demonstrate clearly the methodological advantages of giving functional context of creation precedence over records content and physicality. For the formative work of Peter Scott, see Archives and Manuscripts, various articles, 1979-1981. For the more recent Australian theoretical amplifications on functional context of creation see Chris Hurley, "Ambient Functions: Abandoned Children to Zoos, " Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995), pp. 21-39.
31. Cook, "Mind Over Matter, " p. 42.
32. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
33. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
34. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
35. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
36. Terry Cook, "The Appraisal of Case Files: Sampling and Selection Criteria for the Government Archives Division, National Archives of Canada, " internal report (January 1991).
37. This quotation is taken from Cook's recent and as yet unpublished paper entitled "Archival Appraisal and Collection: Issues, Challenges, New Approaches, " special lecture delivered to University of Maryland and NARA Staff at the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, 21 April 1999, pp. 28-29. I am indebted to Terry Cook for providing a general distribution of this text to archivists engaged in appraisal of government records at National Archives of Canada. For the record, when Cook uses "political" as a criteria of value, what he means is interference by senior administrators outside or inside the archival institution or by interest groups with sufficient influence to distort the acquisition decisions that would have otherwise resulted from the institution's acquisition strategy and adoption of archivists' recommendations, based on their unbiased application of macroappraisal criteria. This criteria is a curiously inconsistent element to be associated with an appraisal theory but its merits (and demerits) as something to be considered in relation to professional conduct and standards is beyond the scope of this essay.
38. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
39. T. R. Schellenberg, "The Appraisal of Modern Public Records, " National Archives Bulletin 8 (Washington, 1956).
40. Richard Brown, "Records Acquisition and Its Theoretical Foundation: The Case for a Concept of Archival Hermeneutics, " Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-92), pp. 34-56
41. Brown, "Macro-Appraisal Theory, " pp. 124-25.
42. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
43. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
44. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
45. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
46. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
47. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
48. Brown, "Records Acquisition, " p. 52.
49. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
50. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
51. Brown, "Macro-Appraisal Theory, " p. 169, endnote 36.
52. Jim Suderman, "Appraising Records of the Expenditure Management Function: An Exercise in Functional Analysis, " Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997), p. 138.
53. Brown, "Records Acquisition, " p. 39.
54. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
55. The portrayal of Brown's conception of macro-appraisal in contrast to Cook's is, of course, simplified in order to develop the central argument in a sufficiently succinct fashion. The insistence on methodological consistency between the macro and micro levels is implicit in the work of both authors. In part Brown comes off as being more consistent because he deliberately focuses on theory, with a commentary on its implications for acquisition strategy, while Cook almost always incorporates theory, strategy, and method (as well as the scope of appraisal) in all his treatments. Yet, this having been said, Brown is clearly out to create consistency.
56. Brown, "Records Acquisition, " pp. 44-51.
57. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
58. For the full scope of the literature by these authors, consult Brown's bibliographic footnotes in his two Archivaria articles. The three principal monographs are Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York, 1972).
59. Brien Brothman, "Orders of Value: Probing the Theoretical Terms of Archival Practice, " Archivaria 32 (Summer 1991), pp. 78-100.
60. Brown, "Macro-Appraisal Theory, " p. 151.
61. Schellenberg, Appraisal of Modern Public Records, and Modern Archives. A rereading of the texts shows that his evidential order of value is entirely divorced and independent of future research considerations. Of course, as the macro-appraisal theorists claim, presentist user-based considerations still hopelessly encumber his concept of informational value. Theoretically, of course, they need not. Schellenberg's two commentaries on appraisal were never meant to be theory. They were written by a senior archival administrator seeking to give practical guidance to line archivists confronting the wall of records of the Federal administration in Washington. Schellenberg merely admitted up-front what macro-appraisal theorists admit through the back door via "political" considerations that are outside the parameters of pure theory. Why theorists continue to assail this exemplary public administrator, though basically as a symbol, is difficult to understand. Terry Eastwood has long since observed the obvious, that Schellenberg's manuals were the work of a methodologist, not a theorist. Terry Eastwood, "Nailing a Little Jelly to the Wall of Archival Studies, " Archivaria 35 (Spring 1993), note 4, pp. 245-46. For a defence of Schellenberg and the American tradition of pragmatism in appraisal methodology see Frank Boles and Mark A. Greene, "Et Tu Schellenberg? Thoughts on the Dagger of American Appraisal Theory, " American Archivist 59 (Summer 1996), pp. 298-310.
62. Catherine Bailey, "From the Top Down: The Practice of Macro-Appraisal, " Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997), p. 94.
63. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
64. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
65. Authority 95/026, Brian P.N. Beaven, "Archival Appraisal Report on the Records of the Office of Commissioner of Official Languages, " unpublished report, submitted and approved, 1995, National Archives of Canada.
66. Suderman, "Appraising Records, " pp 129-42. The designations of NA study and AO study are not meant to suggest that the two approaches compared in this case study represent discernable institutional patterns. It is meant only to objectify an analysis in which the author is a principal author of one of the two studies. The management of the Archives of Ontario did not ultimately accept the archival recommendations developed by Suderman. The analysis here is a case study of appraisal practice-not of management prerogative in determining disposition policy.
67. The whole theoretically based application of the functional method also coincidentally conforms to the internal administrative structure of the Archives of Ontario (AO), which does not distinguish between private and public records but instead relies on the same archivist to apply his or her knowledge regarding the documentation of broad social functions (e.g., education, arts and culture, transportation, industry, social welfare) to the acquisition and management of both private and public sources. At the ministerial level, where these broad social functions are addressed, comprehensive, coherent documentation may thus become perhaps more paramount. This institutional culture contrasts with the situation that the present author faced at the National Archives.
68. The previous principal appraisals related to Treasury Board which I authored relate to Crown Corporations Directorate (authority 1990/009), Comptroller General of Canada (1991/009), Administrative Policy Branch (1992/015, an amendment to 88/005), and the Personnel Policy Branch (1993/031).
69. Working in an institutional environment in which the Treasury Board fonds was regarded within the National Archives at one and the same time (and often by the same managers) as being both almost wholly redundant and contrarily a valuable tool by which the National Archives could effectively and efficiently capture succinct and accurate profiles of all government programs, the author came to the seemingly convenient conclusion that the central agency record was indeed valuable. He recommended retention of almost half of the Program Branch registry. The high level of ambivalence regarding the Treasury Board fonds in fact provided great freedom in this particular case. The author recommended the retention of almost half of the registry because he could find no rationale for taking any less, much as he tried. The review officers had virtually no suggestions to make contrary to my proposed selection.
70. Brian P.N. Beaven, "Archival Appraisal Report on Common Administrative Records Associated with the Financial Management and Comptrollership Functions of the Government of Canada, " unpublished report, submitted June 1998, approved under the signature of the National Archivist, January 2000.
71. While there are currently 103 agencies subject to the National Archives of Canada Act, this should not confuse the issue. The larger figure reflects all government agencies that existed before the program review of 1993-1998 and includes both those institutions governed by the Act and those not covered.
72. The final irony in the contrasting two appraisal methodologies and the acquisition strategy of their respective institutions is that, while the Archives of Ontario did not follow Suderman's recommendations and therefore conformed to National Archives disposition practice regarding expenditure management records, the management of the National Archives rejected small portions of the present author's recommendations in his 1998 report. The National Archives instead opted for a strategy akin to Suderman's institution-specific approach for the disposition of internal audit final report files.
73. Mark Greene, "'The Surest Proof': A Utilitarian Approach to Appraisal, " Archivaria 45 (Spring 1998), pp. 127-69. It should be pointed out that the utilitarian approach demonstrated in this article is not a pure "use-based" appraisal criterion and methodology. It is a sophisticated cost-benefit methodology incorporating multiple considerations applicable to certain kinds of bulky private institutional record series that have already been analyzed in terms of their functional context using a macro-functional appraisal framework adapted to private institutional records collections. Greene explicitly acknowledges this functional contextualization at the beginning of his analysis (p. 132). In fact, Greene's approach is more distinct in its acute awareness of the legitimacy and importance of resource constraints and costs as appraisal issues and criteria than it is in regarding use-or research-orientation in its measure of benefit.
74. Bailey, "From the Top Down, " p. 123.
75. Schellenberg, Modern Archives, p. 149.