Introduction

American archivist F. Gerald Ham provocatively asserted in his 1974 Society of American Archivists presidential address that, ‘Our most important and intellectually demanding task as archivists is to make an informed selection of information that will provide the future with a representative record of human experience in our time … Is there any other field of information gathering that has such a broad mandate with a selection process so random, so fragmented, so uncoordinated, and even so accidental?’ (Ham, 1975, 5). Appraisal, which has been described as ‘the most difficult of archival challenges’ (Cook, 1991, 181), is the process whereby archivists and others involved in recordkeeping, such as records creators, records managers and curators of special collections, make that selection. Although Ham uses the term ‘information’ unqualifiedly, appraisal primarily targets very specific kinds of information: bureaucratic, community and personal records and other forms of media and documentation that serve as primary, and frequently unique, evidence of the acts and experiences of organizations, groups and individuals. Making appraisal choices involves weighing the qualities inherent in such evidence and deciding whether it is sufficiently valuable to preserve. Unlike bibliographic selection, archival appraisal prioritizes context rather than content (although, in practice, many archivists may indeed make their – often pragmatic – decisions primarily based on content). An appraisal decision has long-term and often irrevocable consequences, in that archives commit to enduring or permanent preservation of selected material, while material not selected is often destroyed or otherwise lost to society.

Archivists and appraisal

Ever since it was first professionally proposed in the early twentieth century as a necessity for coping with problems posed by modern records and recordkeeping, archivists have had a conflicted relationship with the notion of appraisal, as well as with their role in appraisal decisions. As discussed further in section 4, the original aims of appraisal were to address the archival implications of a reduction in the use of registry systems by records creators, as well as to reduce volume of and redundancies in records needing to be kept permanently, while still retaining the insights that they collectively could provide into the decisionmaking and other activities of their creators.