Abstracts 1
Appraisal in archives - theories, issues, and practicalities. Where are we today?
Professor Barbara Craig, University of Toronto
Biographical note: Before joining University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies, Professor Craig was University Archivist and Head, Archives and Special Collections at York University. Professor Craig’s interests lie in the integration of institutions with their archives and with broader issues of documentation and cultural memory. She has published widely on the history of record-keeping, on the history of medicine and on archive theory. Recent projects include: Office ecologies in the British Civil Service pre 1950; Authenticity of electronic records in experimental environments with the InterPARES II project; Confidentiality of medical records in archival environments; Archival appraisal as experienced by practitioners in Canada; and Historians’ use of digitized and digital resourses. She has been Chair of the Ontario Council of Archives, the Canadian Council of Archives Preservation Committee, an officer of the Association of Canadian Archivists in many capacities and a Director of the Ontario Women’s History Network. In 1991 she received the W. Kaye Lamb Prize for her contributions to archive theory. Her recent publications include Archival Appraisal (K.G Saur 2004), Historians’ use of archival sources: promises and pitfalls of the digital age. (with Wendy Duff and Joan Cherry) Public Historian (Spring 2004). Professor Craig organized the First International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (I-CHORA) which was held in Toronto in 2003.
The impact of appraisal theory on practices at The National Archives.
Dr Helen Mercer, The National Archives
Paper abstract: This paper takes up some of the questions asked by Caroline Williams in her recent article in Archivaria Studying Reality: The Application of Theory in an Aspect of UK Practice. It asks why theories are and are not taken up in general and discusses the specific concerns that practitioners have with appraisal theory. Secondly, it outlines in more detail why TNA saw the Canadian macro-appraisal model as offering a useful steer through current challenges, and ways in which TNA tweaked the model. This is discussed in relation to who should appraise, the outcomes of appraisal, and how records should be appraised. Finally, the paper assesses where TNA currently stands with regard to the Canadian model of policy, strategy, methodology, criteria and looks at possible ways forward.
Biographical note: Dr Helen Mercer became Appraisal Policy Manager for The National Archives in 2002. She had joined TNA in 1999 as a client manager for HM Treasury and its associated agencies, involved in the selection of records for permanent preservation. She started her career as a school history teacher in a South London comprehensive. After 6 years she embarked on her PhD in an area of modern British business history. She then lectured for several years at Leeds Unversity and the London School of Economics. She has published widely on business history and the history of government-business relations.
Documentation Strategy Revisited.
Peter Horsman, Netherlands Archiefschool
Paper abstract: The ISO 15489 standard for records- and information management chapter 9 starts with determining documents to be captured (9.1), and determining how long to retain records (9.2). Do these clauses illustrate the illusion of the makeability of the archive? Selection precedes archiving. Not less illustrative is clause 7.1 (a) determining what records should be created in each business process and what information needs to be included in each record. The objective is: records are created, received and used in the conduct of business activities. To support the continuing conduct of business, comply with the regulatory environment, and provide necessary accountability, organizations should create and maintain authentic, reliable and useable records…
A comparable positivist notion underlay in the 1990s the Netherlands PIVOT project, that the reader of the archive should be able to reconstruct in main lines governmental acting. PIVOT also strove to implement selection according to business rules at the moment of creation.
Similarly documentation strategies suggest the possibility of documenting a society, based on criteria, agreements, procedures. But do we have reason for such an optimism? Isn’t the reality different? Are archivists, museum curators and librarions able to develop such criteria, let alone to implement them?
Archival repositories nowadays may contain archives appraised by archivists, based on agreed upon criteria, pre-supposed values, and following archival procedures. Most repositories also contain archives created and transferred well before formal appraisal methods were implemented. That is not too say that those archives are complete. On various occasions records were lost by destruction, theft, fire, or simply rotted away in neglect. Which have been the circumstances and factors of such a natural selection and survival of the fittest. Do such archives provide a less reliable documentation of the past than archives appraised and selected by qualified archivists?
Research in archival appraisal and selection should not only include the construction of the ideal documentary heritage for future generations, but also the reality as it has been come to us. Three domains of research might be worked out:
The first is a reconstruction of the process of natural selection, without formal regulation. Why the archive exists as it is.
The second is the application of criteria on comparable archives but in different archival environments: are criteria always applied in the same way? Which are the contextual influences that determine appraisal and selection?
The third then would be the appraisal and selection of the archive in process of becoming. What will be the effect of new legislation on public access? Who decides which documents will be made public, and will only those records survive in the archive? What will be the effect of new technologies and workprocesses based on chains of activities across organisations and sharing information rather than on filing by distinct records creators?
Biographical note: Peter Horsman works currently with the Archiefschool, the Netherlands Institute for Archival Education and Research, where he is responsible for the research programme. He started his archival career in 1975 at the municipal archives of Dordrecht. He worked from 1981 until 1998 with the Netherlands States Archives, in particular involved in automation policies. From 1991 to 1997 he was director of the State Archives Information Policies Department. His special fields of interest include access to archives, digital longevity and history of recordkeeping systems. He worked as a consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, for which he designed an electronic records management system. For the Dutch government he has been involved in e-mail policies, functional requirements for recordkeeping, metadata schema, as well as functional specifications for records management applications. On appraisal he gave papers in Oslo, Washington, Whitehorse, and Tampere. With Eric Ketelaar and Theo Thomassen he edited a new edition of the Manual of Arrangement and Description of Archives by Muller, Feith and Fruin. An abridged translation of their introduction has been published in the reprinted English edition and in the American Archivist. He published in Archivaria on the principle of provenance and the development of local recordkeeping in a Dutch town.
Archival collections in a museum context: their development and use.
Dr Margarette Lincoln, National Maritime Museum
Paper abstract: 98 per cent of the National Maritime Museum’s 2.5 million items (or so) are archival. We collect more archival collections than anything else, many of which are donated. This paper will outline the Museum’s current collecting policy and methodology, the appeal of our archival collections to certain groups of users, and some key issues related to archival cataloguing and public access to archives.
Biographical note: Dr Margarette Lincoln is Director of Research and Planning at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has published widely in eighteenth-century studies. Recent books include Representing the Navy: British Sea Power 1750-1815 (Ashgate 2002), and the catalogue for the Museum’s special exhibition, Nelson & Napoléon, which she edited in 2005. Her latest book, Naval Wives and Mistresses 1745-1815, a study of naval women and their social position within the context of Britain’s growing imperial power, will be published in 2007.
