From The Records .. Terry Cook

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Referencias
Cook, T. (1995). From the record to its context: The theory and practice of.. S. A. Archives Journal, 37, 32. Retrieved
from https://search-ebscohost-
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FROM THE RECORD TO ITS CONTEXT: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF

ARCHIVAL APPRAISAL SINCE JENKINSON
Abstract
Traditional appraisal approaches popularized by Jenkins0n and Schellenberg, and their many
supporters, have serious shortcomings now that archivists are forced to cope with the voluminous
and fragile records of complex modern organizations. This article analyses the history of appraisal
thinking in this century, and concludes that there has been a fundamental paradigm shift for archives
(and archivists) from serving the state to serving society, and from passively preserving the records
judged to have value by the state to actively collecting the records reflective of society - a true
àrchives of the people'. The article also asserts that appraisal must in the first instance give way to
macro-appraisal. Ironically, the last thing the `does in appraising records for use is to appraise
records or consider use. Based on a model developed for the National Archives of Canada, and
implemented there since 1991, the macro-appraisal concept focuses rather on appraising the key
issues and trends in society and its key institutions, and then in turn their mandates, functions,
programmes, activities, and transactions.
Appraisal imposes a heavy social responsibility on archivists. In the stirring words of Pam Wenrich,
writing in the S.A. Archives Journal in 1988, archivists are doing nothing less than "moulding the
future of our documentary heritage." Archivists determine "which elements of social life are
imparted to future generations....'" As a profession, we archivists must realize the gravity of this
task. We are literally creating archives. We are deciding what is remembered and what is forgotten,
who in society is visible and who remains invisible, who has a voice and who does not. In this act
of creation, therefore, we must remain extraordinarily sensitive to the political and philosophical
nature of documents individually, of archives collectively, of archival functions, of archivists'
personal bias, and most especially of archival appraisal, for that process defines which documents
become archives and thus enjoy all subsequent archival processes (description, conservation,
exhibition, reference, etc.) and which are destroyed. Part of that sensitivity means being aware of
the history and evolution of appraisal thinking and practice, and the lessons it teaches us for today.
French historian Jacques Le Goff notes (in translation) that "the document is not objective, innocent
raw material but expresses past [or present] society's power over memory and over the future: the
document is what remains." What is true of each document is true of archives collectively. By no
coincidence the first archives were the royal ones of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and pre-
Columbian America. The capital city in these states became, in Le Goff's words, "the center of a
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politics of memory" where "the king himself deploys, on the whole terrain over which he holds
sway, a program of remembering of which he is the center." First the creation and then the control
of memory leads to the control of history, thus mythology, ultimately power.[2] Feminist theorists,
such as Gerda Lerner in her pioneering works, convincingly demonstrate that such power behind
the fast documents, archives, memory, was remorselessly and intentionally patriarchical: women
were delegitimized by the archival process in the ancient world, a process that has continued well
into this century.[3] In other societies, certain classes, regions, ethnic groups, or races have similarly
been delegitimized from archives, and thus from history and mythology -sometimes unconsciously
and carelessly, sometimes consciously and deliberately. Who do we as archivists memorialize?
More important, who do we marginalize and exclude from memory? Most important, how can we
change our ways to become more inclusive, more reflective of society as a whole, in our appraisal
decisions?
Pam Wernich writes that "the selection of records for preservation from the vast quagmire of official
documentation represents the greatest professional challenge and the most important area of archival
activity.'" I agree with her, with the qualification that perhaps the identification and selection of
records to form our archival heritage from the private non-government sphere of human activity is
equally challenging. If the challenges are thus large, so too is the archival legacy for us to use, and
as importantly modify and adapt to our new circumstances. As a profession, we should sometimes
look backward in order to move forward. What's past is prologue. Without such continuity with the
past, future directions lack legitimacy. Without understanding our predecessors' intellectual
struggles, we are condemned to repeat their errors and lose the cumulative benefit of their successes.
Yet without also realizing that their considerable achievements were a reflection of their time and
place, we are sometimes equally in danger of adhering to the past as a timeless and immutable truth
rather than moving on to face new realities and new changes? We must be inspired by and critically
aware of our past, but not use it to thwart the archival needs of the present and future.
In this article, then, I want to do two things: review very broadly the history of archival appraisal
theory that is our proud past, and then suggest a new paradigm suitable for appraisal in an
information age with overwhelming volumes of records; new electronic means for creating,
maintaining, and transmitting records; and growing awareness amongst ourselves and our publics
of the political, social, and philosophical implications of our appraisal work, of (in Le Goff's words
again) our own archival "politics of memory".
The first voices: the Dutch Manual and Jenkinson
The history of archival theory concerning appraisal is very recent. Ninety-seven years ago, in 1898,
the Dutch trio of Samuel Muller, Johan Feith, and Robert Fruin published their famous Manual for
the Arrangement and Description of Archives. It was the first major book in the world on archival
theory and practice. And the ideas in the Manual have certainly become the foundation of archival
theory and practice in this century. And yet the Manual has virtually nothing to say about appraisal!
The Dutch authors' principal contribution to archival theory was to define archives as organic
products of administration, and to articulate the two most important rules for their treatment: respect
des fonds and provenance. Not surprisingly, we now recognize certain limitations in their Manual.
It is about arrangement and description; it offers no useful guidance about appraisal and selection.
It is about government or public records and their orderly transfer to archival repositories; it virtually
dismisses private archives to the care of libraries and librarians. It is based on experience either with
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limited numbers of mediaeval documents susceptible to careful diplomatic analysis or with modem
records then found in well-organized departmental registries and correspondence fries; it does not
address in detail the disorganized, decentralized, voluminous, multi-media records we must now
appraise. Records then were small in volume, centrally and carefully organized, and virtually all
were important. The problem was not to decide which ones to keep and which to destroy: they would
all be kept. The problem was to arrange them and describe them so as to uncover or reveal their
often obscured contextual origins, that is, their provenance.
It is important to consider for a moment those well-organized registries which the Dutch writers
faced, and which were common in Europe during the formative period when all classic archival
theory was articulated. Based on their experience with such registries, the Dutch authors observed
that the "original organization of archive" in the creating institution would correspond "in its main
outline with the organization of the administration which produced it."[6] This correlation made by
the Dutch authors between an organizational structure and a record-keeping system is one that no
longer holds true in modern organizations. There are now numerous record-keeping systems in many
media in many sub-offices which no longer closely `correspond' to the internal structural
organization and multiple functions of the creating administration. The computer and
telecommunication revolutions of the last decade have radically accelerated this decentralization
and diffusion, to a point where the lines between the record and the administrative structure have
almost completely been erased. Operational functions and work activities of agencies now cross all
manner of structural or organizational lines. Herein lies a central problem for archival theory and
practice today, as characterized by the widening dissonance between the principles of appraisal and
those of arrangement and description. An understanding of rapidly changing administrative
structures, functions, and activities is central to modern archival appraisal, yet such understanding
can no longer simply be based on the study of records according to the classic Dutch principles
devised for arrangement and description. Unfortunately, the societal and record-keeping conditions
in which the Dutch lived and worked, and which naturally influenced their archival practice and
writing, are sometimes forgotten by later commentators.
Twenty-four years after the Dutch Manual, Hilary Jenkinson produced in 1922 the second major
treatise on archival theory and practice, and the first to be written in English. Entitled A Manual for
Archive Administration, Jenkinson accepted, extended, and popularized the Dutch formulations. His
moral defence of archives as impartial evidence and his vision of the archivist as guardian of
evidence have become clarion calls to the profession. In a passage that appears in no less than four
of his addresses,[7] Jenkinson exclaimed:
"The Archivist's career is one of service. He [or she] exists in order to make other people's work
possible .... His [or her] Creed, the Sanctity of Evidence; his [or her] Task, the Conservation of every
scrap of Evidence attaching to the Documents committed to his [or her] charge; his [or her] aim to
provide, without prejudice or afterthought, for all who wish to know the Means of Knowledge ....
The good Archivist is perhaps the most selfless devotee of Truth the modern world produces"
For Jenkinson, this sanctity of evidence was essential, and with it his belief - like the Dutch trio -
that the arrangement and description of archives must exactly reflect their creators' original
administrative structure and record-keeping system(s). Archivists too must be impartial; they were
after all charged with preserving authentic evidence, with maintaining the unbroken custody of the
records assigned to their care. Given that Jenkinson's own work from 1906 on at the Public Record
Office in London focused almost exclusively on mediaeval and early nation-state records, again just
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like the Dutch authors, his insistence on the legal character of archival records, and their evidentiary
characteristics, was a natural outcome of his experience.
If to Jenkinson. records are the unconscious by-products of administration, the untainted evidence
of acts and transactions, then no post-creator interference was possible, or their character as impartial
evidence would be undermined. It followed logically for Jenkinson that appraisal of records by the
archivist was not an appropriate activity. If archives were the organic emanation of documents from
a records creator, then severing any records from that organic whole seemed to violate a fundamental
archival principle. The exercise of `personal judgement' by the archivist, as Jenkinson knew any
appraisal must necessarily involve, would tarnish the impartiality of archives as evidence, as of
course would any consideration of saving archives to meet actual or anticipated uses of records by
historians or other researchers. The archivist's role was to keep, not create archives. Mirroring such
a passive approach, archivists were known in Britain as `keepers' of records. While the huge volumes
of records generated by the First World War gave Jenkinson a perspective which the Dutch archivists
did not have, he never felt comfortable, despite some faint-hearted concessions later in his career,
with archivists doing any sort of appraisal or selection.
His solution was to consign the unwelcome task of reducing vast accumulations of modem records
to the records creator, "making the Administrator the sole agent for the selection and destruction of
his [or her] own documents...." Archivists would then take charge of the remnant in the same way
they cared for mediaeval, and. early modern records, where no destruction was necessary in an
archival setting. While Jenkinson does himself raise the concerns that administrators may not
destroy enough, or may destroy too much, or may create records that consciously have one eye on
history as much as provide unbiased evidence to transactions, he advances no satisfactory solution
to any of these dilemmas.[8]
A recent commentator notes correctly that, given the hard realities of modern workplace and records
management, and often mismanagement, Jenkinson's approach would produce a fragmented and
cost-ineffective archives: "Allowing the creator to designate what should be the archival record
solves the problems of complexity, impermanence, and volume of contemporary records by ignoring
them."[9] The collective record so produced by Jenkinson's method would bear evidence more of
the foibles and resource crisis of modern records management rather than of any other organizational
activity. Such an approach would also allow records creators like Richard Nixon or George Bush to
define the archival legacy by destroying or removing from public scrutiny and accountability those
records - Nixon's tape recordings, Bush's electronic-mail system - which contained unfavourable
evidence of their actions while in office. Jenkinson's approach at its most extreme would allow
archives to be shaped by state ideology, where provenance is destroyed in favour of the
establishment of one state fonds and where records have value solely for their support of the òfficial'
view of history and historical determinism. This was the situation in the former Soviet Union, and
many of its communist satellites. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, a specialist on Soviet- and Russian
archives, notes that, from the 1930s on, Soviet archivists had "to emphasize Marxist-Leninist
conceptions of history and to demonstrate the ingredients of class struggle and the victory of the
toiling masses. Archivists were fired for preparing òbjective' or purely factual descriptions. of mate-
dais, rather than showing how a given group of documents portrayed straggle against the ruling
class. Archival documents not pertaining to party themes were simply not described or their inherent
nature and provenance not recorded." Archivists not conforming "were fired, arrested, and many
sent to the gulag as ìmperialist spies', `Trot-skyites', or ènemies of the people'."[10] No doubt
Jenkinson would have been horrified that the noble ideal of the gentlemanly Victorian/Edwardian
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British civil servant like himself, trained in history at Oxford and Cambridge, who put honour and
public trust ahead of personal gain and career mobility, could be so perverted to these extremes. And
no doubt, given his concern for the sanctity of evidence, be would never have trusted such modern
Àdministrators' as White House colonels or Soviet commis-saires to make appraisal decisions. Yet
his dictums and methods are still cited with great approval.
To the end Jenkinson remained a mediaevalist trying to cope with modern archives. While his
appraisal methodologies are no longer valid, his spirited defence of fundamental archival principles
and his focus on the evidential character of records, when appropriately adapted to the electronic
world, should inspire us still. Indeed, in this regard, his focus on evidence is enjoying a revival today
in the face of ephemeral records, virtual documents, decontextualize. d information, and
unscrupulous records creators (and records destroyers) - a revival especially in Canada and Australia
in the face of the electronic records challenge."
The American voice: T.R. Schellenberg and archival users
The initiative in appraisal theory now passes to the United States, as personified in the work of
Theodore R. Schellenberg. Not sharing with the Dutch trio and Jenkinson the luxury of being able
to formulate archival principles based on the meticulous analysis of limited numbers of old
documents, American archivists began their collective professional activity facing a mounting crisis
of contemporary records. When the National Archives in Washington was created in 1934, it
inherited an awesome backlog of about 1.2 million cubic metres of federal records, with a growth
rate of over 60 000 metres annually. By the end of the 1930s, with the expansion of the government
to implement the New Deal policies to cope with the Great Depression, this had increased to 160
000 metres annually, and with the expansion of government again to run the Second Worm War, the
growth rate by 1943 had reached 650 000 metres annually.[12] This had two principal results: the
first was the emergence of the North American records management profession to help agencies
themselves to cope with this paper avalanche and the second was a fundamental reorientation of the
archival profession, certainly in North America, but also in many other countries of the world where
Schellenberg was read and translated.
Margaret Cross North, a pioneering American archival writer and State Archivist of Illinois, stated
in 1944 that, in light of these incredible volumes of records, "it is obviously no longer possible for
any agency to preserve all records which result from its activities. The emphasis of archives work,"
she noted in direct contrast to Jenkin-son, "has shifted from preservation of records to selection of
records for preservation." Philip C. Brooks, a key thinker at the U.S. National Archives, was explicit
in his criticism of Jenkinson's view that archivists could safely remain "aloof from responsibility for
how public agencies managed their records," which would simply mean that "too many records
would he badly handled and even lost before archivists took custody of them."[13] This was the
origin of the American `life cycle' concept, where records were first organized, maintained, and
actively used by their creators, then stored for an additional period of infrequent or dormant use in
off-site record centres, and then, when their operational use ended entirely, `selected' as archivally
valuable and transferred to an archives, or declared non-archival and destroyed. Like Norton, Brooks
argued for a close relationship throughout this whole `life cycle' between archivists doing such
selection of records for preservation and records managers organizing and caring for active records
in departments: the appraisal function, he argued, "can best be performed with a complete
understanding of the records of an agency in their relationship to each other as they are created rather
than after they have lain forgotten and deteriorating for twenty years." The substance of how that
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selection work was actually to be done, however, was left for Schellenberg to summarize from his
colleagues' work and then articulate in his two landmark books: especially in Modern Archives:
Principles and Techniques (1956), as well as The Management of Archives (1965).
If archivists were to take charge of appraisal, they must have appraisal criteria or guidelines. In
supplying these Schellenberg made his major impact on the archival profession and became "the
father of appraisal theory in the United States."[14] He asserted that records had primary and
secondary values. Primary value reflected the importance of records to their original creator;
secondary value their use to subsequent researchers. Concerning primary value, Schellenberg noted
that creators needed some records on a continuing basis for on-going administration, for legal
purposes to meet obligations and protect rights, and for fiscal and accounting responsibilities.
Primary value was thus not unlike Jenkinson's respect for the use of records in context by their
creator or Àdministor'. Secondary values, which Schellenberg sub-divided into evidential and
informational values, were quite different, for they reflected the importance of records for secondary
research by subsequent users, not for use by their original creator. On this point, Schellenberg
explicitly denied that his èvidential value' was linked to Jenkinson's sense of archives as èvidence'.
For Schellenberg, evidential values reflected the importance of records for researchers, not for
administrators, in documenting the functions, organizations, programmes, policies, decision-making
processes, and procedures of the creator, and in holding the agency accountable for its actions. These
values were determined, after appropriate research and analysis, by Schellenberg's archivist, not by
Jenkinson's administrator. Informational value, the other half of secondary value, reflects the content
of records concerning "persons, corporate bodies, things, problems, conditions, and the like"
incidental to "the action of the Government itself'. Deciding which informational content was
important and which was not, again was to be determined by the archivist, drawing on his or her
training as an historian and con-suiting outside "subject-matter specialists", in order to reflect as
wide a spectrum of research interests as possible? Among these several values, Schellenberg
certainly felt that these informational values so reflecting "the usefulness of records for the larger
documentation of American life ... [were] paramount.'"6 Despite the influence on him of German
provenance-based archival theory and perhaps his own intentions, [17] the legacy of Schellenberg
was to turn the focus of archivists from the record to its potential uses, especially by historians, in
order to document that larger American life. Certainly consistent with his focus on society and
secondary research, Schellenberg to his credit attempted much more than had the Dutch trio or
Jenkinson to build bridges between archivists and librarians, and between archivists caring for
institutional records and those responsible for private manuscripts.[18]
It is very important to note here the other major change in archival thinking introduced by
Schellenberg and his American colleagues - in addition to the focus on research and users. The
Dutch and Jenkinsonian view that all material created and received by an administration is àrchives'
was largely replaced. For Schellenberg, àrchives' were only that much smaller portion that has been
chosen by the archivist for preservation from the larger, original whole, which he termed `records'.
Records were the concern of records managers and creating institutions; archives were the concern
of archivists and archival institutions. Despite good cooperation between the two professions in the
life cycle of records administration, the Schellenbergian distinction of `records' versus àrchives' has
tended to emphasize their differences rather than their similarities, which legacy now creates major
strategic problems for archivists in a computerized world where electronic records require ùp front'
archival intervention.
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Schellenberg was pointed and personal in his criticism of Jenkinson: "I'm tired," he wrote to a friend,
"of having an old fossil cited to me as an authority in archival matters."[19] Rather than allow
Jenkinson's administrators to decide what should be in archives, Schellenherg insisted that archivists
should make this crucial decision themselves and work with records managers to influence the shape
of the future record. Rather than shy away from records destruction, Schellenbcrg spearheaded the
process that eventually saw destroyed millions of metres of U.S. federal records. In all this, it has
been suggested, Schellenherg reflected the contemporary American political culture of "New Deal
statism, with its emphasis on the benefits of a management technocracy and of efficiency," where
the archivist in Schellenberg's vision served "as a contributing partner to the corporate management
team...... "[20] Unlike Jenkinson, Schellenberg anticipated the future rather than defended the past,
and he joined management techniques to historical scholarship in archives. Yet some of these
formulations, especially as amplified by his American successors, have created some concern for
later archival theorists.
The most controversial of these relates to users, and the concept of use-defined or use-driven
archives. This is a topic on which Eric Ketelaar addressed South Africans in 1992 and about which
Verne Harris has been eloquent in this journal.[21] In determining secondary and especially
informational value, some American archivists after Schellenberg emphasized even more than he
did that real or anticipated use by scholars, and particularly by academic historians, should be central
to appraisal. Others, coming later still, saw secondary use defining the very nature of archives
themselves. "Recent trends in historiography are of prime importance to us" was the appraisal advice
offered by Meyer H. Fishbern, a leading appraisal thinker of the National Archives and Records
Service in the 1960s and 1970s.[22] The manual on appraisal written by Maynard Brichford for the
Society of American Archivists in 1977 asserted that "successful appraisal is directly related to the
archivist's primary role as a representative of the research community. The appraiser should
approach records[by] evaluating demand as reflected by past, present, and prospective research
useIn reaching a decision... they [archivists] consider long-term needs for documentary sources and
the potential demands of scholars."[23] Such use-based definitions of archives, Gerald Ham has
argued, have created "a selection process so random, so fragmented, so uncoordinated, and even so
often accidental...." It could hardly be otherwise, for archivists became "too closely tied to the ...
academic marketplace", with the ultimate result "that archival holdings too often reflected narrow
research interests rather than the broad spectrum of human experience. If we cannot transcend these
obstacles," Ham warns, "then the archivist will remain at best nothing more than a weathervane
moved by the changing winds of historiography."[24]
Other archivists have recently gone even further. In their laudable enthusiasm to increase public
support for archives through greater attention W the needs of users and better delivery of services
to all clients of archives, these writers cross a dangerous line by advocating that secondary use
should actually define the very nature of archives themselves. In 1988, for example, one such
advocate contended that it is from the study of "the relationship between the use of information and
the ways in which it is or can be provided ... that the value of records and the information they
contain will be determined and archival practices defined.[25] The leading proponent of this use-
defined approach, Elsie Freeman Finch, not surprisingly dismisses traditional archival theory as
mere "rules of order and practice (sometimes called principles)", and asserts that "a look at how and
why users approach records will give us new criteria for appraising records." Her proposal of use-
defined archives would, in her own words, turn archival practice "upside down".[26]
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Yet such standing on our heads would not address any of the severe problems which Gerald Ham
has illuminated. Archives would still be influenced by the most powerful, most articulate groups of
users in society, who would still lobby archival institutions effectively to get their views
implemented. The result would still be an unbalanced archival record that, in Ham's words, fails to
reflect "the broad spectrum of human experience". In such an approach, the archivist remains a
prophet trying to predict future research trends rather than an analyst trying to reflect the functions,
programmes, and activities of records creators and the broader society in which those creators live,
work, play, think, and dream. Use-driven archival paradigms de facto wrench records from their
natural context within the business activities of the creator and completely overlook the creator's
need for continuing corporate memory. They impose criteria on appraisal (and of course on
description as well) that are external to the record and that thus undermine its internal transactional
functionality, that is, its provenance, and thus detract from its role in cultural memory?
A wider vision: documenting society and functional provenance
How, then, are archivists to achieve Ham's goal to document "the broad spectrum of human
experience"? If archivists are not (as Schellenberg and his successors advocated) to appraise,
acquire, and describe as archival records primarily those that historians and other users want; if
archivists cannot (as Jenkinson recommended) assume that the records creator will be able to decide
fairly what records to keep beyond a very narrow range needed to serve the agency's limited long-
term obligations, what then are archivists to do? Answers and alternative approaches have come
from Germany, the United States, and Canada. Believing that archives should reflect more globally
the society that creates them, these differing `societal approaches' have begun to explore new
conceptions of archival theory and methodology. This perspective represents another fundamental
change in the theoretical basis of archival ideas: one that shifts our discourse from a dialogue with
the state to one with society?
From the era of the Dutch trio and Jenkinson to even the American focus on records management
in government, archives traditionally were founded by the state, to serve the state, as part of the
state's hierarchical structure and organizational culture. Archival theory not surprisingly found its
legitimization in statist theories, models, and concepts. That is no longer the case. Public sanction
for archives in the late twentieth century, or at least for taxpayer-fund archives, has changed
fundamentally: archives are now of the people, for the people, often even by the people? Few citizens
would approve millions of their tax revenues being used to fund archives whose contents largely
feature bureaucrats talking to each other. The justification for archives to the average citizen may
still perhaps involve government accountability and protection of their own personal rights, but
much more so it involves archives offering them a sense of roots, identity, locality, and collective
memory. Archivists generally have been slow to recognise this change, however, and to move from
state-based to societal-based models upon which to articulate their principles and practices. Not
surprisingly, no few of the heated controversies within the archival discourse in recent years have
featured clashes between the traditional statist paradigm and the newer societal paradigm.
Perhaps the most important thinker on the philosophical underpinnings of appraisal is Germany's
Hans Booms. In the then-West Germany, Booms reacted in the late 1960s against the Marxist-
Leninist polities that he perceived to be imposing the state's ideological values on society and thus
on the definition of the archival record. This should be reversed. Society should define its own
values, and these should then be representatively mirrored through its archival records. Archival
value should not be determined by Jenkinson's administrators or by Schellenherg's historians, but
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by the collectivity of the people. "If there is indeed anything or anyone," Booms asserted, "qualified
to lend legitimacy to archival appraisal, it is society itself, and the public opinions it expresses -
assuming, of course, that these are allowed to develop freely. The public opinion," Booms observed,
"...sanctions [all] public actions, essentially generates the socio-political process, and legitimizes
political authority. Therefore, should not public opinion also legitimize archival appraisal? Could it
also not provide the fundamental orientation for the process of archival appraisal?" If taxpayers
support archives, if they are indeed, as Eric Ketelaar has suggested, "of the people, by the people,
for the people," then should those archives also not reflect the people: their key ideas, functions,
groupings, and activities?
To this end, Hans Booms advocated an elaborate documentation plan based on detailed research by
the archivist into trends of public opinion contemporary to the records being appraised. Present-day
public opinion and the natural biases of the archivist should not impinge on selecting past records,
but rather the records must reflect the values of the society at the time the records were created. Such
values the archivist discovers by historical research into public opinion and then matches the scale
of results against records available for appraisal. [30]
Twenty years later, however, Booms criticized his own plan, admitting it was unworkable.
Documenting public opinion had proven simply too complex an under taking and obtaining public
sanction for the results would have been impossible. Nevertheless, Booms held true to his essential
insight that society, not historians and not the records creator, should generate the values that define
ìmportance' and therefore archival significance. This leads to the corollary that "archivists need to
orient themselves to the values of the records' contemporaries, for whose sake the records
werecreated." Booms by 1991 asserted that society's values were best identified not directly by
research into societal dynamics and public opinion however, but indirectly through an understanding
of the functions of those key records creators designated to implement society's needs and wishes.
He asserted that "archivists require a useful analysis of records-creating functions to help them
connect the documentary needs ... with the records themselves." In this way, there is an "immediate
transition" from amorphous societal values or social issues and trends to the provenance of records
expressed through the functionality of society's record creators, which, in Booms' words, is how and
"why provenance must remain the immutable foundation of the appraisal process."[31]
It is perhaps appropriate that Booms made this significant change in his thinking at the annual
conference of the Association of Canadian Archivists held in Banff in 1991, for his revised approach
of mirroring societal values through the functions of the records creator is exactly the direction, as
the second part of this article will suggest, of the new macro-appraisal acquisition strategy
implemented after 1990 at the National Archives of Canada and articulated in my own theoretical
writings. In the 1991 version of Hans Booms and in the Canadian approach, the older archival focus
on the content of records, and on having that content directly reflect public opinion or users' needs
or historical trends, has been replaced by a newer focus on the functional context of the records and
their creators. In this way, provenance has been rescued from the historical documentalist tradition
and restored to its rightful archival place. This `new' provernance is more conceptual than physical
as is appropriate for the age of the electronic record, and often more functional than structural in
orientation as is fitting for an era where organizational stability is crumbling. But it is provenance
nonetheless, whereby the contextual circumstances of records creation are again made the centre of
the archivist's universe of activities.[32] And insofar as these records creators reflect the wishes and
needs of the broader society in which they are placed, at least in democracies, then we have made a
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large step indeed to meeting Gerald Hain' s challenge to reflect "the broad spectrum of human
experience."
Another approach to documenting a wider society has been elaborated by Helen Samuels of the
United States, with her concept of the `documentation strategy'. This concept evolved from her
earlier experience of trying to deal with the records of large science and technology projects, the
records of each such project being scattered across government, universities, and business
corporations. Traditional institution-focused appraisal in such circumstances produced a fragmented
and incomplete archival record. Recognizing that the scale of modem documentation could only be
understood by some wider level of cooperative research above the level of the record and its
immediate creating institution, Samuels conceived the documentation strategy as a multi-
institutional, research-based, planned analysis that combines many archives' appraisal activities in
order to document the main themes, issues, activities, or functions of society. To its great credit, the
documentation strategy integrates in its analysis official government and other institutional records
with private manuscripts and special graphic material, as well as considering published information.
Its focus is not in the first instance provenancial, however, but on themes such as educating college
students or developing the computer industry, or, as an alternative, on a very limited geographical
area, but documenting therein many themes. A proponent has rightly noted that "the documentation
strategy is intended to supplement rather than replace traditional method of appraisal."[33] Yet the
documentation strategy carries with it, unless applied on a very narrow and local basis, the threat of
enormous overlapping of themes/functions and thus the real possibility of duplication of archivists'
research work and of record acquisition. Moreover, the themes or subjects chosen will always be in
dispute, and thus the approach reflects some of the popular "weather-vane" faults of the
Schellenbergian tradition.[34]
For these reasons, the documentation strategy is most appropriate for the world of private
manuscripts rather than government or institutional records, or as a supplement to the latter. Samuels
recognized this, and has since developed the concept of the ìnstitutional functional analysis' in her
important new book, Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities, which
despite its title has applicability for any institutional archives. Here she argues that archivists first
need, not unlike what Hans Booms recommended in 1991, or the Canadian macro-appraisal strategy,
to research and understand the functions and activities of their own institutions. She outlines a
precise methodology for such functional analysis, which leads to a strategic plan to appraise each
institution's records. Once the most important functions are understood, then records are chosen as
archival which best document those functions. In retrospect, Samuels agrees that she really
developed her two broad concepts in reverse order of logic: once the ìnstitutional functional
analysis' has allowed the archivist to appraise the records of his or her parent or sponsoring
institution, then the archivist (or teams of archivists) can intelligently engage in a wider, inter-
institutional `documentation strategy' to locate related private records and identify oral history
projects that might complement or supplement the institutional archives. With both concepts, the
key issue for Samuels is that "analysis and planning must precede collecting."[35] By bridging the
world of corporate records archivists with that of private manuscript archivists, by focusing on the
entire related information universe (records, manuscripts, media, oral history, and publications) of
all relevant creators rather than just a portion of them, by advocating a research-based, functional,
contextual approach to institutional appraisal rather than the old search for `values' in the content of
records, Samuels provides a very important sense of direction for coping with the voluminous
records of complex modern organizations and for revitalizing archival
11
Australian archivists have very recently given a neo-Jenkinsonian twist to appraisal, taking the old
master not literally, but rather metaphorically. Australians have reacted to several public scandals in
recent years, where important records were lost or intentionally destroyed, by articulating anew in
an archival setting the concept of àccountability'. Consciously based on Jenkinson's central dictums,
Australian archival educators Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward assert that the Schellenber-gian
distinction of `records' and àrchives' as the purview of, respectively, records managers and
archivists distracts from their common, unifying purpose as `documents' at any point in their life.
The concept of the document, McKemmish and Upward assert, "directs attention to the continuum
of processes involved in managing the records of a transaction so that it retains its evidentiary
quality. Archival documents first and foremost provide evidence of the transactions of which they
are a part .... It is therefore essential if archival documents are to he useful for current and historical
purposes that they are complete, reliable and accurate. The effective creation and management of
archival documents are critical to their use and the role they play in governing relationships in
society over time and space. Their effective creation and management are also preconditions of an
information-rich society and under-pin the accountability of government and non-government
organizations, freedom of information and privacy legislation, protection of people's rights and
entitlements, and the quality of the archival heritage, made up of archival documents of continuing
value." Information professionals too often are concerned with access and use, and lose sight of the
essential qualities of "integrity, completeness, accuracy and reliability" of information. Unless
institutions are held accountable for ensuring these qualities of `recordness', then any access to or
use of information will be meaningless, for current and archival users alike? Australian colleague
Glenda Acland has quipped that archivists must accordingly start managing records rather than
relics? Needless to say, the Australian Jenkinsonians do not follow their master's stance as passive
keepers and custodians of records, but rather see archivists as active interveners, even auditors, in
the document continuum. This may indeed be a `logical progression' of Jenkinson's maxim about
the moral defence of archives, and the only way to achieve it in an electronic world.[34] Archivists
must not just appraise records, but intervene in computer system design or system implementation
to ensure that the archivally important functions actually produce records in the first place, rather
than just data or information, and that these key records are stamped with contextual metadata before
they are safeguarded as archival. In this, the Australians have been directly and repeatedly
influenced by the writings and extensive working visits of David Bearman. The Australian
accountability framework is very important, therefore, for it combines archival theory concerning
evidence and recordness with corporate or government self-interest. It is thus a potentially powerful
strategy to get archival issues addressed by record creators, which is essential both for successful
appraisal decisions to be made and for their implementation in system design. Nevertheless, the
accountability approach, by its heavy focus on institutional records, also carries with it, as Australian
advocates themselves are beginning to recognize, a danger of dividing into two almost armed camps
the administrative and cultural roles of archivists, of archival institutions, and of records?
A suggested solution: the Canadian macro-appraisal model
Out of this evolution of world appraisal theory, and both reflecting it and articulating it, has come
the new approach that I have been conceptualizing in a series of articles and implementing with
colleagues at the National Archives of Canada.
To describe the new Canadian approach in one rather controversial sentence might go something
.like this: while archivists appraise records for eventual use and thus societal enlightenment and
empowerment, archivists should in the first instance neither appraise records nor try to anticipate
12
their use. Despite Hans Booms and Helen Samuels, most appraisal theory and implementation
strategies still follow Schellenberg and focus on the actual appraisal of mountains of records, looking
in them to find `value' for research purposes. The emphasis is on searching for what might be most
useful for actual or anticipated research rather than on determining which records bear most
evidence of the functions, programmes, activities, transactions, and structures of the records creator
or creators. The traditional approach focused on appraising records; the new approach being worked
out in Canada focuses first on appraising which functions, which creators or institutions, which
programmes and activities, are most important to document, before targetting actual groups and
series of records for appraisal per se. During this macro-appraisal stage, vast proportions of the
records are rejected as insignificant, and not ever appraised in the traditional sense. Similarly, for
non-institu-tional records, archivists look for private records creators to complete and supplement
the institutional dock. For shock value, I like to assert that the last thing an archivist does in
appraising records is to appraise records.
The macro-appraisal approach advocated by Booms, Samuels, and myself is not easy, but in my
view, it has more integrity vis-a-vis the nature of records creation in our present society, and thus
will produce a better archival record. Archivists (with a few noel exceptions) have, in Gerry Ham's
view, traditionally "assumed a passive role in shaping the documentary record." They were "too
little aware of the larger historical and social landscape" that surrounded the record, remaining
passively content to gather, arrange, and describe records no longer needed. Many were (and remain)
frightened of violating Jenkinson's dictates about the (alleged) impartiality of archivists and the
resulting innocence of documents. By contrast, some appraisal theo-fists are now asserting that
archivists should be active, probing how society records, uses, stores, and disposes of information
and, even more importantly, determining what larger functions these acts of recording were meant
to serve. Archivists need to engage in a kind of macro-appraisal of functions, before the actual
appraisal of records. And, yes, in so doing, they will be partial and biased, within professional limits,
and, yes, they will `create' rather than merely inherit or preserve or `keep' archives. Yet it seems
better to recognize rather than deny these realities, and then to move to develop processes to achieve
the best societal balance possible in our resultant collections.
The concept of the macro-appraisal begins with Margaret Cross Norton's simple, but profound
insight that records follow functions. This truism has long held for corporate and governmental
practices, from business area analysis and system design in the world of computers to current interest
in business process re-engineering. The approach is simple enough to state. Institutions have certain
formal and internally developed functions assigned to them and sanctioned by democratic societies.
For these functions, they articulate various sub-functions, which are allocated to different
administrative structures or offices, each with a mandate to perform or implement such a function,
or (increasingly with one or more other offices) part of a function, or perhaps parts of several
functions. These offices in turn create various programmes and activities to meet their functional
mandates, which in turn lead to actions and transactions, for the efficient operation of which
information systems are built. Of all these steps and processes, the record itself is the final evidence
within those information systems. This means that the contextual milieu in which records are created
their conceptual if not physical provenance - is determined by all these factors: functions, sub-
functions, structures, programmes, activities, actions, and transactions, as well as records-creating
processes, systems, and technologies. This does not mean that records are no longer important to
archivists. Nor does it mean that the longstanding archival grounding in the evidence, structure, and
accountability of the record is threatened in any way. It does mean that records must be understood
first within their contextual circumstances of creation and contemporary use - that is contemporary
13
use, not subsequent or anticipated research use - if they are to be intelligently appraised, and later
described and made available. It does mean that, by focusing on manageable numbers of functions,
programmes, and activities in the first instance rather than on billions of records, the archivist is able
to see the forest whole rather than just the trees, shrubs, and weeds. Seeing the context whole
ultimately means that poorer and duplicate records are more easily identified and eliminated, and
that the most succinct, precise, primary record is more readily targetted and preserved.
This is a major change or reorientation in what archivists have done. It is not a refinement or slight
tinkering to accommodate new realities. As Charles Dollar noted in his concluding address to the
1992 International Congress on Archives in Montreal on the impact of information technology on
archival theory and practice, the old archival paradigm based on determining evidential and
informational value "must be replaced by one that emphasizes a functional analysis of the context
of records creation and [contemporary] use."[40]
Let us be very clear where we stand here. We must get our archival heads out of the sands of practice
devised for mediaeval charters and papal decrees. We must realize that clinging to old practice and
old theory in light of the volume and technology of the records is not a noble defence of principle
or archival tradition, but an act of wilful neglect. The current paper records of the Government of
Canada - which is smaller than South Africa's - if laid end-to-end, would circle the globe 144 times,
or complete 8 round trips to the moon, or, more to the point, amount to about 600 000 books (a
good-sized university library) for each archivist to appraise, every year - and that is just the paper.
It is estimated that the electronic records of the government might total between 100 and 1 000 times
the extent of those in paper format. It is asserted that more information has been produced in the
past 30 years than in the previous 5 000.[41] It should be self-evident that we as archivists need to
start at the mind above all this mass of recorded matter, rather than the other way around. Moreover,
many such records themselves in a virtual electronic world will increasingly not even exist in ways
that we traditionally understand in order to be appraised at the record or document level, as I outline
in detail elsewhere in this issue of the Journal. In short, we archivists need a top-down (functions-
process centred) rather than a bottom-up (record - product) focus for appraisal (and for description
as well - but that is another story!).[42]
It is precisely on this point that the Canadian macro-appraisal approach has its greatest value.[43] It
shifts the initial and major focus of appraisal from the record to the functional context in which the
record is created. And although focusing on analyzing institutional and societal functions, it is
nonetheless sensitive to the ways in which structures reflect functions. Based on careful research by
archivists, the interaction of function and structure includes an analysis of organizational cultural
dynamics, records-keeping systems, and citizen/client involvement and interaction with the
institution or function. This reseach illuminates the broad context in which all information of the
institution is created - and the context in which it should therefore be appraised. Using such
knowledge gained by an institutional functional analysis, the main appraisal questions for the
archivist are not what has been written (or drawn, photographed, filmed, or automated), where it is,
and what research values does it have. Rather, the two key appraisal questions are, first, what
functions and activities of the creator should be documented (rather than what documentation should
be kept?) and, secondly, who - in articulating and implementing the key functions, programmes, and
transactions of the institution - would have had cause to create a document, what type of document
would it be, and with whom would that corporate person cooperate or interact in either its creation
or its later use? These questions beg a third: which records creators or `functions' (rather than which
records) have the most importance? And its converse: which functions are poorly documented in
14
institutional records and must be complemented by private manuscripts, other archival media, oral
history projects, and non-archival documentation (publications, `grey literature', buildings,
inscriptions, monuments, museum and gallery artifacts, etc.) - none of the latter necessarily collected
by archivists or at least the institutional or corporate archivist. Only after these questions are
answered can the archivist target realistically the actual records or series of records likely to have
greatest potential archival value for `micro-appraisal' (or, really, traditional appraisal of applying
àppraisal criteria' such as age, extent, uniqueness, time span, completeness, fragility,
manipulability, etc.) at whatever greater level of detail they may warrant. Moreover, as these macro-
level questions are answered, it means that large volumes of records can be destroyed without further
investigation, thus saving agencies and archives time, space, and money.
How this macro-appraisal occurs in archival working reality was addressed in detail during a week-
long workshop conducted by me at the State Archives, Pretoria in November 1994, and appropriate
documents and guidelines have been left with officers there for those who may be interested. To
describe the actual criteria and methodologies used in the macro-appraisal would readily amount to
a separate paper.[44] Nevertheless, the theory and related strategies and methodologies have been
put in place at the National Archives of Canada and have worked well in the past four years. A
similar macro-appraisal project (the PIVOT project) is underway in the Netherlands, as well as
elsewhere.
Let me conclude with my central point again. Macro-appraisal moves in a topdown fashion from the
purpose or broad societal function to all relevant record creators, then to the key individual record
creator, and their operational programmes, then through various structures and transactional
processes and client interactions designed to implement that societal function (and numerous sub-
functions and and activities) within that creator, on to information systems created to produce and
organize records that permit those processes to work, and finally to the records themselves which
document a}l the foregoing as well as the impact of the function and structure on the citizen and,
equally important, that of the citizen on the. functions and and structures. This contextual whole
must be understood as a whole. By concentrating on the entire functional and records universe rather
than a portion of it, by advocating a topdown functional analysis rather than a bottom-up search for
`values' in records, the macro-appraisal provides a strategic direction, a set of tools and
methodologies, and a sound theoretical basis, for coping with the appraisal of voluminous and very
fragile electronic records of complex modem organizationa and societies and for targetting the sites
where the most valuable, |most succinct, and most precise reflection of society occurs through its
institutions.
Picking up the theme of the symposium and continuing the words of Eric Ketelaar and Abraham
Lincoln, if archives are to be `for' the people, they must be òf' the people. That means that macro-
appraisal must be applied (as we try to in Canada) within a `total archives' perspective combining
conceptually, strategically, and professionally the worlds of public and private archives. We need to
develop appraisal approaches that will allow for the identification of records that collectively will
reflect the key institutions of society and their core functions, and the impact these institutions have
on citizens and as importantly the way citizens interact with and change these institutions, and those
portions of the lives of citizens entirely outside contact with institutions. I believe that the world
over archival theory, practice, and resources have focused far too much on the first of these three
areas in isolation from, the other two. If we are to continue to be charged and entrusted `by' the
people to be their collective archivists, we need to refreshen and balance our perspective.
15
If we are successful, the result, I am certain, will be a more comprehensive, more useable, perhaps
even a less voluminous archival record; to ensure both the accountability of records creators to
society and posterity, and the fullness and richness of the national memory we leave for our
communities and nations. If we are indeed, as Jacques Le Goff asserts, the creators of archives and
thus the architects of the future's memory, should we do less?
* I wish here to acknowledge formally, as does Sharon Anne Cook, the many South Africans who
by their kind welcome made our visit to their country in 1994 at once informative, pleasant, and
memorable.
Our principal hosts from city to city were especially solicitous: Marie Olivier, Clive Kirkwood,
Verne Harris, Con de Wet, and ludwig Wagner, but they were joined by a score of others who
combined to establish a new definition of gracious hospitality. For this article which, unlike its
counterpart in the same issue, has only been lightly revised from the version that was delivered
orally, I also thank Verne Harris, the editor of the S.A. Archives Journal, for his support and
encouragement. While major portions of the article were previously committed for publication
elsewhere , I agreed with Verne's request that it also be allowed to appear here as a record of the
symposium's discussions.
1Pam Wernich: "Moulding the Future of our Documentary Heritage: Thoughts on the Appraisal
of Archives", $.A. Archives Journal 30 (1988), p. 43.
2Jacques Le Goff: History and Memory, translated by Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman
(New York, 1992), pp. xvi- xvii, 59-60, and passim. Interestingly enough, a key challenger of
archival orthodoxy and a leading advocate of virtual archives, and of cross institutional post-
custodial perspectives, entitled her first major exposition in a manner that is very reminiscent of
Le Goff's themes - see Helen Willa Samuels: "Who Controls the Past", American Archivist 49
(Spring 1986), pp. 109-124..
3Feminist scholars are keenly aware of the ways that systems of language, writing, and recording
infor-marion, and preserving such information once recorded, are social-and power-based, not
neutral, now and across all past millennia. For example, see Gerda Lerner: The Creation of
Patriarchy (New York and Oxford, 1986), pp. 6-7, 57, 151, 200, and passim; and Riane Eisler:
The Chalice & The Blade (San Francisco, 1987), pp. 71-73, 91-93. Lerner's new book, The
Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy (New York and
Oxford, 1993), carefully details the systematic exclusion of women from history and archives,
and the attempts starting from the late nineteenth century of women to correct this by creating
women's archives: see especially chapter 11, "The Search for Women's History".
4Wernich: "Moulding the Future", S.A. Archives Journal, p. 43.
5The relativism of archival theory and much related strategy and methodology is nicely pointed
out by Verne Harris, in "Community Resource or Scholars' Domain? Archival Public
Programming and the User as a Factor in Shaping Archival Theory and Practice", S.A. Archives
Journal 35 (1993), p. 6. For an argument that this relativism is our strength rather than weakness,
see Terry Cook: "Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management
and Archives in the Post-Custodial and Post-Modernist Era", Archives and Manuscripts 22
(November 1994), pp. 300-329.
16
6. Cited by Frank Upward, who also makes this critical point himself, in his "In Search of the
Continuum", Sue McKemmish and Michael Piggott (eds.): The Records Continuum: Ian
Maclean and Australian Archives First 50 Years (Melbourne, 1994), p. 117.
7. "Memoir of Sir Hilary Jenkinson", in J. Conway Davies: Studies Presented to Sir Hilary
Jenkinson, C.B.E., LLD., F.S.A. (London, 1957), p. xxx. This "Memoir" is the best biographical
sketch of Jenkinson, which can be usefully supplemented by Richard Stapleton: "Jenkinson and
Schellenberg: A Comparison", Archivaria 17 (Winter 1983-84), pp. 75-85.
8. Hilary Jenkinson: A Manual of Archive Administration (London, 1968, a re-issue of the

revised second edition of 1937), pp. 149-155. In fairness, it must be holed that Jenkinson did
encourage a limited àrchive making' role for archivists, consisting of articulating standards
whereby administrators could create and maintain high-quality archives in the future that would'
bear those trustworthy characteristics of authentic, impartial evidence as did past archives. This
is hardly a satisfactory solution, He admits (p. 190) the insoluble dilemma, given his overall
approach, that this àrchive-making' intervention would have to distinguish more ìmportant'
agencies (and programmes and activities) from others, yet such very judgements of importance
and value - which are the foundation of modem archival appraisal - immediately undermine his
impartial archivist, and therefore Jenkinson, always consistent at least, admits that "upon this
point we have no suggestions to offer"! He does not seem to have appreciated that eves his
limited intervention of setting standards for àrchive making' also undermines the ìnnocence' of
archives as natural or pure accumulations of recorded information that their creators created,
organized, and used. in the normal course of business as they (sad not standard-setting archivists)
saw fit. Jenkinson's `hands-off' approach to appraisal had a lasting influence in Britain, on
through to the Grigg Report of the 1950's - see Ole Kolsrud: "The Evolution of Bask Appraisal
Principles - Some Comparative Observations", American Archivist 55 (Winter 1992),pp. 27-29.
9. F. Gerald Ham: Selecting and Appraising Archives and Manuscripts, Society of American
Archivists, Archival Fundamentals Series (Chicago, 1993), p. 9. Even during his lifetime, those
archivists very friendly to Jenkinson opposed his views on appraisal; in a festschrift in his
honour, the leading archivists of Canada and Australia underlined the difficulties of Jeskinson's
approach - see W. Kaye Lamb: "The Fine An of Destruction", pp. 50-56, and Ian Maclean: "An
Analysis of Jeskinson's `Manual of Archive Administration' in the Light of Australian
Experience", pp. 150-151, both in Albert E.J. Hollaender (ed.): Essays in Memory of Sir Hilary
Jenkinson (Chichester, 1962).
10. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted: Archives and Manuscript Repositories in the USSR: Moscow
and Leningrad (Princeton, 1972), pp. 23-60; and, more pointedly, her recent Intellectual Access
and Descriptive Standards for Post-Soviet Archives: What Is to be Done?, International Research
and Exchanges Board preliminary preprint version (Princeton, March 1992), pp. 9-23.
11. See, for example, the unabashed Jenkinsonianism of the Australians, perhaps represented
best in Sue McKemmish: "Introducing Archives and Archival Programs", in Judith Ellis (ed.):
Keeping Archives, second edition (Port Melbourne, 1993), pp. 1-24; Sue McKemmish and Frank
Upward: Archival Documents: Providing Accountability Through Recordkeeping (Melbourne,
1993); Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward: "Somewhere Beyond Custody", Archives and
Manuscripts 22 (May 1994), pp. 138149; and most explicitly Glenda Acland: "Archivist -
Keeper. Undertaker or Auditor?", Archives and Manuscripts 19 (May 1991), pp. 9-15. For
17
Canada, the best and most articulate statement is by Heather MacNeil: "Archival Theory and
Practice: Between Two Paradigms", Archivaria 37 (Spring 1994), pp. 6-20.
12. The figures and growth rates are taken from James Gregory Bradsher: "An Administrative
History of the Disposal of Federal Records, 1789-1949", Provenance 3 (Fall 1985), pp. 1-21.
13. Margaret Cross Norton: "Records Disposal", in Thornton W. Mitchell (ed.): Norton on
Archives: The Writings of Margaret Cross Norton on Archives and Records Management
(Chicago, 1975), p. 232, and her chapter "The Archivist and Records Management" in the same
volume; Philip C. Brooks: "The Selection of Records for Preservation", American Archivist 3
(October 1940), p. 226; and on Jenkinson, see Donald R. McCoy: The National Archives:
America's Ministry of Documents, 19341968 (Chapel Hill, 1978), p. 178. Brooks' interventionist
notion was rearticulated and explored further by Jay Atherton: "From Life Cycle to Continuum:
Some Thoughts on the Records Management-Archives Relationship", Archivaria 21 (Winter
1985-86), pp. 43-51, and the idea of front-end work by archivists on this records continuum
underpins much current thinking about electronic recoils. Atherton's continuum formulation was
itself anticipated by Ian Maclean of Australia: see his "An Analysis of Jenkinson's `Manual of
Archive Adminstration' in the Light of Australian Experience", Essays in Memory, pp. 128-152;
and Ian Maclean: "Australian Experience in Record and Archives Management", American
Archivist 22 (October 1959), pp. 387-418.
14. Ham: Selecting and Appraising Archives, p. 7. Schellenberg's fullest statement of his oft-
cited principles is "The Appraisal of Modem Public Records", National Archives Bulletin No. 8
(Washington, 1956), pp. 1-46, of which an extract is readily available, under the same title, in
Maygene F. Daniels and Timothy Walch (eds.): A Modern Archives Reader: Basic Readings on
Archival Theory and Practice (Washington, 1984), pp. 57-70.
15. Quotations from ibid, pp. 58-63, 69.
16. Ham: Selecting and Appraising Archives, p. 8. Schellenberg's influence is still strong; a
recent text-book chapter asked that his secondary values relating to `research uses' are still "the
principal concern of archivists". See Maygene F. Daniels: "Records Appraisal and Disposition",
in Bradsher: Managing Archives, p. 60.
17. On this reinterpretation of Schellenberg, see Angelika Menne-Haritz: "Appraisal or

Selection: Can a Content[-]Oriented Appraisal be Harmonized with the Principle of
Provenance?", in Kerstin Abukhanfusa and Jan Sydbeck: The Principle of Provenance: Report
from the First Stockholm Conference on Archival Theory and the Principle of Provenance 2-3
September 1993 (Sweden, 1994), pp. 103-131 (reprinted also in the American Archivist 57
(Summer 1994), pp. :528-542.
18. Stapleton: "Jenkinson and Scbellenberg", p. 84. For an analysis of Schellenberg's personal
evolution, especially regarding private archives and archival relations with librarianship, see
Richard C. Berner: Archival Theory and Practice in the United States: A Historical Analysis
(Seattle and London, 1983), pp. 47-64, and passim.
19. Cited in McCoy: National Archives, p.180. Biographical details for Schellenberg may found
in "In Memoriam: T.R. Schellenberg", American Archivist 33 (April 1970), pp. 190-202.
18
20. Barbara Craig: "What are the Clients? Who are the Products? The Future of Archival Public
Services in Perspective", Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 139-140, where she speculates on
the impact of contemporary social mores on the development of archivial ideas.
21. Eric Ketelaar: "Archives of the People, By the People, For the People", S.A. Archives Journal
34 (1992), pp. 5-16. See also his "Exploitation of New Archival Materials", Archivum 35 (1989),
pp. 189-199. I agree wholeheartedly with Ketelaar that archives should not be appraised and
acquired to support use; once acquired, however, their description, reference, and diffusion
should of course reflect client needs as far as possible - and well beyond the traditional archival
domain of academic scholars. See Terry Cook: "Viewing the World Upside Down: Reflections
on the Theoretical Underpinnings of Archival Public Programming", Archi, aria 31 (Winter
1990-91), laP. 123-134. For Verne Harris, see again his "Community Resource or Scholars'
Domain.9", S.A. Archives Journal, pp. 4-13. I would agree with Harris' characterization therein
of my views, except where he asserts that my position of according primacy to the. record and
archival theory in. public programming, rather than to use and users as most outreach advocates
demand, somehow revolves circumventing "the subjective nature of appraisal" (p. 10). I trust
the present essay clarifies my views; all archival theorists are not necessarily Jenkinsonian
positivists in outlook! As well, I argue in this present essay (and elsewhere) that the record can
never speak for itself devoid of its provenancial and societal context; thus the subjective
intervention of the archivist and society in forming the record, which Harris makes part of his
complex base model (p. 9), is in fact the basis of macro-appraisal thinking and my own recent
writing. In this, I think Harris' perspective and my own are considerably closer than his article
may suggest. For fuller statements on the subjective nature of appraisal and the archivist, see
Terry Cook: "Mind Over Matter: Towards a New Theory of Archival Appraisal", in Barbara
Craig (ed.): The Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa, 1992), pp.
38-70; and Cook: "Electronic Records, Paper Minds", Archives and Manuscripts.
22. Meyer H. Fishbein: "A Viewpoint on Appraisal of National Records", American Archivist
33 (April 1970), p. 175, as cited in Ham: Selecting and Appraising Archives, p. 10.
23. Maynard J Brichford: Archives & Manuscripts: Appraisal & Accessioning (Chicago, 1977),
p. 13. Despite growing protests against this approach to archives, it continues, with explicit
acknowledgement of Schellenberg's influence; see Elizabeth Lockwood: "'Imponderable
Matters': The Influence of New Trends in History on Appraisal at the National Archives",
American Archivist 53 (Summer 1990), lap. 394405.
24. F. Gerald Ham: "The Archival Edge", in Daniels and Walch: (eds.): Modern Archives
Reader, pp. 328-29.
25. Lawrence Dowler:. "The Role of Use in Defining Archival Practice and Principles: A
Research Agenda for the Availability and Use of Records", American Archivist 51 (Winter and
Spring 1988), p. 74, and passim (emphasis added). For a supportive Canadian view of this largely
American perspective, see Gabrielle Blais and David Enns: "From Paper Am-hives to People
Archives: Public Programming in the Management of Archives", Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990-
91), pp. 101-113, and especially p. 109.
26. Elsie T. Freeman (now Finch): "In the Eye of the Beholder: Archives Administration from
the User's Point of View", American Archivist 47 (Spring 1984), pp. 112-113, 119.
19
27. I have criticized (perhaps harshly) the user-driven approach to archives as a trivialization of
the archival essence in pursuit of the marketing rhetoric of customer-obsessed corporate
America. See, among others, Terry Cook: "Viewing the World Upside Down: Reflections on
the Theoretical Underpinnings of Archival Public Programming", Archivaria; "Easy To Byte,
Harder To Chew: The Second Generation of Electronic Records Archives", Archivaria 33
(Winter 1991-92), pp. 210-211; and "Mind Over Matter", in Archival Imagination, pp. 40-42,
and passim. Almost all the writers on alternative contemporary archival frameworks in the
following paragraphs also reject, at least implicitly, user-driven definitions of archives.
28. The point is Oddo Bucci's, in his analysis of the "Evolution of Archival Science", in Oddo
Bucci (ed.): Archival Science on the Threshold of the Year 2000 (Mascerata, Italy, 1992), p. 35,
and if.
29. Abraham Lincoln's memorable phrase was first placed in an archival context by Eric
Ketelaar; see his article cited in footnote 21 above.
30. Hans Booms: "Society and the Formation of a Documentary Heritage: Issues in the Appraisal
of Archival Sources", Archivaria 24 (Summer 1987), (original 1972: translation by Hermina
Joldersma and Richard Khimpenhouwer), p. 104. On the lack of legitimacy provided either by
Idealist/Hegelian models based on a prediction of historical trends and "a futurology of research
interests" or by Marxist or other models based on alleged "objective laws for social
development", both of which models ignore the very "exismential conditions of human
existence", see p. 100, and passim (pp. 69-107). For an amplification of Booms' views of records
reflecting or embodying an ìmage' of society, see the work of his Bundesarchiv colleague,
Seigfried Buttner, as described ha Terry Cook: The Archival Appraisal of Records Containing
Personal Information: A RAMP Study With Guidelines (International Council on Archives,
Paris., 1991), pp. iv-v, 35-37; and inter alia through comments on But-tner's views in Hans
Booms: "Uberlieferungsbildung.' Keeping Archives as a Social and Political Activity",
Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-92), pp. 28-29.
31. Ibid, pp. 25-33 (quotations from pp. 31-33). For a critique of Booms' major work within the
German archival tradition, and its two streams of societal documeatalists and provenance
advocates, see Menne-Haritz: "Appraisal or Documentation", American Archivist, passim.
32. See Cook: Archival Appraisal of Records Containing Personal Information, and "Mind over
Matter", both cited above. The titles of the internal documents or related publications setting
forth the National Archives' new approach are given in the footnotes of "Mind Over Mater". I
drew inspiration for my theoretical work and for the National Archives' practical models from
both Booms and Buttner's ideas. I did so, however, at a philosophical level (i.e., archival `value'
should be define by social constructs and societal functions, rather than be determined by records
creators or subsequent users), but I did not do. so at the level of implementation of a research
and appraisal methodology requiring archivists to focus directly on societal trends and issues.
By adopting a functional-structural focus for archival research into records creators, where those
creators de facto represent the collective require-meats of society, l consciously placed my work
and the National Archives' methodology in a context-based, provenance-centred framework
rather than in a content-based historical-documentalist one. Those who do not read my work
carefully get this reversed - see, for example, the unpleasant charges in Terry Eastwood: "Nailing
a Little Jelly to the Wall of Archival Studies", Archivaria 35 (Spring 1993), pp. 248-250, which
20
I have refuted in Terry Cook: "'Another Brick in the Wall': Terry East-wond's Masonry and
Archival Walls, History, and Archival Appraisal", Archivaria 37 (Spring 1994), pp. 96-103.
Appraisal Guidelines for Sampling and Selecting Case Files", Archivaria 32 (Summer, 1991) pp
25-50. For an impotant qualification from one who worked on this project, see Richard Brown:
"Records Acquisition Strategy and its Theoretical Foundation: The Case for a Concept of
Archival neutics", Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-92), pp. 34-56.
33. The original statement is Helen Willa Samuels: "Who Controls The Past', American
Archivist 49 (Slating 1986), PlY. 109-124. A later article features an updated overview, and its
footnotes contain useful additional references; see Ri chard J. Cox and Helen W. Samuels: "The
Archivist's First Responsility: A Research Agenda to Improve the Identification and Retention
of Records of Enduring Value", American Archivist 51 (Winter-Spring 1988), pp. 28-42. Two
other oft-cited examples are Larry Hackman and/Joan Warnow-Blawett: "'The Documentation
Strategy Process: A Model and a Case Study", American Archivist 50 (Wimer 1987), pp. 12-47;
sad Richard J. Cox: "A Documentation Strategy Case Study: Western New York", American
Archivist 52 (Spring 1959), pp. 192-200 (quotation is p. 193). The working out of Samuels'
approach, without the theoretical underpinnings, was first evidenced in Joan K. Hm, Helen Willa
Samuels, and Barbara Trippel Simmons: Appraising the Records of Modern Science and
Technology: A Guide (Chicago, 1985).
34. For critiques, see David Bearman: Archival Methods (Pittsburgh, 1989), pp. 13-15, and
chapter 1 generally; Cook: Archival Appraisal of Records, pp. 33-34, 36-37; and Cook:
"Documentation Strategy", Archivaria 34 (Summer 1992), pp. 181-91.
35. Helen Willa Samuels: Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities
(Metuchen, N.J., and London, 1992), p. 15, and passim. See also her overview of both
documentation strategies and institutional functional analyses in Helen W. Samuels: "Improving
our Disposition: Documentation Strategy", Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-92), pp. 125-40. For
Samuels' rejection of the American Schellenbergian tradition of defining value through use and
for her insistence on the centrality of provenance, see Varsity Letters, pp. 8, 13, and 16.
36.McKemmish and Upward: Archival Documents, pp. 1, 22, and passim.
37. Glenda Acland: "Managing the Record Rather Than The Relic", Archives and Manuscripts
20 (May 1992), pp. 57-63. She has been one of the key movers towards an accountability
framework; see her testimony to government bodies cited in McKemmish and Upward: Archival
Documents, pp. 13-15.
38. See the revealing title of Glenda Acland's "Archivist - Keeper, Undertaker or Auditor?",
Archives and Manuscripts, where she argues strongly for the last role.
39. Upward and McKemmish: "Somewhere Beyond Custody", Archives and Manuscripts, pp.
145-46, and Frank Upward in Archival Documents, p. 43.
40. Charles Dollar: "Seizing the Opportunity: Archivists in the Information Age", comments
delivered at the Fourth Plenary Session, XIIth International Congress on Archives (Montreal,
1992), p. 2, where he was summarizing (and endoring) all insight offered by Angelika Menne-
Haritz of Germany.
21
41. For the complexities of modern information, see Terry Cook: "Rites of Passage: The
Archivist and the Information Age", Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 171-76; and Richard
Saul Wurman: Information Anxiety (New York, 1989).
42. For the parallel argument for the archival function of description to the one being made here
for appraisal, see Terry Cook: "The Concept of the Archival Fonds in the Post-Custodial Era:
Theory, Problems and Solutions", Archivaria 35 (Spring 1993), pp. 24-37. 43. This paragraph is
taken with some modification from my "Mind Over Matter", pp. 47, 53.
44. The macro-appraisal criteria are summarized in ibid., pp. 52-57. The two interrelated models
are developed in Cook: Archival Appraisal of Records Containing Personal Information,
especially chapters three and four; and Terry Cook: "Government-Wide Plan for the Disposition
of Records, 19911996", internal report, National Archives of Canada, November 1990. The
former focuses on indentifying functional `hot-spots' in the citizen-state interaction; the latter on
which records-creating structures are most important. They are further integrated in Terry Cook:
"An Appraisal Methodology: Guidelines for Performing an Archival Appraisal", internal report,
National Archives of Canada, December 1991. I plan to bring these (and other) scattered sources
into an integrated and more accessible form for publication. Even in these much longer studies,
however, my presentation of the model is meant to be suggestive rather than comprehensive.
Future study by archivists and archival studies students, as well as practical experience in
implementing it, will no doubt test its validity and flesh out its present somewhat skeletal form.
For practical dimensions and an example of the implementation of the models for at least one
kind of record, see Terry Cook: "Many Are Called, But Few Are Chosen:
~~~~~~~~
By Terry Cook*, National Archives of Canada
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1

FROM THE RECORD TO ITS CONTEXT: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF

The first voices: the Dutch Manual and Jenkinson

The American voice: T.R. Schellenberg and archival users

A wider vision: documenting society and functional provenance

A suggested solution: the Canadian macro-appraisal model

4Wernich: "Moulding the Future", S.A. Archives Journal, p. 43.

8. Hilary Jenkinson: A Manual of Archive Administration (London, 1968, a re-issue of the

15. Quotations from ibid, pp. 58-63, 69.

17. On this reinterpretation of Schellenberg, see Angelika Menne-Haritz: "Appraisal or

36.McKemmish and Upward: Archival Documents, pp. 1, 22, and passim.

By Terry Cook*, National Archives of Canada

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