ARMReN workshop 1: appraisal and collection
Notes from plenary session.
Discussion group 1: Helen Mercer
Does functional analysis change the way records are catalogued? Q: how well do researchers respond to functional structures and descriptions?
Are archival theories and practices the same at local and national level? Q: are archivists involved in early stages of retention schedules? If not, should they be? Has archival theory and practice been applied to what is collected?
Q: What effect does digital have on appraisal?
Discussion group 2: Peter Horsman
Acquisitions /documentation strategies: what are they, how do they work? Not functionally based.
Organisations suit some models better than others: local record offices, TNA mandate may be limited. Total archives concept: does this suit?
Artificial collections, what value do they have as evidence? Does the loss of provenance matter; what about mixed collections, cross domain? What does functional value do for such archives?
Arrangement: keep arrangement as it is on deposit or not?
Functional appraisal: do organisations actually follow the written rules.
What about personal and private papers?
Transparent working important: keep a good record of the process.
How to apply macro appraisal to old records? Does it apply?
Does the political environment effect appraisal?: research to understand the history of the administration, especially across organisational type boundaries (puboic-private)
Discussion group 3: Margarette Lincoln
Subjectivity?
Extent to which appraisal models developed elsewhere are applicable to museum archives: extent to which selection procedures in museums for all objects have lessons for archive domain.
How far do existing models fit museums?: two issues, museum’s own archives and archives relating to objects.
Levels of activity within appraisal: decision to accept or not a collection offered; if accepted, will the collection be further appraised in detail?
Assumptions behind the models: these need to be explored and made transparent. Do they work better within the record creating organisation? How well do they work when archivist has no access/limited access to record creators.
What criteria are appropriate for museums? Are they different from other collecting archives? The way in which museum archives have developed historically: does this affect the present methods eg re-appraisal?

Is appraisal only about what to keep/what not to keep? Is there not a range of appraisal purposes eg what to digitize, catalogue, vital records, preserve etc: do the appraisal models help in these other areas?
Records of conflict; looted records/objects; restitution of cultural property.
Costs and risk in appraisal: risk not value as an appraisal model?
Artefactual value: archivists could learn from museum curators on this. We tend to focus on information etc.
Does value exist?? Value to an individual: but does it exist independently?
Ultimately appraisal is not a problem to be solved but a life to be lived.
Open discussion
Cost and risk in appraisal: do we have good models for costs of preservation and access including of digital? How do you measure the value of spending the money or the risk of not doing it? Value to whom? Costs to whom?
Documenting appraisal: how best to do this? Who for? Future archivists? Users now and in future? Public or social memory: needs public input.
ES
Digital records: what effect does it have? The methodology should be the same, even if its application is different? Does the fact that records are created differently
(digitally) affect the method of appraisal? Access control in early intervention is a problem? EDRMS changes affects appraisal. Wikis, websites, blogs? If then made accessible on web, ie publish them, what happens to copyright?