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Course Description

The Appraisal and Selection course will treat paper records and those in other media, including electronic records. I plan to focus critically upon the following themes: what is the traditional theoretical basis for appraisal of archival materials, both records and manuscripts, and the social setting for its emergence; what were the effects of the shift to a "documentation strategy" as social history gained importance after the 1960s in the US and elsewhere; what are the changes implied and entailed by electronic records; and what have been the impacts of changes in archival practice on the structure of the archival record. Students will investigate appraisal practices in existing archives to discover what kinds of appraisal decisions are made in real-world environments, what constraints lead to such decisions, and how (and when and if!) archivists document their appraisal decisions.

Course Objectives

• To review the history and concepts of archival appraisal as a practice of cultural construction.

• To familiarize students with current appraisal practice in an institutional setting, including economic, political, theoretical, and professional issues.

• To prepare students to review existing appraisal policies and past appraisal decisions and to prepare appropriate documentation plans for a given archival environment.

• To give students experience of the negotiation with archival constituencies (including archival staffs) necessary for dealing effectively with the underlying value issues of appraisal.

Assignments

Class participation (30% of grade): Students will be expected to read assigned readings, prepare a minimum of one-paragraph précis of each to be turned in, and come to class prepared to discuss them critically. Since students will make their choice of project early, it is expected that they will bring the specifics of “their” repository to bear in class discussions, using the discussions in class and fellow students’ insights to help them clarify the project work.

Semester project (45% of grade): Each student will write an evaluation of the acquisition/appraisal policies/procedures of an archival repository in the Austin area. The student will visit the repository; evaluate the collection, existing acquisition policies, and any formalized evidence of appraisal practice (handbooks, rules of thumb, etc.); interview appropriate staff for actual appraisal practice; read appropriate appraisal literature for the kinds of collections maintained by the repository; and prepare a report evaluating findings (minimum 10 pages, double-spaced and exclusive of endnotes, appendices, and bibliography). The report will cover the following elements:

1. Description of the institution, its collections, and its selection and appraisal policies/practices.
2. Statement of what significant element(s) of appraisal theory this case study can be used to address.
3. Evaluation of appraisal policies/practices, based upon standard archival handbooks discussed in class and additional theoretical literature appropriate to the collections (your evaluation and references should reflect a critical reading of this literature).
4. Formal statement of revisions to the institution’s collection and appraisal policies and practices that could be appropriate to the institution and its collections, based upon current theoretical literature.
5. Suggestion of evaluation methods for determining whether selection and appraisal policies and practices, existing and proposed, are successful.

Students should choose the repository they wish to analyze by the third class meeting (September 24) and should discuss their choices with one another to ensure that they avoid duplication. In the first class meeting we will discuss how to obtain access to repositories to carry out the projects; the instructor (and possibly fellow students) will assist with contacts and introductions. The resulting paper should be a scholarly and professional production adhering to the most recent Chicago Manual of Style.

Presentation (25% of grade): Each student will prepare a fifteen-minute presentation of the findings of the above project, designed to provide classmates with an overview of the repository for context, but to concentrate on the special problems or issues of acquisition and appraisal that the repository faces, the ways it has solved them, and the student’s suggestions for improvement concomitant with the mission of the institution and cost-benefit expectations. The student will invite a representative of the institution to attend the presentation.

Class Schedule

September 8: Stopping Time and Editing the Past: Course Overview

Course materials and assignments:
Except for the Ham and Samuels texts, readings will be available online or on E-reserves; please check the syllabus for changes
Class participation
Readings and precis
Final paper/report
Class presentation

Reading: NOTE that since we will lose our first class meeting day to Labor Day, students will be expected to read the assignment for this class after meeting class for the first time if they have not read it previously.

Ham, Selecting and Appraising Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: SAA,1993), Chapter 1

September 15: Historical Development of Appraisal Theory

Readings:

Frank Boles with Julia Marks Young, Archival Appraisal (New York: Neal-Schuman, 1991), Chapter 1

Ham, Selecting and Appraising, Chapter 2

Hilary Jenkinson, A Manual of Archive Administration (1922; 2nd edition London: Percy Lund, Humphries, and Co., 1937), 136-155

Theodore Schellenberg, The Appraisal of Modern Public Records (Bulletins of the National Archives No. 8; Washington: National Archives, 1956), 237-278 (also in Maygene Daniels and Timothy Walch, eds., A Modern Archives Reader, [Washington: NARA, 1984], 57-70)

Luciana Duranti, “The Concept of Appraisal and Archival Theory,” American Archivist 57 (Spring 1994), 328-344

September 22: Value and Significance

Readings:

Ham, Selecting and Appraising, Chapter 6

Tom Nesmith, “Postmodern Archives: The Changing Intellectual Place of Archives,” paper presented at SAA, 2000

Gary Taylor, Cultural Selection: Why Some Achievements Survive the Test of Time—And Others Don’t (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 3-20

Kenneth E. Foote, “To Remember and Forget: Archives, Memory, and Culture,” American Archivist 53 (Summer 1990), 378-392

Shauna McRanor, “A Critical Analysis of Intrinsic Value,” American Archivist 59 (Fall 1996), 400-411

“Intrinsic Value in Archival Materials” (Staff Information Paper 21; Washington: NARA, 1982), in A Modern Archives Reader, 91-99

September 29: Social History and Documentation Strategy

Readings:

Ham, Selecting and Appraising, Chapter 11

Hans Booms, “Society and the Formation of a Documentary Heritage: Issues in the Appraisal of Archival Sources,” Archivaria 24 (Summer 1987), 69-107

Terry Eastwood, “Towards a Social Theory of Appraisal,” in Barbara L. Craig, ed., The Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa: Association of Canadian Archivists, 1992), 71-89

Larry J. Hackman and Joan Warnow-Blewett, “The Documentation Strategy Process: A Model and a Case Study,” American Archivist, 50 (Winter 1987), 12-47

Richard J. Cox, “The Documentation Strategy and Archival Appraisal Principles: A Different Perspective,” Archivaria, 38 (Fall 1994), 11-36

October 6: Institutional Purpose: Functional Analysis and Macro-Appraisal

Readings:

Helen Willa Samuels, Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities (Lanham, MD: SAA and Scarecrow Press, 1988). Yes, read the whole thing. Concentrate less on the details than on the method, but I want you to get a feel for the scope of the documentation strategy. Think about what might be included on the UT campus.

Ham, Selecting and Appraising, Chapter 3

Helen Willa Samuels, “Who Controls the Past,” American Archivist, 49 (Spring 1986), 109-124

Frank Boles, “Mix Two Parts Interest to One Part Information and Appraise Until Done: Understanding Contemporary Record Selection,” American Archivist 50 (Summer 1987) 356-368

Terry Cook, “Mind Over Matter: Towards a New Theory of Archival Appraisal,” in Barbara L. Craig, ed., The Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa: Association of Canadian Archivists, 1992), 38-70

Peter Horsman, “Appraisal on Wooden Shoes. The Netherlands PIVOT Project,” Janus 1997 (2), 35-41

October 13: Cost-Benefit Analysis and Appraisal

Mid-term informal class evaluation

Guest lecturer from Preservation and Conservation Studies will discuss issues in figuring conservation costs

Readings:

Wendy Duff, “Studying the Weathervane: Use as a Factor in Appraisal Criteria,” Provenance 12, 1-2 (1994), 83-129

William J. Maher, "Measurement and analysis of processing costs in academic archives," College and Research Libraries 43 (January, 1982) 59-67

Paul Ericksen and Robert Shuster, "Beneficial Shocks: The Place of Processing-Cost analysis in Archival Adminstration," American Archivist 58 (Winter 1995): 32-52

David Bearman, “Selection and Appraisal,” in Archival Methods (Archives and Museum Informatics Technical Report No. 9; Pittsburgh: Archives and Museum Informatics, 1989), available at http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/archival_methods/

Waters, Peter. "Phased Conservation." The Book and Paper Group Annual 17 (1998). 113-122.

October 20: Appraising Public vs Private Records

Readings:

Ham, Selecting and Appraising, Chapters 4 and 5

Michael A. Lutzker, “Max Weber and the Analysis of Modern Bureaucratic Organization: Notes Toward a Theory of Appraisal,” American Archivist 45 (Spring 1982), 119-130

Mark Green and Todd Daniels-Howell, “Documentation with an Attitude: A Pragmatist’s Guide to the Selection and Acquisition of Modern Business Records,” in James M. O’Toole (ed.), The Records of American Buisiness (Chicago: SAA, 1997), Chapter 7.

Philip N. Cronenwett, "Appraisal of Literary Manuscripts." in Nancy E. Peace, Archival Choices: Managing the Historical Record in an Age of Abundance (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books), 1984. Chap. 5., 105-116

Adrian Cunningham, “From Here to Eternity: Collecting Archives and the Need for a National Documentation Strategy,” LASIE 29,1 (March 1998); available online at http://www.slnsw.gov.au/lasie/prepdf.htm (click on March 1998)

October 27: Special Appraisal Concerns: Intellectual Property, Privacy, Case Files

Readings:

Ham, Selecting and Appraising, Chapter 8

Terry Cook, The archival appraisal of records containing personal information: A RAMP study with guidelines; available online at http://www.unesco.org/webworld/ramp/html/r9103e/r9103e00.htm

Terry Cook, “Many are Called but Few are Chosen: Appraisal Guidelines for Sampling and Selecting Case Files,” Archivaria 32 (Summer 1991), 25-50

November 3: Appraising Records in Other Media

Readings:

Dick, Ernest. "Appraisal of Collections" in Steven Davidson and Gregory Lukow, eds. The Administration of Television Newsfilm and Videotape Collections: A curatorial manual (Los Angeles, American Film Institute), Chap. 3., 31-48

Nancy Carlson Shrock, “Images of New England: Documenting the Built Environment,” American Archivist 50 (Fall 1987), 474-498

Terry Cook, “Building an Archives: Appraisal theory for Architectural Records,” American Archivist 59 (Spring 1996)136-143

Sam Kula, “Archival Appraisal of Moving Images,” William H. Leary, “The Archival Appraisal of Photographs,” and Helen P. Harrison, “The archival appraisal of sound recordings related materials,” in Selected guidelines for the management of records and archives: a RAMP reader, available at http://www.unesco.org/webworld/ramp/html/r9006e/r9006e00.htm#Contents

November 10: Appraising Electronic Records

Readings:

Hugh A. Taylor, “Transformation in the Archives: Technological Adjustment or Paradigm Shift?,” Archivaria 25 (Winter 1987-88), 12-28

Luciana Duranti, “The Thinking on Appraisal of Electronic Records: Its Evolution, Focuses, and Future Directions,” Janus 1997 (2), 47-67

Terry Eastwood, “Appraisal of Electronic Records: A Review of the Literature in English” available at http://www.interpares.org/resources.htm (then scroll down to “Reports” to find it)

Harold E. Thiele, Jr., "Appraisal, Provenance, and the Computer Revolution: An Examination of Organizational Records in the Electronic Age," University of Pittsburgh Katharine Sharp Review 6 (Winter 1998), available at http://edfu.lis.uiuc.edu/review/6/thiele.html

Peter Botticelli, "Records Appraisal in Network Organizations" Archivaria 49 (Spring 2000) 161-191

Lucie Paquet, “Appraisal, Acquisition, and Control of Personal Electronic Records: From Myth to Reality,” Archives and Manuscripts (November 2000), 71-91

November 17: Reappraisal and “Deaccessioning”

Readings:

Ham, Selecting and Appraising, Chapter 10

Leonard Rapport, “No Grandfather Clause: Reappraising Accessioned Records,” American Archivist 44 (Spring 1981), 143-150; also in Daniels and Walch, A Modern Archives Reader, 80-90

Karen Benedict, “Invitation to a Bonfire: Reappraisal and Deaccessioning of Records as Collection Management Tools in Archives—A Reply to Leonard Rapport,” American Archivist 47 (Winter 1984), 43-49

Lawrence Dowler, “Deaccessioning Collections: A New Perspective on a Continuing Controversy,” in Peace, Archival Choices: Managing the Historical Record in an Age of Abundance, 117-132

November 24: Student Presentations and Discussion

Reading:

Ham, Selecting and Appraising, Chapter 7

December 1: Student Presentations and Discussion

Class survey

 

Texts

Gerald Ham, Selecting and Appraising Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1993)

Helen Willa Samuels, Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities (Metuchen, NJ: Society of American Archivists and Scarecrow Press, 1992)

Readings: Available through Electronic Reserves