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 lecturers Karen Pavelka and Consuela Metzger 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.sl.nsw.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

James Gregory Bradsher, "The FBI Records Appraisal," The Midwestern Archivist XIII, 2 (1988), 51-66.

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

Terry Eastwood, “Appraisal of Electronic Records: A Review of the Literature in English” available at http://www.interpares.org/book/interpares_book_l_app03.pdf

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://www.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

Here are some sample deaccessioning policies to compare:

Mount Holyoke: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/library/arch/gs/rules/appraisal/daccess.shtml

UT-Arlington (scroll down): http://libraries.uta.edu/SpecColl/processman/title3.htm

Oregon State University (scroll down): http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/archives/schedule/collections.html

Victorian Jazz Archive (see part 4): http://home.vicnet.net.au/~vjazarch/html/CollectInfo.html

Iowa Women’s Archives: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/policy.html

November 24: Student Presentations and Discussion

Reading:

Ham, Selecting and Appraising, Chapter 7

December 1: Student Presentations and Discussion

Class survey

December 8: Student Papers due