Workbook on Digital Private Papers > Appraisal and disposal > Introduction
Introduction
Considerations affecting the appraisal of personal archives
Impact of personal record keeping behaviours
Different people have different ways of filing the same material. For example, at the offices of two Paradigm participants records were accessioned from two successive members of staff. In both cases, individuals who had the same job description as their predecessors and who created the same records series, used different file naming conventions. As in paper archives much depends on the record keeping behaviours of those creating the records. Logical arrangement and good file-naming conventions can assist appraisal, and more lax record keeping can significantly hinder the process. The arrangement of records within well-named series of folders allows the archivist to make appraisal decisions at the series level and to preserve existing meaningful relationships between items. Meaningful filenames make appraisal at item level simpler.
Appraisal timing
Traditionally, a politician's papers find their way to an archive towards the end of their working life, or they are deposited after their death by a relative. Quite often, papers are held untouched by the library or archive until staffing or funding considerations permit the creation of a full catalogue. This means that little or no appraisal is undertaken until immediately prior to cataloguing and, in most cases, cataloguing is delayed until a significant proportion of the collection can be opened to researchers. The same approach could be taken in a digital environment, but the need to create technical metadata for the preservation of digital objects at the point of ingest to the digital repository means that there is a strong case for bringing appraisal decisions forward, so that metadata is only created for objects that the repository will preserve. It might also be prudent to add high-level descriptive metadata (akin to box-listing) at this stage. At the very least, a collection level description will be required.
Financial and staffing constraints governing digital repositories may dictate that the creation of technical metadata and detailed appraisal cannot take place until funding is secured for a full catalogue description (usually when a collection can be opened). If this is the case it seems likely that Archival Information Packages (AIPs) will have to be created after only rudimentary appraisal and disposal. Towards the end of the digital archives record cycle, as preparations for opening a collection are under way, the archivist will have more time and knowledge to make a fuller appraisal of content. It is likely that the final detailed appraisal will take place during the cataloguing process when other records with no long term historical value will be identified and destroyed.
See the Paradigm diagram 'Digital Archives and the Records Cycle' for an overview of the workflow stages and processes (including appraisal) undergone by digital objects from working with record creators, to acquisition and ingest into the digital storage area, through subsequent preservation strategies to the creation of a dissemination package for the end user.
Impact of collection development approach
The nature and timing of appraisal may also depend upon the collection development approach (see Chapter 02 Collection development) taken to acquire the papers. If snapshots of digital material are acquired during the creator's working life, there may be an opportunity to influence record keeping behaviours at the creation stage and to select only series of historical interest and possibly eliminate duplicate files prior to acquisition. Such an approach would minimise the extent of post-acquisition appraisal required and permit appraisal to take place soon after the materials are transferred to the Library. If the archive is acquired in a more traditional fashion, with the delivery of boxes of older papers, disks and other media, more appraisal time needs to be allocated. First, the archivist will need to judge whether it is worth the, sometimes considerable, expense of recovering archival material from media. Labeling may assist the archivist in this decision, but all too often labeling is inadequate to allow the archivist to form a realistic assessment of the media's contents. If the archivist proceeds to recover the data, it is also likely that some data will require migration to an accessible format so that the content and context of the records are accessible for making appraisal decisions.
