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96-440: To build and curate an archive, one must acquire and evaluate the materials, and be able to access them later. To this end, archival science seeks to improve methods for appraising , storing, preserving , and processing (arranging and describing) collections of materials. An archival record preserves data that is not intended to change. In order to be of value to society, archives must be trustworthy. Therefore, an archivist has

192-470: A librarianship perspective, records were organized according to classification schemes and their original context of creation were frequently lost or obscured. This form of archival arrangement has come to be known as the "historical manuscripts tradition". The principle of " respect des fonds " and of "original order" was adopted in Belgium and France about 1840 and spread throughout Europe during

288-452: A "participatory archiving model" in 2007 in an effort to re-orient archival concepts such as provenance , ordering of records, and appraisal, hoping that it would help alleviate some representation by multicultural communities, this model would occur with a "traditional archives" rather than a community archives. They also acknowledged, when proposing this model, that it was labor-intensive and outside scope of most archival institutions. In

384-411: A Canadian archivist, argues that North American appraisal theory is unplanned, taxonomic, random and fragmented, and has rarely embodied the concepts of institutional and societal dynamics which would lead archivists to a working model that would allow them to appraise the broad spectrum of human experience. His model is a top-down approach, which focuses on key processes through which a particular function

480-499: A balancing act between the demands of administrative and heritage objectives; between the context of creation and the use of records. Depending on the degree of her or his autonomy to make appraisal decisions, an archivist's role is more or less central to the memory of an institution or society. Jacques Grimard sees archivists as participating in the "management of the world's memory" in three ways, by developing, preserving and communicating memory. In Luciana Duranti 's view, appraisal

576-400: A departure from Jenkinson's approach, necessitated by the advent of mass duplication and an overwhelming influx of documents into archives. In his work, he divides the value of records into primary values (the original value for the creator; for their administrative, fiscal, and operating uses) and secondary values (their lasting value after they are no longer in current use; for those other than

672-399: A doorway into the archives through which all records must pass". Some considerations when conducting appraisal include how to meet the record-granting body's organizational needs, how to uphold requirements of organizational accountability (be they legal, institutional, or determined by archival ethics), and how to meet the expectations of the record-using community. While archival collecting

768-418: A fonds could be the writings of a poet that were never published, or the records of an institution during a specific period. Fonds are a part of a hierarchical level of description system in an archive that begins with fonds at the top. Subsequent levels become more descriptive and narrower as one goes down the hierarchy. The level descriptions go from fonds to series to file and then item level. Between

864-436: A fonds together electronically as well as physically. As Jefferson Bailey puts it, "the database logic is nonlinear and there is no original order because order is dependent upon query." In the digital context, some archives have taken to describing their holdings on a fonds or series level, or if an archive chooses to do a file and item level description, the fonds can be kept together by implementing metadata and ensuring that

960-630: A knowledge base of archival skills (including digital records and access systems) whereas a doctorate is more broad in scope and includes critical inquiry of its archival practices, with graduates typically preparing for careers in research and teaching. Archival science students may have academic backgrounds in areas such as anthropology , economics , history , law , library science , museum studies or information science . Professional archivist associations seek to foster study and professional development: Smaller professional regional associations provide more local professional development. These include

1056-449: A larger institutional collecting policy and mission statement. The SAA also says, in their "Guidelines for College and University Archives", that appraisal should be based on the mission statement of the archives and that archivists, using appraisal, will determine what records belong in the archives, based on the "long-term administrative, legal, fiscal, and research value" of the records themselves. They also note that archives will obtain

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1152-435: A record. Preserved materials in digital archives can be accessed usually by specifying their metadata, or by content-based search such as full text search when using dedicated information retrieval approaches. These usually return results ranked in terms of their relevance to user queries. Novel retrieval methods for document archives can use other ranking factors such as contemporary relevance and temporal analogy. In 2002,

1248-407: A responsibility to authenticate archival materials, such as historical documents , and to ensure their reliability, integrity, and usability. Archival records must be what they claim to be; accurately represent the activity they were created for; present a coherent picture through an array of content; and be in usable condition in an accessible location. An archive curator is called an archivist ;

1344-423: A shorter life expectancy than paper. Migration from older non-paper formats to newer non-paper formats is necessary for the preservation of digital media so they can remain accessible. Metadata is an important part of digital preservation as it preserves the context, usage, and migration of a digital record. Similarly to traditional preservation, metadata is required to preserve the authenticity and accessibility of

1440-479: A significant lack of attention to other, diverse perspectives. In 2002, the Society of American Archivists published guidelines for a graduate program in archival studies. The guidelines were most recently revised and re-approved in 2016. Formal courses of study in archival science are available at the master's and doctoral level. A master's degree is typically a two-year professional program focusing on acquiring

1536-449: A system-wide understanding of the intended life-cycle of the record . Within the archival field, there has been some debate about how to engage in appraisal in the digital realm. Some have argued that effective appraisal, which prioritizes acquisitions by archival institutions, is part of a coordinated approach to data, but that criteria for appraisal should incorporate accepted "archival practice", assessing not only significance of data to

1632-443: Is "appropriately weighed against other considerations". Other informational professionals have also connected appraisal to digital curation of data, saying that one of the key areas of digital curation and digital preservation is selection and appraisal of materials. Apart from macro-appraisal, documentation strategy, and debate about the place of appraisal in the digital world, there has been questions of how appraisal relates to

1728-499: Is an analogue for the archival profession as a whole. It is the duty of the profession to "act as a mediator between those who produce archives and those who use them, as a facilitator of public memory making and keeping". She is cautious in her use of the term value in the context of archives, if establishing value means compromising the relationships between documents and the "impartial societal evidence" they might convey to future generations. Other archivists have argued that appraisal

1824-666: Is another key feature of preservation. There are many strategies to preserve archives properly: rehousing items in acid-free containers, storing items in climate controlled areas, and copying deteriorating items. Digital preservation involves the implementation of policies, strategies, and actions in order to ensure that digitized documents remain accurate and accessible over time. Due to newly emerging technologies, archives began to expand and require new forms of preservation. Archival collections expanded to include new media such as microfilm , audiofiles , visualfiles , moving images , and digital documents. Many of these new types of media have

1920-434: Is best "left up to the archivist during the appraisal process". Connected with the writings of Helen Willa Samuels , documentation strategy aims to reach beyond institutional frameworks when appraising collections. In the past, she says, archivists have been passive, concentrating on researchers’ needs rather than understanding a document in context. This has led to a circular problem, as researchers state their needs based on

2016-421: Is examined to determine its value for that institution. It also involves determining how long this value will last. The activity is one of the central tasks of an archivist, to determine the archival value of specific records. When it occurs prior to acquisition, the appraisal process involves assessing records for inclusion in the archives. In connection with an institution's collecting policy, appraisal "represents

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2112-427: Is expressed by intersecting with structures and individuals. Macro-appraisal is distinguished from micro -appraisal in that the former seeks to appraise the institution by understanding the context of creation and the interrelationships between, for instance, the different ministries or agencies within a government. In Cook's view, this institutional understanding should precede and inform the latter, micro-appraisal;

2208-403: Is for writers in the archival and library field to create preservation priorities and appraisal methods. They have argued that archival managers understand the appraisal methods in setting preservation priorities in their archive, which is the first responsibility. Others have added to this that archivists have long recognized that "their first professional responsibility is to identify and protect

2304-464: Is important in order to maintain cultural heritage for future generations and can provide a legal record for those concerned about their human rights . Appraisal is considered a core archival function, along with acquisition, arrangement and description, preservation and access . The official definition from the Society of American Archivists (SAA) is as follows: In an archival context, appraisal

2400-542: Is impossible to be "neutral or invisible" in archival appraisal. This was in line with what Elizabeth Yakel noted in 2003: the need to re-examine old appraisal decisions, and the suggestion of scholar Richard Cox to attribute appraisal decisions to specific individuals. Despite Jimmerson's suggestions, ten years later scholars were still lamenting that archivists seemed to not document "transformative effects" of their appraisal decisions and recommended that archivists should not only acknowledge their own role in appraisal, but not

2496-866: Is increasingly alert to colonial and imperialist implications. Since 2016, the concept of "symbolic annihilation" has been used to describe the disappearance of communities through systematic or implicit lack of representation or under-representation in archives. It was initially adapted into the archival literature by Caswell from feminist uses of symbolic annihilation . This absence can also be found in archival policies as well as description and annotation practices. Preservation and usage of accurate language and descriptions of community archives ensures that community values are not neglected, and contributes to critical archival discussions regarding omissions in historical documentation. Hughes-Watkins has demonstrated that mainstream archival institutions tend to preserve homogeneous, Eurocentric content within archival practice, with

2592-496: Is more commonly known as today among the English-speaking world, provenance . Provenance, in this sense, is the practice by archivists of keeping a group of records obtained as a unit in itself and not merging it with other documents. Provenance also is sometimes referred to as custodial history as it takes in account the different people or organizations that held these records prior to the archive obtaining them and

2688-427: Is no universal set of laws or standards that governs the form or mission of archival institutions. The forms, functions, and mandates of archival programs and institutions tend to differ based on geographical location and language, the nature of the society in which they exist and the objectives of those in control of the archives. Instead, the current standards that have been provided and are most widely followed, such as

2784-471: Is not only one of the acts of record creation, but it requires the impossible in that the archivist is looking into the future, making judgements "as to what information will be of value to researchers". Furthermore, other scholars have argued that appraisal allows for the real or perceived value of records to be determined, that value judgments are made by archivists, based on historical context and their personal beliefs, when they engage in appraisal, although

2880-543: Is on the surface. One of the outgrowths of social change during that period and "rethinking" of archival principles, including of business records, was macro-appraisal in Canada and documentation strategy in the U.S., along with archives that reflect specific social issues and communities, reflecting a changing interest by archivists in "documenting the wider society" and a need to properly document not only society but "public interaction with state institutions". Terry Cook ,

2976-444: Is sometimes equated with appraisal, appraisal is still seen as a critical function of the modern archival profession, even though it has been argued that historical societies contribute to the "general randomness of collecting", which stands against rigorous appraisal standards even as many collecting programs still "acquire the collections of private collectors" and some aspects require partnerships between varied institutions. Appraisal

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3072-563: Is the process of determining whether records and other materials have permanent (archival) value. Appraisal may be done at the collection, creator, series, file, or item level. Appraisal can take place prior to donation and prior to physical transfer, at or after accessioning. The basis of appraisal decisions may include a number of factors, including the records' provenance and content, their authenticity and reliability, their order and completeness, their condition and costs to preserve them, and their intrinsic value. Appraisal often takes place within

3168-399: Is to act as a steward of the records in his or her custody. Neither the archivist nor the historian is competent to make appraisal decisions. That process should be left to the donor. Jenkinson deals directly with destruction of records, which he sees as solely the purview of the creator of those records. As long as destruction is done in accordance with the needs of its "practical business" and

3264-454: The Augsburg city council. However, since he could not attend the council meeting, he described the structure and management of the archives in writing. Although this is not the first work about archival science (Rammingen himself refers to earlier literature about record-keeping), earlier manuals were usually not published. Archival science had no formal beginning. Jacob von Rammingen's manual

3360-731: The French Revolution , a newfound appreciation for historical records emerged in French society. Records began to "acquir[e] the dignity of national monuments", and their care was entrusted to scholars who were trained in libraries . The emphasis was on historical research, and it seemed obvious at the time that records should be arranged and catalogued in a manner that would "facilitate every kind of scholarly use". To support research, artificial systematic collections, often arranged by topic, were established and records were catalogued into these schemes. With archival documents approached from

3456-596: The National Archives and Records Administration (then called NARS). In 1986, Susan D. Steinwall, then at the Area Research Center at University of Wisconsin–River Falls , wrote that this case not only warns archivists to not rely too much "on the opinions of nonarchivists", like FBI agents, regarding the usefulness of the records of a specific agency, but it calls into question commonly-held archival assumptions. In her article, she describes how

3552-663: The "notion of archival neutrality". Apart from Zinn, Hans Booms also discussed, as did others, the societal role of archivists and how they influence appraisal, with some even posing feminist analysis of appraisal which bolstered social inclusion, placing archivists within ever-changing community dynamics. There have also been scholars who have emphasized the importance of appraising personal archives because they show an individual's character and attitude that theories like macro-appraisal do not account for, necessitating more of an "archives of character than of achievement", with efforts to document our "complex inner humanity" rather than what

3648-725: The FBI descriptions of their own files, discussing the records they were to dispose with FBI officials before "approving records disposition requests". After bringing in the writings of others in the field of archival appraisal, which was purportedly embryonic in the late 1970s, like Philip C. Brooks , JoAnne Yates, and Maynard Brichford she notes that often Schellenberg is evoked in discussion of appraisal because he provided archivists with vocab to describe documentation's "potential research values." She adds that in his book, The Appraisal of Modern Records , Schellenberg described how "modern public records" have two types of values, one for "immediate use of

3744-595: The ICA standard, ISO standard, and DIRKS standard, act as working guidelines for archives to follow and adapt in ways that would best suit their respective needs. Following the introduction of computer technology in archival repositories, beginning in the 1970s, archivists increasingly recognized the need to develop common standards for descriptive practice, in order to facilitate the dissemination of archival descriptive information. The standard developed by archivists in Canada, Rules for Archival Description , also known as RAD,

3840-543: The Netherlands Association of Archivists (1898), commonly referred to as the "Dutch Manual", assumed, generally, that the archives would keep each record it acquired. The authors articulated concepts of provenance and original order that privileged an "organic bond" in a collection that precedes its transfer to an archival repository. Appraisal decisions that involve selecting individual records or groups of records for exclusion would consequently lie outside

3936-546: The New England Archivists, Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists, Society of Ohio Archivists, Society of North Carolina Archivists , and Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference. Archival appraisal In archival science and archive administration, appraisal is a process usually conducted by members of the record-holding institution (often professional archivists ) in which a body of records

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4032-476: The United States in the 1960s and 1970s, existing Jenkinsonian and Schellenbergian ideas held by archivists began to be shaken, with efforts to broaden historical records beyond "elites and socially dominant groups", leading some to say that social justice was a call for justice for archives and tying it to appraisal itself. Some, within the field, like Tyler O. Walters, have written about how challenging it

4128-620: The agency of origin refrains "from thinking of itself as a body producing historical evidence", its actions should not, in Jenkinson's view, be considered illegitimate, even by succeeding generations. In 2010, scholar Richard J. Cox noted that many archivists still cling to Jenkinson's ideas on appraisal, which claims objectivity in appraisal because record creators engaged in “selection decisions” rather than archivists. T. R. Schellenberg 's work in Modern Archives (1956) represents

4224-404: The appraisal criteria they applied and the assumptions they made in processing and describing records, along with the records they decided to not keep. Fonds In archival science , a fonds (plural also fonds ) is a group of documents that share the same origin and have occurred naturally as an outgrowth of the daily workings of an agency, individual, or organization. An example of

4320-487: The appraisal of documents. His approach to macro-appraisal does not just derive from the position of the creating body within an established hierarchy. It is not top-down in a conventional, bureaucratic sense. It is top-down in that it moves from macro to micro-appraisal. This requires a planned, logical approach—archivists embarking upon appraisals are equipped with an understanding of the record creator, its mandate and functions, its structure and decision-making processes,

4416-449: The appropriate records that meet appraisal criteria, and that using the appraisal criteria, archives will develop a regularly updated, written acquisitions policy. Others have described appraisal as a unique skill that archivists bring to the table, especially when it comes to maintaining records and data, with problems when organizations have engaged in appraisal when they didn't have trained archivists on staff. Appraisal can be viewed as

4512-506: The archival field, more, like Christian James and Ricardo L. Punzalan , have said that the core archival functions of provenance, original order, appraisal, and arrangement to be inadequate. Part of this change is a focus on bias and value judgments by archivists. Randall C. Jimmerson wrote about this in 2007, archivists need to be conscious of their "potential bias" by not only working to preserve records which are often overlooked but by documenting their appraisal decisions, while recognizing it

4608-546: The archival profession take up this mantle. The latter was the case with a community archive documenting police brutality in Cleveland, Ohio , with scholars noting that citizen archivists maintain responsibility over management and direction of this people's archive, specifically as it pertains to outreach and appraisal of the archive itself, describing not only the archives' purpose but its construction. Even though, two archivists, Katie Shilton and Ramesh Srinivasan, proposed

4704-631: The archival world, and are still in use today. In modern archival practice, the idea of fonds still exists today, principally in Europe and North America. However, the fonds is sometimes changed slightly to suit other archival practices. For example, in the British National Archives , the term archive group is used instead of fonds, while in the United States National Archives and Records Administration

4800-426: The archivists who appraised the FBI records not only relied on Schellenberg's manual, The Appraisal of Modern Public Records , but on FBI reference material and his own experience. Not only did NARS approving disposal requests for the FBI in 1945 and 1946, but it wasn't until 1978 that they reviewed their appraisal decisions of FBI files under "mounting public pressure", and in appraising these records they had relied on

4896-486: The capacity to make appraisals in the "context of online representation and interpretation" is becoming possible. At the same time, some scholars have said that digitization of records may influence decision-making of appraisal since the greatest proportion of users for archives are generally family historians, often called genealogists , leading to implications for future record-keeping and entailing that digitization be clearly defined as just one component of appraisal which

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4992-487: The care of all the aggregates within a collection. Conservation can be included in this practice and often these two definitions overlap. Preservation emerged with the establishment of the first central archives. In 1789, during the French Revolution , the Archives Nationales was established and later, in 1794, transformed into a central archive. This was the first independent national archive and its goal

5088-485: The context of records, or series of records, for their potential research values, macroappraisal assesses the significance of the context of their creation and contemporary use. The benefits of this process are theoretical (identifying the important functions in society which should be documented) and practical (the ability to focus appraisal activities on records of the highest potential archival value). Cook also argued that in any appraisal model archivists need to remember

5184-421: The context that they deduce from the archives, and as the archives create an artificial context based on researchers’ stated needs. "Archivists are challenged to select a lasting record", Samuels says, "but they lack techniques to support this decision making" (1992). Samuels argues that while archivists once needed to know and understand the complex bureaucratic structures of organizations, they must now understand

5280-441: The conviction that records entering an archive have an essential connection to the person or office that generated and used them; archivists consider all the records originating with a particular administrative unit (whether former, or still existing) to be a separate archival grouping, or " fonds ", and seek to preserve and describe the records accordingly, with close attention to evidence of how they were organized and maintained at

5376-452: The curation of an archive is called archive administration . Archival science emerged from diplomatics , the critical analysis of documents . In 1540, Jacob von Rammingen (1510–1582) wrote the manuscript of the earliest known archival manual. He was an expert on registries ( Registraturen ), the German word for what later became known as archives . Rammingen elaborated a registry for

5472-606: The degree of use of records as the only means that acquisition or appraisal can be evaluated. The archival appraisal theory of Schellenberg was a major factor in the American Friends Service Committee, et al. v. William H. Webster, et.al (1983) case, which began in June 1979 as social action organizations, historians, journalists, and others, sued the U.S. government to stop destruction of FBI files challenging an existing "archival appraisal decision" of

5568-433: The field also can pertain to individuals who maintain private collections or business archives. Archival Science is taught in colleges and universities, usually under the umbrella of Information Science or paired with a History program. A list of foundational thinkers in archival studies could include: American archivist Theodore Schellenberg and British archivist Sir Hilary Jenkinson . Some important archival thinkers of

5664-528: The first description of the principle of provenance and argued that "original order" is an essential trait of archival arrangement and description. Complementing the work of the Dutch archivists and supporting the concept of provenance were the historians of the era. Through subject-based classification aided research, historians began to concern themselves with objectivity in their source material. For its advocates, provenance provided an objective alternative to

5760-639: The following decades. Following the rise of state-run archives in France and Prussia , the increasing volume of modern records entering the archive made adherence to the manuscript tradition impossible; there were not enough resources to organize and classify each record. Provenance received its most pointed expression in the "Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives", a Dutch text published in 1898 and written by three Dutch archivists, Samuel Muller, Johan Feith, and Robert Fruin. This text provided

5856-620: The fonds and series level there is sometimes a sub-fonds ( French : sous-fonds ) level, and between the series and file level there is sometimes a sub-series level. In the archival science field, it is widely agreed upon that the term fonds originated in French archival practice shortly after the French Revolution as Natalis de Wailly , head of the Administrative Section of the Archives Nationales of France, wrote Circular No. 14 , which laid out

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5952-492: The fonds level of description to follow provenance procedures unless told to do so, and it does not automatically sort the items within in a chronological order to follow respect des fonds practices either. There is also the issue of items that are born digital , which are items that have been created electronically and are not automatically subject to the hierarchy of a physical item. The practice of implementing fonds in an electronic database presents new challenges in keeping

6048-455: The form, extent, and content of archival materials, include Machine-Readable Cataloguing (MARC format), Encoded Archival Description (EAD), and Dublin core . Provenance in archival science refers to the "origin or source of something; information regarding the origins, custody, and ownership of an item or collection". As a fundamental principle of archives, provenance refers to the individual, family, or organization that created or received

6144-504: The generally subjective classification schemes borrowed from librarianship . Historians increasingly felt that records should be maintained in their original order to better reflect the activity out of which they emerged. Although original order is a generally accepted principle, there has been some debate about applicability to personal archiving . Original order is not always ideal for personal archives. However, some archivists insist that personal records are created and maintained for much

6240-409: The idea of context and the importance of maintaining context. When a record is removed from its fellow records, it loses its meaning. In order to preserve a record it must be preserved in its original entirety or else it may lose its significance. This definition relates to the principle of provenance and respect des fonds as it similarly emphasizes the idea of the original record. Metadata is key for

6336-405: The idea of fonds as keeping records of the same origin together because prior to this announcement records were classified arbitrarily and inconsistently. In the same publication, Wailly also coined the idea of respect des fonds , a principle of original order under which archivists should leave the arrangement of documents within a fonds as originated by the person or agency who created

6432-532: The items in a collection. In practice, provenance dictates that records of different origins should be kept separate to preserve their context. As a methodology, provenance becomes a means of describing records at the series level. Describing records at the series level to ensure that records of different origins are kept separate, provided an alternative to item-level manuscript cataloguing. The practice of provenance has two major concepts: " respect des fonds ", and " original order ". " Respect des fonds " rose from

6528-841: The journal Archival Science published a series of articles that analyzed systems of power in archival practice, theory, and recordkeeping. This approach was described in 2017 by Punzalan , Caswell , and Sangwand as "critical archival studies". Critical archival studies applies critical theory to archival science, with the goal of developing and implementing archival practices that are more fully inclusive of matters pertaining to race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. For example, it includes documentation of racist acts and references past omissions of such. There are synergies between critical archival studies and digital humanities , to work to resist oppression. Archival studies have focused renewed concern on recognition and representation of indigenous, community, and human rights archives. Archival practice

6624-404: The latter has been contested, and that seeing "naturalness" and "utility" in records upsets existing archival appraisal theory. Whether this argument is accepted or not, a professional assessment which constitutes appraisal, requires specific knowledge and careful planning. It cannot only can be linked with records management but with documents management as part of this analytical procedure. In

6720-700: The manner in which an archivist could perform appraisal based on these criteria, placing a stress in every case on the importance of research and analysis on the part of the archivist. According to Schellenberg, informational value is based on three criteria: Other scholars have added that evidence and information are among the goods that records provide underlines his appraisal model, since it emphasizes evidential and informational values, and that effective records management necessitates an appraisal process. Some have even said that new thinking on appraisal led some to see distinctions between Schellenberg's "evidential" and "informational" values as artificial, while others see

6816-412: The nature of the organizations which created them, and more importantly, of the order of activities out of which they emerged. Not infrequently, practical considerations of storage mean that it is impossible to maintain the original order of records physically. In such cases, however, the original order should still be respected intellectually in the structure and arrangement of finding aids . Following

6912-467: The original creator). He defines evidential value as deriving from the "evidence records contain of the organization and functioning of the Government body that produced them", and informational value as related to the "information records contain on persons, corporate bodies, things, problems, conditions, and the like, with which the Government body dealt". After defining the terms, Schellenberg details

7008-838: The originating agency and secondary for later use by other agencies and users", with secondary values considered "evidential or informational", with many larger series of records in the National Archives accessioned for information they "contained regarding matters other than government actions". She ends her article by arguing that this case, often called the "FBI files case", shows that government archivists should reconsider Schellenberg's appraisal philosophy, and notes how some archivists, like Frank Boles and Julia Marks Young , have advocates for not interpreting what Schellenberg says literally, noting that at times, records that have minimal administrative value may have not have, conversely, "minimal value to research." With social movements in

7104-518: The past century include: Canadian archivist and scholar Terry Cook , South African archivist Verne Harris , Australian archival scholar Sue McKemmish , UCLA faculty and archival scholar Anne Gilliland , University of Michigan faculty and archival scholar Margaret Hedstrom , American archival scholar and University of Pittsburgh faculty member Richard Cox, Italian archival scholar and faculty at University of British Columbia Luciana Duranti , and American museum and archival scholar David Bearman. There

7200-435: The people who slip through the cracks of society, with the voice of marginalized groups often only heard and documented through "their interaction with such [white, male, and capitalist] institutions and hence the archivist must listen carefully to make sure these voices are heard". Julie Herrada, an archivist, added to this by noting there is value in collecting contemporary material and noted that sorting and weeding of records

7296-483: The phenomenon of community archives, or archival institutions which are run by and for the communities they serve, rather than a government or other external entity. Scholars are divided on approaches archivists should take, some saying that appraisal not only needs to be reframed when looking at community archives, while others say that communities should directly be enabled to participate in the appraisal process, defining what they see as valuable records, rather than having

7392-522: The preservation of context within archival science. Metadata, as defined by the SAA, is "data about data". This data can help archivists locate a specific record, or a variety of records within a certain category. By assigning appropriate metadata to records or record aggregates, the archivist successfully preserves the entirety of the record and the context in which it was created. This allows for better accessibility and improves authenticity. Physical maintenance

7488-399: The preservation of their cultural heritage . Preservation, like provenance, is concerned with the proper representation of archival materials. Archivists are primarily concerned with maintaining the record, along with the context in which it was produced, and making this information accessible to the user. Tout ensemble is a definition relating to preservation. This definition encompasses

7584-460: The process, archival appraisal theories can be consulted, especially in the case of random sampling and elimination of records, which have short-term or routine uses, from consideration as possible records within an archival institution, since they are not inactive records. Mostly concerned with the records of government bodies, the Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives: Drawn up by

7680-605: The public. Metadata comprises contextual data pertaining to a record or aggregate of records. In order to compile metadata consistently, so as to enhance the discoverability of archival materials for users, as well as support the care and preservation of the materials by the archival institution, archivists look to standards appropriate to various kinds of metadata for different purposes, including administration, description, preservation, and digital storage and retrieval. For example, common standards used by archivists for structuring descriptive metadata, which conveys information such as

7776-477: The records creator is responsible for determining which records should be transferred to the archives for preservation. Since in his view records are "impartial", the task of selection is merely a matter of choosing documents that best describe "what happened". Jenkinson staked out a limited role for the archivist, positioned between the administrative body transferring the records and the researcher who might seek to access them. The archivist, according to Jenkinson,

7872-669: The records. However, Luciana Duranti has found evidence of the idea originating in Naples and other places prior to Circular No. 14 in 1814. Regardless of origin, respect des fonds spread rapidly across Europe after the publication of the Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives , which is commonly referred to as the Dutch Manual , in 1898, and the First International Congress of Archivists in 1910. The term fonds as created by Wailly

7968-430: The research community, but significance of data source and context, how materials would complement existing collections, uniqueness of data, potential usability of data, and "anticipated cost of processing". Additionally, others have described appraisal and selection by web archives as including selection of materials to be digitally "captured" and URLS where a " web crawler will start", which fits with those who argue that

8064-516: The responsibilities of the archivist, in their view. Sir Hilary Jenkinson was a British archivist and Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office upon his retirement. His great contribution to appraisal theory is his Manual of Archive Administration (1922; revised 1937; reissued 1965) in which he argued that archives are "documents which formed part of an official transaction and were preserved for official reference". For Jenkinson,

8160-569: The same reason as organizational archives and should follow the same principles. Preservation , as defined by the Society of American Archivists (SAA), is the act of protecting materials from physical deterioration or loss of information, ideally in a noninvasive way. The goal of preservation is to maintain as much originality as possible while retaining all the information which the material has to offer. Both scientific principles and professional practices are applied to this technique to be maximally effective. In an archival sense, preservation refers to

8256-473: The small portion of the overall record that has long-term value." Some of these changes involved borrowing from experiences of librarians . In 1977, Howard Zinn argued that institutions has ignored "experiences of marginalized peoples", saying they had gaps in their collections which are often "presented as comprehensive representations of social history", following his speech to the Society of American Archivists seven years earlier when he openly questioned

8352-415: The structures between organizations and ignore institutional boundaries. However, this is increasingly impossible; archivists need to examine documentation in a comprehensive manner. A documentation strategy is, then, "a plan formulated to assure the documentation of an ongoing issue, activity or geographic area". Its development includes records creators, archivists, and users, and it is carried out through

8448-452: The term document collection , which is used for document aggregations assembled based on some shared characteristic by a collector , but it is not created by the collector and it often does not follow provenance. As archives are increasingly being digitized (scanned and stored on a computer) and moved to an electronic platform, the idea of a fonds existing in an online database is shifting. An electronic catalog does not sort its items in

8544-412: The term record group is preferred. Record groups are often compared to fonds, but in actuality they can be composed of more than one fonds or not even a full fonds. In Australian archival theory, there is recognition of the principle of respect des fonds , but the theory focuses on series as the primary descriptive level, with the existence of multiple provenances. Fonds should not be confused with

8640-486: The time they were created. "Original order", refers to keeping records "as nearly as possible in the same order of classification as obtained in the offices of origin", gives additional credibility to preserved records and to their originating " fonds ". Records must be kept in the same order they were placed in the course of the official activity of the agency concerned; records are not to be artificially reorganized. Records kept in their original order are more likely to reveal

8736-412: The way it creates records, and changes to these processes over time. Macroappraisal assesses the societal value of both the functional-structural context and the work-place culture in which the records are created and used by the creator(s), and the interrelationship of citizens, groups, organizations – the "public" – with that functional-structural context. If appraisal designates the long-term value of

8832-438: The way they organized them. Respect des fonds is often confused as being the same as provenance, but the two ideas, although closely related, are distinct in that provenance refers to maintaining works by specific people or organizations as separate from others, while respect des fonds adds to this by also maintaining or recreating the original order of the creator. The ideas of fonds and respect des fonds transformed

8928-457: Was first published in 1990. As a standard, RAD aims to provide archivists with a consistent and common foundation for the description of archival material within a fonds , based on traditional archival principles. A comparable standard used in the United States is Describing Archives: A Content Standard , also known as DACS. These standards are in place to provide archivists with the tools for describing and making accessible archival material to

9024-404: Was not as precise as it could have been and left a lot of room for interpretation of fonds. Due to this, Prussian archivists issued regulations for the arrangement of archives in 1881. These regulations provided a clearer image of fonds as public records that "should be grouped according to their origins in public administrative bodies", and this principle was termed Provenienzprinzip , or, as it

9120-514: Was printed in Heidelberg in 1571. Traditionally, archival science has involved the study of methods for preserving items in climate-controlled storage facilities. It is also the study of cataloguing and accession , of retrieval and safe handling. The advent of digital documents along with the development of electronic databases has caused the field to re-evaluate its means and ends. While generally associated with museums and libraries ,

9216-469: Was to preserve and store documents and records as they were. This trend gained popularity and soon other countries began establishing national archives for the same reasons, to maintain and preserve their records as they were created and received. Cultural and scientific change reinforced the concept and practice of preservation. In the late eighteenth century, many museums, national libraries, and national archives were established in Europe; therefore ensuring

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