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The archival appraisal of sound recordings related materials
Helen P Harrison
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 RAMP studies use the term "appraisal", but archivists in the field of recorded sound do not understand this particular term and tend to regard the process of selection as closely akin to that of appraisal. Is there indeed a difference or is it only one of semantics and usage in particular countries- For example, selection is more commonly used in Europe to describe the activity of decision making in retention and preservation policies, while in North America the word appraisal is used for initially determining the intrinsic and long term value and potential uses of records. Others use the terms inchangeably, and throughout this study "selection" and "appraisal" will be used in this way.
Appraisal in the intellectual decision making activity that precedes selection in common usage. Selection to reduce a collection to manageable proportions is, since the material has already been commissioned, more correctly, referred to as "reappraisal". In theory appraisal should precede, not follow accessioning, but this is seldom possible in audiovisual archives. Audiovisual archives usually deal with material which has been literally "collected" and not transferred to the archive in accordance with comprehensive schedules or as a result of a records management programme. The audiovisual archivist is much more likely to be dealing with material which has already been accessioned, often in haphazard order, and the task becomes one of weeding these accessioned materials into a more manageable, or cohesive collection.
Appraisal has been defined as the process of determining the value and thus the disposition of records, based upon their current administrative, legal and fiscal use: their evidential and informational or research value; their arrangement and their relationship to other records. A secondary definition is the monetary evaluation of gifts of manuscripts. Selection may be defined as the practical and controlled application of appraisal principles to a body of material.
Appraisal may also be aimed at determining the intrinsic value of the material. Intrinsic value is the archival term that is applied to permanently valuable records that have qualities and characteristics that make the records in their intrinsic form the only archivally acceptable form for preservation.
This is a very difficult decision to make in considering many audiovisual materials, especially sound recordings, because of technical reasons.
1.2 The nature of audiovisual materials and the attempts to build archives and collections of these materials are more likely to be based on "selection" of what is available rather than on appraisal of the long term value of the documentation of an institution, such as a business or a government agency. The sound archivist seldom has this amount of material to choose from, he deals in what has managed to survive until the point in time he considers collecting or preserving the material. This situation may change as a result of more adequate records management, but for the present it is very often a question of the archivist being presented with a collection of available material and then asked to make choices on the basis of his knowledge of the existing collection and the purposes of the repository.
Audiovisual records are, therefore, more closely related to the selection process than to the 'appraisal' process. Appraisal implies a more leisured activity whereby records or collections can be presented as a corporate entity to the archives which may take or reject at its final discretion. With audiovisual archives the 'collectors' are seldom so well organised or so fortunate. There is a lesser degree of records management involved or evident. Audiovisual items are collected, acquired or presented for possible retention in a more piecemeal fashion. This is especially the case with moving images, but will also frequently apply to sound recordings.
1.3 Everything at some time may have some value. This surely
is the dilemma of the archivist. If the archivist takes this
attitude from the beginning then he is simply turning himself
into a storekeeper. Some archivists and even donors might
advocate that everything should be kept, and if it were to cost
nothing to acquire, preserve and store achive materials then
perhaps this policy of saving everything could be adopted. But to
keep everything is a form of madness: archivists, like people are
forced to pick and choose, and audiovisual archivists must often
choose from an incomplete record. Others would go to the other
extreme like the New York State
Archives whose policy is "when in doubt, throw it out".
What is surely required is something between the two, something
which has called, "disciplined appraisal". Archivists
should withdraw from a race to acquire the total record - an
impossible task with regard to audiovisual materials, including
sound recordings, photographs arid moving images, and they should
concentrate instead of preserving materials selected in
accordance with archival principles. Once again the principles of
selection and appraisal are a necessity.
1.3.1 Selection is a necessity because of the volume of the material involved and the very nature of the material. Some sound archives have been in existence for nearly ninety years and the longer they exist the more necessary the process of selection becomes. Sound recordings were produced in the 1880's and 1890's, and the earliest sound archive was that established in Vienna in 1899. The fact that other archives were not established for a further 30 or 40 years has had a major effect on the collection of sound recordings and the necessity for and criteria of selection. Many of the early recordings did not survive long enough to be available to the archives.
Selection has been made even more imperative as a result of the increased ease of recording. With improvements in equipment and ease of handling such equipment to produce acceptable recordings, more and more people are recording material which can be regarded as one of archival value.
1.3.2 Audiovisual materials are regarded as more difficult to preserve than paper documents. There is a cost involved, but there is a greater problem involved in locating information within the plethora of information available. Audiovisuals are very slow to work with, at both the input and at the output stage, they have to be listened to or viewed in real time. Unreasonable amounts of time needed in research due to large or confusing or mismanaged collections will often lead to the researcher giving up or looking for alternative sources. Therefore, to try to keep everything can be argued to be as self defeating as to keep nothing.
1.3.3. The volume of output makes selection inevitable. In addition to the commercial production of the recording industry there is a large non-commercial output and the output of oral historians and broadcasting. Where far more material is recorded than is transmitted, the unedited, untransmitted material may be potentially valuable for later usage. Specialised subject collections may also contain recorded material or the archivist may have conducted interviews which have been edited for public access purposes, but the unedited material has its own value. We might also consider one area often overlooked, which is selection at the point of origin. This is the situation in which the sound archivist who initiates a recording needs to reflect on why he has to record this material, at what length he should be doing so, and whether or not he should edit the recording and then dispose of the material which is superfluous to the recording he intended or his present requirements.
1.3.4 Selection has been made even more imperative as a result of the increased ease of recording. As tape recording has become easier and the equipment less cumbersome, more and more recording is made possible by a greater variety of people. No longer is it the sole province of a technician to record material for preservation purposes. With improvements in equipment and ease of handling such equipment to produce acceptable recordings, more and more people are recording material which can be regarded as a useful record.
1.4 Post accessioning selection may also be used to reduce an
archive or collection to manageable proportions. Unless selection
principles are used we are in danger of sinking in a tangle of
magnetic tape, under a sea of books, cassettes, videodiscs or
computer software.
Worse, we might disappear altogether into the computer hardware
in seach of that elusive piece of data which was not properly
labelled.
And herein lies another powerful argument for selection. If we do not select with reasonable care then what is the point of spending resources of time and money documenting, storing and preserving material which is not of archival value?
Indeed it can be argued that it is a dereliction of our duty as information providers, whether archivists, librarians or information scientists, not to select the material for preservation and future use. Too much information can be as difficult to handle as too little; it is equally difficult to access and discover the material which would be most useful. The idea that, with the aid of modern technology you can store everything easily on convenient little cassettes appeals to the research worker, but how is he going to access a roomful (and it has been expressed in that very term) of audio or videocassettes when each cassette bears from 3 to 6 hours of material; not necessarily in edited form. The research worker too frequently forgets that someone has to expend effort and time entering the information into the database in a retrievable or accessible order.
1.5 The criteria for selection of sound recordings have not been, and indeed cannot be, laid down as hard-and-fast rules, but it is hoped that those who consult this study will find many practical examples and working principles in the pages which follow. Examples of criteria used in different types of archives are included: these should assist sound archivists in arriving at reasoned, practical criteria for selecting material to store in archives for passing on to future generations.
8. GUIDELINES
8.1 Appraisal is necessary for the determination of the long term value of the sound recording. Although sound recordings are relatively new as archival materials, the value of sound recordings when collected either separately or in conjunction with printed and other audiovisual documents is being increasingly recognised. Controlled or disciplined appraisal will make possible selection between and within individual collections.
8.2 Selection using appraisal techniques and based upon established criteria and guidelines is essential because of the volume of material both to reduce collections to manageable proportions and to prevent a waste of financial and human resources in retaining, documenting, preserving and restoring material which has no long term value.
The international body of archives devoted to sound recordings, IASA (International Association of Sound Archives) has issued a publication on the selection of materials for sound archives, but has not drawn up guidelines for appraisal and selection. The following considerations offer a basis upon which more specific guidelines may be developed.
8.2.1 Total conservation is impossible for sound recordings because of the volume of material and resources required for this restoration and conservation. Additional factors which make total conservation unattainable include the technical problems of deterioration in existing recordings and the non-survival of many early recordings. Most early recordings were made for the commercial market or for experimental reasons rather than for archival retention. Once the initial market was satisfied no consideration was given to retaining the recordings, especially as very few archives came into existence until many of the early recordings had deteriorated beyond recall.
8.3 Archival acquisitions should be actively chosen and not passively accepted. Passive acceptance implies that the archive is a repository for all materials, not a cohesive collection of material relevant to the function and purpose of the archive involved.
8.4 Selection principles are needed in the area of sound archives and sound archivists should define and agree upon these principles as a matter of priority. Now that a variety of sound archives have been established there is a need to encourage greater co-operative collection on several levels, regional, national and international, in order to rationalise the collection of sound recordings. This will have consequences for the collection policies of individual archives and, if fully carried out, should lead to specialised collection by archives. The results should be more effective use of available financial resources for preservation, and the use of such funds in a more systematic manner for restoration over a wider area of subject and material by concentrating resources in specific archives for special areas of sound recordings and by preventing duplication of effort and restoration.
8.5 Sound archives should be preserving sound recordings which are specifically relevant to the medium itself. Some events, happenings or recordings are better recorded and displayed in sound material than on film or television or in the printed document. Such recordings need to be given high priority by all types of sound archives.
8.6 As a general principle sound archives have an obligation
to ensure preservation of the recording by selecting the best
quality copy available. However, technical developments have not
yet reached the stage at which it can be said that a sound
recording can be preserved indefinitely. This has implications
for preservation of records for their intrinsic value, that is
the original recording, and will influence storage, restoration
and preservation policies.
Nevertheless an archive has an obligation to retain original
recordings against the day when technology improves.
8.7 Appraisal is one of the most important and challenging tasks for an archivist. Appraisal should be carried out according to a well defined selection policy. Some such policies exist but few have been published outside the institutions for which they were devised.
A greater exchange of ideas and information, as well as discussion of existing policies is necessary leading to a greater number of published policies and to increased co-operation among archives to achieve an international network of collecting institutions and to improve the general exchange of information, collection and preservation of sound recordings.
It is obvious that rigid formulae are not going to suffice in this situation. Archival appraisal will undergo change according to the needs of the times, the purposes of the archive concerned, and the nature of the materials stored within the archives. But some common agreement has already been achieved, and the following guidelines for the selection and appraisal of sound recordings are offered for consideration and adaptation to the particular circumstances of the many different types of sound archives which exist.
8.8 The archive should select material according to the needs, purposes and intentions of the repository and with the ultimate "user" in mind. Subject areas of interest may be narrow, but the related or "grey" areas should not be overlooked in selection.
8.9 Material for archival preservation should be either unique
to a collection or not duplicated in several existing collections
when there may be a waste of resources in preserving the same
thing.
Leval deposit is a rarity and one archive cannot assume that any
other is collecting in a particular area or country of origin. In
these circumstances it becomes important for all sound archives
to have an acquisitions policy and appraisal criteria and to
discuss these with other archives, both nationally and
internationally, to ensure that valuable material is kept
somewhere, but not in each archive.
8.10 The principle of selection according to the quality of the recording is a relative one and is closely related to the unique quality of the material. In theory the best quality material should be selected, but when the only available material is of poor quality its unique nature overrides the principle of quality. A closely related factor is that of technological change which may mean a recording is only available on an obsolete carrier. Archives should not select on the basis of whether or not they can replay material this is library selection, when the only material in a library relates closely to the playback machinery available either in the library or in the user's home. An archive must consider other qualities of the material and if it is essential to the collection, but on an unplayable medium, an archive should transfer it to a usable medium.
Technical appraisal, that is the selection of material on the basis of quality and whether or not to keep all the old material against the day when the technology improves to the extent that better preservation recordings can be produced is a basic consideration. The potential technical improvement of recordings has implications for appraisal, including intrinsic value.
8.11 Some material may be "unusable" because of copyright or contractual restrictions. However, copyright can lapse and one of the functions of an archive could be expressed as outliving copyright and other such restrictions. The material is held for the restricted period (it may be possible to use it under certain conditions during such a period) and when copyright expires the archive will be able to grant access. Copyright restrictions should not necessarily deter selection of valuable items and the appraiser must think beyond the temporary restrictions.
8.12 Selection at the point of origin is a neglected area. The sound archivist who initiates a recording needs to consider why and how the material is being recorded and whether or not to edit the recording and what should be its ultimate disposition. Related to this consideration is the concept of pre-archival control, that is controlling the record and documentation of the record before the material enters the archive. This can be achieved by influencing record companies to label material fully and by requiring full documentation to be presented as well as a technical record of the processes involved in recording the material which is deposited. It should also be required that the recording meet a minimum technical standard.
8.13 The timing of selection is also an important consideration. Some material needs to be kept for only short periods while checks are made on existing material which it may duplicate. Other material should be looked at retrospectively after a period or periods of time. Most archives which practice selection will be found to use this policy of periodic reappraisal.
Hindsight is a useful mechanism and it can be achieved by adopting a long-term retention policy. Optimum selection decisions are best taken after a "decent" interval.
The concepts of reappraisal and deaccessioning should be incorporated into the repository's policies and practices. An archive will collect material in accordance with its purpose and objectives, but as these may change at intervals the selection principles will have to be flexible to accommodate these changes.
Selection principles themselves should, therefore, be subject to periodic review and re-evaluation.
8.14 One of the main principles of selection is objectivity. Selection staff should be as objective and free from bias as possible, within realistic parameters. A collector may be subjective in his approach, but an archivist should be seen to be objective and a set of principles is needed here to provide a framework for collection.
8.15 Selection out of the collection can have many end results. It may mean the destruction of the original record and retention of the original. It may mean the transfer of the material to another archive which has a more appropriate collection to house and manage the material involved, e.g. transfer of material dealing with war and conflict from a national archive or broadcast company to a war museum or of ethnographic material into a specialist collection or archive.