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30. There are other factors, as will be seen in the next chapter, which can refine and indeed reverse an initially positive appraisal decision made by using this model concerning records containing personal information. As noted before, however, such "traditional" appraisal criteria come after the application of the "macro-appraisal" based on the model of the citizen-state interaction. That model is generic. It does not depend on particular functions -- immigration, law enforcement, or health care -- but rather is applicable to all functions and is an appraisal framework that should be applied before the specific functions are assessed. Furthermore, this approach does not explicitly search for values in the records per se -- whether evidential or informational -- but rather how accurately the records project and sharpen the image of the citizen-state dialectic. That will naturally include evidential and informational values, but combine and in a way transcend them.
31. This theoretical approach is, in short, a means around a hopeless dilemma faced by archivists the world over: appraisal cannot occur properly unless the archivist can comprehend the entire information universe of government records and divine all the key themes, movements, and people in society, a requirement that is clearly impossible to achieve. This model gives a point of attack, and a rationale for it. By accepting the model of the citizen-state dialectic, the archivist can focus with confidence on a manageable part of the whole, without having to know the whole universe. He or she concentrates at the level of the personal information record on looking for evidence of significant changes, variations, and distortions between targets and results. It is at such points that the image of society is sharpest. The archivist's appraisal responsibility is to ensure that the quality of the image is high in those personal information records selected for permanent retention. It is worth repeating again that there is no implication here that such records form the entire image. As will be seen, other kinds of archival records and many other heritage and artistic artifacts also have their role. This model concerns only that portion of the image reflected in the personal information case files created during the citizen-state interaction.
1. As will be seen in this and the next chapter, not all aspects of traditional appraisal should be applied -- they are stated here for sake of argument and familiarity. Considering potential uses of records, for example, seriously distorts appraisal, while several other issues relate to the preservation and accessibility of the records, not in the first instance to their appraisal.
2. See above Chapter 1, section 12, and especially the footnote references to Berner and Ham.
3. For an early statement of this position, see Terry Cook, "The Tyranny of the Medium: A Comment on 'Total Archives,"' Archivaria 9 (Winter 1979-80), pp. 141-50. This generated a debate, summarized and culminating in Terry Cook, "Media Myopia," Archivaria 12 (Summer 1981), pp. 146-57.
4. My thinking is this regard has been much influenced by David Bearman, who once told me that the best means to approach appraising or describing records was to "put a bag over the records," not look at them, and focus on the functions and mandates of the records creator. See also his presentation (soon to be published) on "Multi-Sensory Data and Its Management," paper given at the Symposium on Current Records, International Council on Archives, Ottawa, Canada, 15-19 May 1989; and David Bearman and Richard Lytle, "The Power of the Principle of Provenance," Archivaria 21 (Winter 1985-86), pp. 14-27. While Bearman's insights often derive explicitly from a discussion of archival description, their application to appraisal is obvious. I have stated this in more detail in Terry Cook, "Leaving Safe and Accustomed Ground: Ideas for Archivists," Archivaria 23 (Winter 1986-87), pp. 124-25.
5. Compare David Klaassen's important assertion that "an archivist must begin by conceptualizing a universe consisting of the written records generated or accumulated by the participants and observers of the defined field. Put another way, the question 'what has been written?' must be preceded by 'who would have had reason to write by virtue of involvement in the field?"' (For government records, in place of "field," one could substitute a "defined agency or programme.") By contrast, librarians are concerned with what is written about a programme, rather than what was created by participants (i.e., records creators) in the programme. See David J. Klaassen, "Achieving Balanced Documentation: Social Services from a Consumer Perspective," The Midwestern Archivist 11 (1986), p. 116.
6. For early calls for such an approach, see Terry Cook, "From Information to Knowledge: An Intellectual Paradigm for Archives," Archivaria 19 (Winter 1984-85), pp. 40-42, and passim; Tom Nesmith, "The Archival Perspective," Archivaria 22 (Summer 1986), pp. 10-11; and Barbara L. Craig, "Meeting the Future by Returning to the Past: A Commentary on Hugh Taylor's Transformations," Archivaria 25 (Winter 1987-88), pp. 7-11. In the same research tradition but from another perspective, the attempt to revive in North America the centuries-old auxiliary historical science of diplomatics, shorn of history and updated and applied to archives, brings the complex richness of diplomatic research, directly and by analogy, to modern archival functions; see Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science," Archivaria 28 (Summer 1988), especially pp. 7-11. Hugh Taylor, in his usual imaginative way, pushes the borders of archival research even further, to ask archivists to consider research into communications theory and technology as part of their work: among several recent pieces, see for example "'My Very Act and Deed': Some Reflections on the Role of Textual Records in the Conduct of Affairs," American Archivist 51 (Fall 1988), pp. 456-69. Finally, the entire Winter-Spring 1988 double issue of the American Archivist (Vol. 51) deals with establishing a research agenda for archivists across all archival functions; for appraisal, see Richard J. Cox and Helen W. Samuels, "The Archivist's First Responsibility: A Research Agenda to Improve the Identification and Retention of Records of Enduring Value," pp. 28-42, and the commentaries which follow by Frank Boles and Frank J. Burke.
7. See Hans Booms, "Society and the Formation of a Documentary Heritage: Issues in the Appraisal of Archival Sources," Archivaria 24 (Summer 1987), pp. 95, and passim (this is a translation by Hermina Joldersma and Richard Klumpenhouwer (who provide a brief introduction) of Booms' 1972 original article, published in Archivalische Zeitschrift, Vol. 68).
8. The point is well made in Frank Boles, "Mix Two Parts Interest to One Part Information and Appraise Until Done: Understanding Contemporary Record Selection Processes," American Archivist 50 (Summer 1987), pp. 356-68.
9. The original statement is Helen Willa Samuels, "Who Controls The Past," American Archivist 49 (Spring 1986), pp. 109-24. The article by Samuels and Cox cited above in note 6 ("Archivist's First Responsibility") is an updated general view, and its footnotes contain useful additional references. See especially Larry Hackman and Joan Warnow-Blewett, "The Documentation Strategy Process: A Model and a Case Study," American Archivist 50 (Winter 1987), pp. 12-47; and Richard J. Cox, "A Documentation Strategy Case Study: Western New York," American Archivist 52 (Spring 1989), pp. 192-200, from which the citations in the text are taken (p. 193).
10. The most important statement (from 1972 originally, and reflecting in its text and notes the debate in Europe at that time) is Booms, "Society and the Formation of a Documentary Heritage," Archivaria, pp. 69-107. This is a brilliant theoretical conceptualization of the archivist's role in society. In my opinion, no one has written as deeply about the philosophical and even moral position of the archivist.
11. Ibid. Booms makes the point in his critique of the Marxist orientation of archival appraisal practices in East Germany.
12. The term and argument is that of Siegfried Büttner, and is used throughout his background paper prepared for this study ("The Appraisal of Public Records Containing Personal Data: An Essay on an Unsolved Problem"); for more details about this paper and my debt to it, see my Foreword. The metaphor of the mirror image of society has appealed to others who have complained about the inadequacy of traditional appraisal: see F. Gerald Ham, "The Archival Edge," in Maygene F. Daniels and Timothy Walch, eds., A Modern Archives Reader (Washington, 1984), pp. 334-35; and Cook, "Leaving Safe and Accustomed Ground," Archivaria, pp. 124-25.
13. In an analogous way, the American documentation strategy focuses inductively on specific themes and small geographical areas, rather than attempting to isolate and document as one single exercise every conceivable theme and function for the entire United States (or world?). As noted in 3.14 below, this results from a certain conceptual weakness in the approach itself.
14. It is recognized that this operates with greater subtlety than indicated here in the text. While citizens indeed create records, either directly or indirectly, they only create institutions indirectly. New institutions, or more likely new programmes within older agencies at first, take time to develop. Similarly, older institutions may still exist long after the need for them has diminished, and thus their dead hand from the past can blur present realities. These time lags and societal filters distort, but do not undermine the dialectic proposed here. Similarly, as will be seen, the records themselves can be merged, discarded, amended, or reclassified, thus altering the evidence of the citizen's intended or original interaction with the state. Naturally, the archivist must be aware of and account for these distortions in making appraisal judgements, and does so by exacting research into the history of records and records creators.
15. The model is outlined in Wolfgang Bick and Paul Müller, "Sozialwissenschaftliche Datenkunde für prozess-produzierte Daten: Entstehungsbedingungen und Indikatorenqualität," in Wolfgang Bick, Reinhard Mann, and Paul Müller, eds., Sozialforschung und Verwaltungsdaten (Stuttgart, 1984), p. 123 ff.
16. One reader of the draft manuscript thought that exploring this distinction (as the following paragraphs suggest) improperly transforms the archivist into a social historian. I want, therefore, to be clear on this point, and on my intention. I am arguing that all archivists in their appraisal work should do research into the functions and mandates of the records creators and the history, evolution, and intent of programmes, those creators put in place; archivists should interview primary record users on these points; and they should attempt to assess the importance of the programme, whether it was perceived by its creators as a success or failure, and how it had to be modified over time. It is from such research, after all, that archivists determines which records are more or less important, or have "value" during the appraisal process. That process involves making judgements all the time about the importance and effectiveness of a programme and its records, and such judgements to me are at the centre of any notion of archival appraisal. That is quite different, however, from trying to place the content of the records against broader societal trends and patterns, which is indeed the role of the historian and other researchers.
17. Again, as throughout this chapter, it is necessary to stress that such a generalization refers only to those series of case files being assessed for their collective significance or evidential value. As noted at the end of Chapter 2, series of files having no impact on the concept of "image" may still contain informational value of use to genealogists or local historians
18. An excellent guide to some of the factors archivists should consider in understanding how an agency functions and how it makes decisions is Michael A. Lutzker, "Max Weber and the Analysis of Modern Bureaucratic Organization: Notes Toward a Theory of Appraisal," American Archivist, 45 (Spring 1982), pp. 119-30.
19. F. Gerald Ham, "Archival Choices: Managing the Historical Record in an Age of Abundance," in Nancy E. Peace, ea., Archival Choices (Lexington, 1984), p. 137.
20. See Klaassen, "Achieving Balanced Documentation," The Midwestern Archivist, pp. 111-24, especially pp. 118-19. He uses "consumer" as in the consumer or user or client of the social service programmes, he discusses.