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4. Appraisal methodologies, criteria, and options
Introduction
The comprehensive appraisal method
Appraising case files: general working rules
Appraising case files: specific criteria
Appraising case files: practical and
preservation issues
Appraisal
Options
Sampling:
a summary profile
Conclusion
Notes
1. This chapter will outline methods and criteria, as well as practical approaches, that an archivist should use in appraising records containing personal information. Such appraisal operates on two levels:
-- for the large majority of case file series which have value primarily for their collective or evidential character (and thus have been identified for further appraisal using the macro-appraisal model in Chapter 3); and
-- for those series which only contain certain informational value about specific persons, places, and things.
The chapter begins by recommending a comprehensive approach as the only logical way to make sound appraisal decisions. This is followed by general and specific appraisal criteria, the latter both for special files in a series (informational value) and for series as a whole (evidential value, leading to the broader sharpening of the societal image). Various practical and preservation issues are next addressed, and then various appraisal options, including a brief summary of sampling, are presented.
The comprehensive appraisal method
2. Archivists should appraise series of records containing personal information as part of a larger information universe.1 Not to do so is to start at the bottom of the records pyramid with the most voluminous and repetitive records having the least value, rather than at the top with the policy files and then in the middle with subject files. The archivist must consider the value of records created by the formulation of policy and then those resulting from its general operations, interpretation, and modifications (as revealed in policy and subject records). before being able to understand and appraise correctly the records generated by the daily implementation of the policy (as revealed by the case files). When dealing with the case files themselves, the archivist should consider first the societal image model, and then later issues of informational value separate from the collective and evidential value of the series.
3. As indicated in Chapter 3, moreover, records containing personal information must by definition be appraised against a wider background, especially where such records have their principal significance because for a given function they enrich the image of the citizen-state interaction. That image will be sharpest, and thus most worthy of documentation by the archivist, where there is evidence of significant changes, variations, and distortions between targets and results of the given programme and where the agency allows the citizen sufficient latitude to express his or her opinions.2 Thus, ipso facto, the archivist must determine the operating culture of that programme and agency by looking first at the sources which reveal it:
-- policy and subject files whose importance to the image was explained in the last chapter;
-- electronic records which aggregate much more precisely the more amorphous information from the case files and make clear the relevant demographic and statistical patterns;
-- central government sources (budgets, audits, inquiries, reports, and so on);
-- procedural and forms manuals;
-- legislation; and
-- related published and near-published information.
After determining which policy and subject records and which electronic data bases will be preserved by the archives, as well as the availability of other relevant (but non-archival) information, only then will the archivist be able to assess both the sharpness of the image in the citizen-state interaction and the value of the connected case records containing personal information. Finally, as noted, if the case file series do not have value in sharpening the collective societal image, they should still be appraised, as a last step, for the informational value they may have about specific individuals and events and places. In this comprehensive approach, therefore, actually looking at the records containing personal information is, ironically, the last rather than the first step in appraising such records. To look at personal information case files in isolation from these other factors and these other records is a prescription for poor archival appraisal.
4. The implementation of this comprehensive appraisal framework may conflict, however, with the priorities of government agencies in scheduling their own records. The records schedule is a timetable created by a records manager indicating how long files or groups of files should be retained, where they should be retained (agency or records centre), and their ultimate disposition (transfer to an archives or destruction). If archivists can record their appraisal decisions onto records schedules as part of the process whereby those schedules are approved, the result is a more efficient and economical disposal process, reducing considerably the work of archivists and ensuring in all likelihood that valuable records are not lost or inadvertently destroyed. In this process, it has traditionally been the case that all relevant records in all media for a particular programme or administrative sub-unit are not be scheduled comprehensively by the agency, although that is desirable and should be encouraged. Usually, however, the bulky records containing personal information, which often have the shortest retention periods, will be scheduled first, simply because the agency does not want the high storage costs of maintaining them for long periods of time. But that does not mean that these records must be appraised first in isolation: the schedule is merely a tool to record an appraisal decision, among its other functions. The archivist should thus appraise in the comprehensive context (as outlined above) all the series and media of records created in a particular office relevant to assessing the image model, even if only a small portion of the records are being formally scheduled at any one time.
5. In the same comprehensive approach to their work, archivists should consider adopting the "cluster concept" when they appraise records. If there are several interrelated series of personal information records -- military records involving individuals might include the personnel file, court martial files, burial files, and so on -- these should be appraised together so that overlapping information may be more readily identified and thus a better appraisal made. The same clustering occurs in immigration and naturalization files and in certain court records.3
6. The timing of the appraisal of series of case files or similar personal information records will vary. For the essential records category, the decision can be made immediately. For more routine and homogeneous series, in a manner similar to appraising electronic records at the system design stage, the records may be appraised as (or even before) they are first created. Here a diplomatic analysis is necessary to understand the form and process and structure behind the records per se, which in turn will reveal much about the informational content before the records are even created. In such cases, archivists must monitor the situation periodically to decide if changes in the programme, agency, or records structures over time require a revised appraisal. But for most series containing personal information case files, the issue of retention will revolve around whether the records reflect a societal image which distorts, alters, or negates an articulated intent of the programme or agency. Almost by definition, such cases will involve public issues or government functions which are controversial, hotly debated in public forums, and emotion-laden for many citizens (including archivists) at the time of their occurrence. In such cases, distance adds needed perspective to the. appraisal decision. That time can be gained by storing records for periods of infrequent use in records centres, but archivists must guard against excessive use of this strategy in order to avoid filling centres with useless records with ever-mounting storage costs. Records centre storage is not justified simply because records creators, records managers, and archivists refuse to make difficult decisions. Good archival research and analysis, however, will shorten the needed "cooling-off" period for records. Even if there is delay in making the actual appraisal until this perspective has been gained, the archivist should still gather relevant documentation and interview responsible departmental officers as soon as possible, before both disappear and important experience and impressions are lost.
7. The comprehensive approach to appraisal, as well as the reorientation of the archivist from passive receptor to active selector and the ideal timing of the appraisal, may sometimes be in conflict with the aims of records managers with whom the archivist must cooperate. All archivists have had the experience of roomsful of records dumped on them without warning, thus undermining any chance to treat such records comprehensively with the others in their information universe or actively in terms of isolating (according to Chapter 3) the key records worth preserving in order to retain the most faithful image of society. There is no easy solution to this dilemma, but since the volume of records ever increases, and as space and other resources diminish for both records managers in departments and archivists, it is mandatory that archivists break this vicious circle and regain control of the archival agenda. That may be done by implementing a planned, strategic approach to records scheduling with agencies, that is, a plan based on archival priorities derived from research into all the complex variables mentioned in Chapters 2 and 3, but which also recognizes the need of agencies to have authority (usually received from the national archivist in most countries) to destroy records without archival value in a timely fashion.4
Appraising case files: general working rules
8. The main working rule for archivists in appraising all records is to destroy them.5 On the standard 5 per cent: 95 per cent ratio of keep versus destroy -- which in many countries is closer to 2:98 or 1:99 -- "it is neither scientifically desirable nor economically defensible to spend most of our time and energy on minutely culling the larger mass of records".6 If this is true for all records, then it is especially so for large series of case files containing personal information. The focus for the archivist should not be to explain what is being destroyed, but rather to advance "definite and compelling justifications" for what is being kept. Of that 5 per cent of paper records so selected, many will be policy or significant subject files, but a large volume may be textual case files in paper format (especially where there are strong pressures to save records for their informational values).7
9. Essential records containing personal information, as outlined in Chapter 2, sections 22 and 23, are not covered by these rules or by the theoretical considerations of Chapter 3. Such essential categories of records are not acquired by archives to sharpen the societal image (although they obviously contribute to it), but rather to provide a demographic profile of the nation, to protect citizens' rights, and to underpin certain judicial processes.
10. Personnel records similarly are acquired both in their own right for the evidential and informational value they have in isolation (see Chapter 2, sections 24 to 28), as well as for how they may contribute to the overall societal image.
11. Where the principal value of the important personal information records coming from the "macro-analysis" of the societal image is determined by the archivist to be collective and quantitative rather than personal and qualitative, the record should usually be kept in electronic rather than paper format, where both exist. The advantages of the machine-readable version of the record are numerous, in addition to obvious savings in space and storage costs: manipulability of the information, ease of anonymization permitting public access in light of tougher privacy laws, linkage to other data to create "new" information bases and potential for aggregation and statistical analysis.8 As noted before, this rule may apply to essential personal information records as well, and it does apply to personnel records series.
12. As outlined in the last chapter, records containing personal information should not be kept to document the historical significance of a programme or an agency per se (as opposed to the concept of sharpening the societal image). The only exception is that a small example of case files may sometimes be kept to demonstrate the forms used where the programme was of particular importance. Keeping large examples or more formal samples merely to show the processes of the agency or the nature of its daily operations is rarely justifiable. Information on processes and operations, as noted, is readily available elsewhere in the information universe and records hierarchy. This rule also includes attachments to or associated artifacts connected with case files, such as X-rays, fingerprints, weapons, blood samples, and so on.
13. The primary use of records must not be confused with their secondary, archival uses, although the nature of the primary use is clearly important to understanding the records' context during the appraisal process. Simply because a department has a long-term and sometimes even a permanent use for a record does not render such case files an archival record, unless they also have significance in terms of the societal model in Chapter 3 or of informational value for research. It may be that political pressure, as noted before, may in some countries require such records to be stored in the national archives, but that is a pragmatic decision, not one based on archival significance.
14. In addition to researching and understanding all the factors and variables outlined in the last two chapters, archivists must ensure that they do not give undue weight to various types of records. They cannot appraise a large series of case files by "spot-checking" or by accepting the word of the agency's officials that various records are duplicated in other series and/or in other levels of the administrative hierarchy. Archivists must approach the task more comprehensively and scientifically. In appraising 135,000 cubic feet of Department of Justice litigation case files in the United States, for example, archivists followed the department's own classification system to break the cases into 194 distinct categories (kidnapping to insurance fraud) and then used a consistent sampling methodology to select a balanced number of files from each category for study during the appraisal process. This is sampling for appraisal rather than for acquisition and transfer. As the number of cases ranged from over 10,000 in each of anti-trust, land, and taxation categories to under 10 for those relating to misuse of insignia, census violations, or farm loans, such scientific categorization and sampling is necessary in order to understand the nature of the records involved and to ensure that cases with few instances are not overlooked and those with many are not overemphasized. The Department of Justice methodology is not only directly relevant to the personal case file series of other judicial, court, police, and intelligence agencies, but also to any series which on the surface appears to be homogeneous, but which in reality has various internal categories or functions.9
Appraising case files: specific criteria
15. There is no attempt in this section to write guidelines, complete with full argument and examples, concerning archival appraisal criteria in general.10 Rather, only those factors affecting the appraisal of records containing personal information are summarized. If a series of case files following the "macro-appraisal" model is determined to have potential permanent value, then a secondary series of appraisal factors must thereafter be considered. As well, series which do not have such collective or evidential value in sharpening the image of society may still have informational value. The following paragraphs outline appraisal factors for both cases: identifying within a series the individual files that have particular significance (informational value) and dealing with all cases in the series as a collective reflection of the citizen-state interaction (the macro-appraisal model). The first involves pulling special cases away from the whole; the second involves sampling (where all files need not -- or cannot -- be kept) to ensure that the part retained in an archives is a valid representation or reflection of the whole.
16. Series as a Whole. Without denying the importance of the exceptional and controversial cases within a case file series, or the general informational value of the series, it is the series as a whole, as an aggregate of the citizen-state relationship, that should first draw the archivist's attention. In such cases, after determining that the series does indeed qualify as sharpening the image of society as outlined in Chapter 3, the archivist evaluating the series of records containing personal information must address a number of additional factors, which are common to all appraisal:
a. Completeness of the series. The more complete a series is, including both successful and unsuccessful cases, regional and headquarters input, the greater its value.
b. Authenticity. There must be assurance the records are genuine, created in the normal course of business under established procedures, and clearly linked by provenance to their creator.
c. Uniqueness. Is the record physically duplicated in whole or large part in electronic, micrographic, or published form? Is significant information from it tabulated, summarized, or abstracted in policy and subject files, data bases, or publications? If so, as noted before, the paper version of the case file should rarely be acquired by an archives. If the record or information is unique, does it merely confirm impressions already recorded elsewhere, does it supplement what it known, or does it provide a fresh, untapped body of data?
d. Relationship to other records. If the records complement or extend the understanding or significance of other records in the archives' custody, their value increases. Similarly, the potential to link records or data between these and other records must be considered.
e. Dates and time-span. The earlier the date of the series, especially for pre-1945 case records when other personal information sources were less available, the more value the series may have. Similarly, for comparative and longitudinal studies, the longer period of time covered by a series of records containing personal information, the greater their value.
f. Extent. Obviously the overall existing volume of the series, and the annual rate of accumulation, must be considered.
g. Usability. The records must be legible, coherent, accompanied by relevant supporting documentation, and arranged or indexed in a manner rendering them usable by researchers, or have the potential to be made so.
h. Rigidity/Flexibility. As noted at length in Chapter 3, the series has greatest value if its structure (and the programme and agency behind it) allows information from citizens to be recorded directly rather than indirectly, in free prose rather than set forms, and reflecting views and opinions rather than merely the rigid application of fixed procedures.
17. It may be useful for archivists to consider drafting an appraisal checklist of questions when appraising records containing personal information. As noted before, this must be used after extensive research by the archivist into the history and character of the records and their creator and after undertaking the "macro-appraisal" outlined in Chapter 3. Naturally, the questions asked will vary from agency to agency in light of their particular mandates and functions. One such checklist, which includes most if not all of the above points, was produced from the National Archives and Records Administration's celebrated appraisal of the FBI case files, and it is reprinted in the Appendix to this study.
18. Finally, following from the insights of the documentation strategy, archivists faced with appraising large volumes of records containing personal information should develop national networks to ensure that the records being appraised in their own jurisdictions, using the foregoing criteria, are indeed unique, and that the information in them is not reflected or even duplicated in similar records being retained in other archival repositories.11 Extending the argument beyond the contents of other archives, archivists should remember that the societal image is reflected and preserved as well by librarians, museum and art gallery curators, historic site interpreters, recorders of oral history, and many other heritage professionals. The results of their work may well allow the archivist to destroy certain types of information rendered thereby less essential to the overall image. Such national networks will not be easy to establish nor will they always work harmoniously, but the need for them is apparent and the effort should be made.
19. Special Cases within a Series. There is no better way to introduce the appraisal of series for informational value than by quoting the admirable guidelines set forward in a National Archives and Records Administration handbook for appraising selected case files for permanent retention:
Those chosen normally fall under one or more of the following categories. The case: a. Established a precedent and therefore resulted in a major policy or procedural change; b. Was involved in extensive litigation; c. Received wide-spread attention from the news media; d. Was widely recognized for its uniqueness by established authorities outside the Government; e. Was reviewed at length in the agency's annual report to the Congress; or f. Was selected to document agency procedures rather than to capture information relating to the subject of the individual file. Categories a. through e. establish the exceptional nature of a particular case file while category f. relates to routine files chosen because they exemplify the policies and procedures of the creating agency. The types of case files selected for permanent retention under the criteria established above include, but are not limited to, research grants awarded for studies: research and development projects; investigative, enforcement, and litigation case files; social service and welfare case files; labour relations case files; case files related to the development of natural resources and the preservation of historic studies [sites?]; public works case files; and Federal court case files.12
As noted earlier, category f. (evidential value) should only be used very sparingly for records containing personal information, and should never exceed a small sample. However, unless the creating agency is willing to code the files physically (numbering variation, colour tabs, a cover stamp or annotation) to indicate that any particular case file was indeed exceptional and falls into categories a. to e. above, there is little chance that the archivist will be able to isolate such files using these categories --especially if there are hundreds of thousands of file units.
20. There are three alternatives. One is to isolate important instances by date: military records during wartime years, immigration records during years of special migrations or forced evacuations, whether globally or by particular countries; all files created during the pioneering, early, or controversial periods of a particular programme. A second alternative, and one following the extended example of personnel case files cited in Chapter 2, is focusing on certain levels or categories of individuals, where such hierarchical organization exists and is easily evident in the filing system used for the records. A third and more assured alternative is concentrating on the "fat file" -- or the multi-section or multi-volume file.13 As exceptional, unusual, or controversial cases almost by definition generate more correspondence than their routine counterparts, such files will be thick and thus easily identifiable even in vast series to be pulled for archival retention. Of course, not all thick files necessarily follow this pattern: it may be that someone was routinely repaying a loan in monthly payments over thirty years (thus generating a fat file of 360 receipts). The archivist will have to assess the reasons for the thickness of particular files in series where they occur to ensure that such files are indeed exceptional. It is also logical that such exceptional files may well contain all which the archivist feels is necessary to document the "hot spots" in the citizen-state dialectic. After all, such controversial and precedent-setting files by their nature represent the "image" forcing changes on the programme and agency intentions and targets (see systematic sampling in section 32 below). In certain situations, the archivist may also want to select for preservation a "normal" base of information against which these special and exceptional cases may be compared and contrasted by researchers.
Appraising case files: practical and preservation issues
21. There are certain practical and preservation factors which may affect the ultimate decision to acquire a series of records containing personal information, or to acquire only part rather than all of it. The archivist must consider these factors, but only after going through the four steps of researching and applying the "macro-appraisal," the comprehensive analysis, the general rules, and the specific criteria noted above. If after that process, the archivist has made a positive decision that the records containing personal information indeed have value and that some or all of them should be acquired, then the following issues must also be considered. These are not appraisal issues, however, but preservation ones. The distinction is subtle, and important. While these practical and preservation factors clearly affect the nature (and sometimes even the possibility) of the actual acquisition of the records, they do not affect per se the intellectual decision of whether or not the records have permanent value. For example, the billions of bytes of climatic data received daily from hundreds of satellites and earth sensor stations have permanent value for long-term ecological study, but no archives is equipped to acquire them directly. Thus, such data are appraised as being permanently valuable, but practical or preservation issues prevent their actual transfer to an archives.
22. The most obvious practical factor is the cost of retaining the records. There are the obvious costs of the space needed to store the records and the containers and shelving to hold them. Less visible but equally pertinent costs concern the salary time and materials needed to arrange and describe the records, to preserve (and possibly copy) them, and to make them available to the public. In preserving the best possible record within budgetary limitations, many archives will find that they cannot keep all desirable series of case files and some hard choices will have to be made. If the foregoing analysis has been carefully researched and documented, and if it is sufficiently comprehensive across an agency (as defined in sections 2 to 7 in this chapter), then the priorities between competing series will be easier to identify for making that final decision.
23. There are sometimes legislative or statutory prohibitions which prevent archivists from viewing certain series of records in order to appraise them or which legally bar the transfer of certain categories of records to the archives, or both. In such cases, archivists (and their outside supporting communities) must lobby for legislative amendments or administrative arrangements to overcome these prohibitions. Ideally, archival legislation itself grants archivists the right to appraise and acquire even sensitive records.
24. Where the original paper records are too extensive, it is possible to convert the information, or the key portions of it, to electronic data, microfilm, or optical disk. Unless this conversion has been done by the creating agency, most archives will find that the conversion costs outweigh the storage ones, and only a small portion of their holdings will be so treated. Even where microfilm or computer versions of the record are available, however, archivists are cautioned that such miniaturization is no substitute for sound appraisal. Keeping useless records, even those with modest space requirements, complicates description and research unnecessarily, and clutters the desired total image of society.
25. Certain practical considerations may affect the timing of the transfer of records containing personal information, although again this has little to do with appraisal as contrasted to acquisition. If records are still actively used in an agency or likely to be subject to many freedom of information or privacy requests, it may be desirable to extend their formal retention period and thus delay their transfer to the archives in order to avoid excessive reference workloads. Conversely, if the archivist fears that records are physically threatened with either outright destruction or rearrangement that would obliterate their original order, then the retention periods should be shortened and the records safeguarded in the archives as soon as possible. This second scenario occurs when records are highly sensitive or embarrassing to the government in power or where the agency is transitory in nature (an investigatory commission, a small bureau) and about to pass out of existence.
26. Another preservation strategy may be to share between several archives in a formal network (or even informally across national borders) a large series of records which is beyond the capacity of any one of them to retain as a whole. In Great Britain, for example, over 300,000 feet of shipping and seamen's records (as of 1954 only) were handled as follows: the Public Record Office kept all crew lists up to-3860 and a 10 per cent sample thereafter, together with the crew lists for certain well-known ships; a sample of the remaining lists for every tenth year was then preserved by the National Maritime Museum; certain crew lists were handed over to local archives (for ships registered at ports within the area); and the very large residue was transferred to the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project of Memorial University of Newfoundland.14 While purists might argue about original order, or that this approach simply evades a tougher appraisal decision, researchers are pleased with this more generous solution which was beyond the capability of the Public Record Office itself.
27. Finally, as mentioned in Chapter l, more restrictive privacy acts coming into force around the world place very tight restrictions on the release of records containing personal information to third parties. These acts can dictate that certain types of personal information not be collected at all or can require that records containing it be destroyed after a short period of primary use, or can preclude transfer of such records to the archives (see legislative restraints above), or can make it impossible for researchers to use the records even if they are transferred. Archives must learn to live in this new environment by demonstrating to their sponsoring governments that they will follow the acts and not release personal information records in ways that will harm an individuals' rights to privacy. Archivists should also try to convince their sponsors and legislators that the sensitivity of personal information will eventually expire, and in such circumstances the personal information records can then be made available for public consultation. Therefore, such records should not now be destroyed merely to protect personal privacy. In such a manner, it is possible, as in the Canadian Privacy Act, to get specific exemptions for archival use of records containing personal information.15 In a related vein, by keeping a citizen's sensitive file as part of a sample, especially depending on the political climate of the country, archives may actually disadvantage that citizen and leave him or her open to prosecution, public embarrassment, or worse. It is essential that records containing such highly sensitive personal information kept solely for their collective significance in a series not be made available through descriptive tools which allow retrieval by a personal identifier for any purpose, including genealogical research, during the person's lifetime. As well, care must be taken to store (and destroy, if relevant) such sensitive personal information in a secure manner.
28. After all the above analytical steps, the archivist is faced with making one of the following decisions:
a. Retain all records permanently. Very few personal information records aside from the "essential" categories defined in Chapter 2 will be kept in their entirety. Perhaps a small series of case files in a programme where cases were appealed to and settled in the minister's office would be an example, or the examples cited before (see Chapter 2.30) of national gallery artist files or senior scientists' research grants. As a working rule in such cases, for interrelated series of records, it is preferable to keep all of a small series rather than samples from a much larger one.
b. Remove and keep key documents only from the files. Immigration landing record forms or medical and employment history charts once removed from the case files render what remains behind unarchival. It is, however, a labour-intensive job to remove such documents for large series if this work is not already performed by the creating department in the course of its normal business. It is good records management practice tin which archivists have an obvious stake) to ensure that key forms can be readily separated from ephemeral material.
c. Sample the records. Sampling permits the retention of the characteristics of the whole, both physically and intellectually, in a small portion of the whole. See the special section on sampling which follows for more information.
d. Take an example of the records. This involves taking a very small specimen (a file or box per year perhaps) solely to show the forms and processes used. As noted, there are better ways to document the evidential value of a programme, and this method for voluminous records containing personal information should be used sparingly.
e. Destroy all the records. This will of course be the decision taken for most series of personal case files created by modern governments.
29. At any stage in this process, archivists can consider converting the records or key information in them to electronic, micrographic, or optical disk formats as an alternative to collecting extensive series of bulky paper records, or consider alienating the records to another repository, but as noted these are preservation options, not appraisal ones. The personal information records in such instances have already been appraised as having permanent value before the practical and preservation concerns of actual transfer and acquisition are considered.