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3. appraisal policies and principles
The purpose of appraisal is to determine the long-term value of sound recordings before they are added to the archival holdings and before further work is carried out This long term value includes the value of the records for administrative, legal, financial, reference or research purposes, and can be extended to include the cultural an artistic value of sound recordings as art forms.
Appraisal policy will have to take account of all these values, and before attempting to formulate any principles it will be worth while looking at several of them in more detail.
3.2 Retention of material is often advocated by people want everything kept. This is an administrative impossibility due to lack of space and resources, both financial and human, and therefore some form of selection appraisal is forced upon the archivist from the beginning. Archivists would also question that there is the unlimited time needed to sit through hundreds of hours of material order to carry out appraisal, let alone to process all of the material and make it available for research. The value of the material cannot ignore the administrative costs of handling and conserving and the costs of storage.
3.3 The basic purpose of selection is to ensure preservation of material relevant to the subject matter of the archive concerned. This means different archives will have different selection policies according to the intended use of their holdings.
3.4 Legal aspects have to be taken into account in dealing with appraisal, and this will include legal deposit. The lack of legal deposit or mandatory deposit laws has had a marked effect, although it is only recently that legal deposit has become an issue for audiovisual materials and very few countries have even begun to approach the issue. The National Sound Archive in the UK, where there is no statutory deposit law, claims a 95% voluntary deposit of commercial recordings, and other organisations use a hit-and-miss system of voluntary deposit. Voluntary deposit does raise the problem of refusal to accept material resulting in the loss of subsequently useful material, a situation of which archives have to be aware. However legal deposit also leads to a necessity for an appraisal policy, unless the archive is obliged by law to retain everything which is deposited. It should not be made obligatory for an archive to retain everything in this way, otherwise we are back to the situation of keeping everything just because it is available. Many audiovisual archivists have been unenthusiastic about legal deposit for just this reason, for it is they who will have to use their limited financial and human resources in maintaining the material if and when it begins to deteriorate. Archives are not dumping grounds for the benefit of producers who cannot or choose not to maintain their own materials, but many archivists see legal deposit as an excuse for the producers to shirk their responsibility for the materials created, and to turn the archives into mere warehouses for their material.
3.5 The financial aspects of appraisal will include considerations such as the cost of purchase of materials, deposit, storage and subsequent documentation and access facilities for research workers. Reference and research use have to do with the value of sound recordings, but they all have to do with the collections policy of the archive. There may also be regional differences in policy which could be related to the different types of archives, or to archives with different functions, or the differences may relate to the subject content, the type of material, or the purpose of the archival repository.
3.5.1 Selecting material within defined areas of interest of an individual archive raises questions regarding what is in and what is outside the field of interest. There will, almost inevitably, be grey areas where the material could be considered of use to the archive in conjunction with the rest of its holdings. The nature of sound archives may make them much more closely related to appraisal by subject than many film archives.
3.5.2 Selection of sound recordings according to the nature and type of the recorded content will also influence the selection policy. For example, regarding gramophone records of musical works the question arises as to whether one should keep the entire output, that is, every performance of a work, either as a complete record of the recordings in order to allow comparison of interpretation by different; artists, soloists, conductors, orchestras, or as a complete output of a particular artist's work.
3.5.3 This leads to a consideration of the cultural and artistic value of sound recordings. Gramophone record companies may retain a complete archive of the recordings they themselves have produced, whether as an archive or in order to produce reissues on appropriate occasions, such as an anniversary of a composer or artist.
3.6 Moving to other types of sound recordings and in particular those of the spoken word, there are similar problems. There may be reasons such as reissue of material, or the need to study the production of a particular artist or poet, but will it be necessary to keep every version of this material or only a representative sample, including presumably material which is read or played by the author or composer themselves?
3.6.1 The production of oral history material presents additional problems for the appraiser. There is the problem of volume, especially of unedited material. Should tape be edited and then the original lengthy interview disposed of, or should the unedited version be retained in favour of the edited? This involves an ethical problem, but one reasonable solution is to retain the unedited version, especially if the editing has significantly reduced the duration of the interview. Cutting out the hesitations and repetitions is less serious, if arguably mistaken, than retaining only a 5 minute section of a 50 minute interview. However even hesitations and repetitions in an oral history interview have an informational value. They may indicate where an informant is unsure of the facts, or even where he is not telling the whole truth or trying to suppress certain facts.
3.6.1.1 Appraisal of oral history interviews includes selection at the point of origin, that is in deciding what to record, what to investigate, and the purpose of an interview.
3.7 Given that selection is necessary one must both determine who it is who is to select the material and formulate the criteria for selection. As previously noted some archives have selection staff who concentrate on the areas of selection and acquisition, while some archives use a system of selection committees. But selection by consultation and committee is fraught with difficulty when sectional and special interests are promoted by people from different disciplines.
3.7.1 One of the primary qualifications for the archival appraiser is objectivity. The archivist will constantly be assailed by the sceptics who will accuse him of "playing god" and question whether he is qualified to select material for retention and future use. The archivist will certainly need qualifications in order to select materials for the archives, and just as people should be trained to be archivists so they should be trained in the art and craft of appraisal and selection. It is one of the most important skills of the archivist and it needs to be part of any training programme.
3.7.1.1 In addition any archivist should have a thorough knowledge of the subject in order to formulate and implement selection policies. He should be qualified in the subject he is dealing with in order to recognise the true from the false, the genuine from the spurious, relevant subject content and intrinsic value in the particular subject area. It could be argued that a sound archivist with a knowledge of classical music should not select material from the popular scene, although this does not necessarily follow. Many music or sound archivists can do both, but perhaps considering 'horses for courses' would be a useful maxim here. However, this is not to say that a historian should select material for archival purposes, or a musician select music for archival retention, without prior archival training and experience. The people involved should be trained archivists with a background subject knowledge in the appropriate area.
3.8 The snap, crackle and pop of early recordings and the use of recording machinery not of a particularly high standard mean that to make material accessible, in the basic sense of being suitable for listening purposes, the material will inevitably need some "cleaning up". Early film has its problems, but if it was once of good quality this is a good starting point for restoration. The evidence which has survived precludes an easy answer regarding the quality of early sound recordings. The recording may have deteriorated further in use and be difficult to reproduce. Once the material has been cleaned up there is no guarantee that the original quality has been restored; or we may be left with a 'muted' heavily dampened version of the snap and crackle, and loss of the original dynamic range which may not have been wide, but was at least wider than the restored version.
3.8.l Field recordings or oral history interviews tend be produced on less high quality recordings than music, because of the nature of the recording situation and the necessity to use highly portable equipment in often less than ideal conditions. But the material collected is no less valuable for that reason. Oral history documents or collections may even be counted as more complete than many archive collections of sound recordings.
Selection should be made with the possibilities of future technology in mind. Other criteria for selection include the determination of value in terms of recording or rerecording technique, subject or artist. Technical specifications always have to be taken into consideration as will the subject content of the material.
3.9 Before discussing some examples of appraisal policies in action it might be as well to take a brief look at some of the general procedures used in appraisal. Appraisal takes a considerable amount of time. But it is critical that a fiscal assessment of the cost of accessioning, organising and preserving the record is maintained. We must begin to attach price tags to selection decisions and such decisions should be documented for referral by future archivists. Fiscal notes are essential additions to the appraisal record. This applies to all records and will include conservation and storage costs.
3.9.1 Some pre-archival control of the records should be exercised, and archivists should participate in decisions about how records are stored before they come to the archives. Modern records management techniques for handling information suggest that there is a need to influence file organisation, access systems and the media on which recording and storage is made. This last point will either help or hinder the work of eventual archival preservation. For example archives should try to ensure that material that will eventually be deposited is recorded on good quality audiotape to minimum technical standards rather than on poor quality audiocassettes. Archives should participate in establishing systems in the areas of technical standards or type of documentation required. The records can then be transferred to the archive with much of the initial processing and preservation already paid for. This is management of the record before it comes into the archive.
3.9.1.1 Selection techniques will vary from archive to archive and may be done at different levels. Rolf Schuursma in an article in "Selection in Sound Archives", analyses two levels of selection which he calls "coarse" and "fine-mesh" selection. Coarse mesh selection is the evaluation of complete collections of recordings without investigating individual records within that collection. Fine mesh selection is based on a record-for-record approach. The first type of selection is not very time consuming and inevitably results in a larger but possibly less manageable collection, especially if the accompanying documentation is less than adequate. It may also result in "a lot of rubbish and only a few valuable recordings". The second method necessitates withdrawing the recording and listening to it, consulting or providing adequate accompanying documentation, and adequate cataloguing.
This fine mesh selection should be applied to records which are offered or come into the archive individually or in small numbers, not extensive collections.
Negative selection does not necessarily mean destruction. The recordings not selected may be stored elsewhere or offered to another more appropriate archive.
The processing of archival records may prove to be prohibitively expensive, especially when the cost of accessioning and cataloguing overtakes that of selection. Selection, as a general rule reduces the number of records to be stored and catalogued and therefore helps to maintain the collection economically.
3.9.2 Another valid technique for selection in man archival situations is that of "sampling". It is of applied to large groups of materials, or collections permanently valuable sound recordings. The classic definition of archival sampling is provided by Lewinson:
"sampling of archives consists in the selection of some part of a body of homogeneous records files so that some aspect of an organisation's government's work or the information received developed by the organisation or government may be represented or illustrated thereby".
Sampling has been used on large series of paper materials, but a similar technique can be more-widely used for sound recordings, especially when one considers the huge output of radio broadcasting stations, or the transcripts and monitoring broadcasts of the larger series. The aim of sampling is to carry out a survey on a body of material which is large when compared with the importance of the subject content.
Broadcasting is the major area in which the sampling technique is used for sound recordings, as stated, for example in the policy of the Public Television Archives of the US Public Broadcasting System :
"with regard to program series, the Archives will generally preserve the first and final episodes and such other episodes as are necessary to document changes in plot, setting, characterization, technique etc."
Sampling is also used for preserving representative sample of regular news broadcasts; many radio archives will retain only one news broadcast a day, that which is designated as the main broadcast.
3.10 From the foregoing it can be concluded that rigid criteria are going to be of little use to the archivist; criteria will have to be flexible and take into account all related areas of interest. What should first be investigated are the principles required for proper appraisal of sound recordings. This is the basis on which guidelines should be formulated. There are several governing principles which should be considered before guidelines can be enumerated.
3.10.1 The premise upon which selection is based is that acquisitions should be actively chosen and not merely passively accepted.
3.10.2 The necessity for selection is forced upon the archivist because of lack of space and resources for preservation and lack of staff for cataloguing. The sheer volume of audiovisual materials being produced makes it impossible to preserve everything. But the longer we wait the less resources will be available and the more our conscience will bother us! A well established and consistently applied appraisal and selection policy is the best solution.
3.10.3 Criteria and techniques should first be defined at the institutional level. The written analysis of appraisal policies is called for as a priority.
Appraisal should be done according to a well-defined policy based on national collection in a national archive or for specialised purposes in other types of archives. Defining the policy and making it known will assist potential donors in offering material to the appropriate repository.
3.10.4 Selection principles for sound recordings can be considered under several headings. The most important of these is selecting records which are medium specific, that is presented in the particular medium most appropriate to them. Another principle is selecting material according to the purpose and function of the archive. Finally, the completeness of the recordings should be considered.
3.10.4.1 With regard to the specific qualities of a medium, the concern here is that the sound recording actually has something to say over and above the printed word or the official document. For this reason live interviews and discussions in the spoken word category may be more useful than official speeches. But many discussions degenerate into confused babble, to which so many "talk shows", or panel discussions on radio bear witness, not to mention proceedings from some of the world's Parliaments where Hansard or the written proceedings is a more comprehensible report. Medium specific qualities also apply to music recordings, as performances cannot be replaced by the printed music.
3.10.4.2 The intent and purpose of the archive implies that archives should collect within a designated area and further that there should be a division of collection policies between archives. Archives should define their collection policies to prevent duplication.
3.10.4.3 The length and completeness of the recordings may have an important bearing on their relevance. Records may be too short or fragmented to provide sufficient useful information, or the materials may be merely commentaries by frequently ill-informed persons. These are the main concerns but there are others including the importance of the subject, especially its longer term importance. The importance of the subject as social history is frequently the case with spoken word recordings.
3.10.4.4 National and international cooperation between archives is also an important aspect of appraisal. This emphasises the need to encourage specialisation in particular archives. In order to promote this development, more information is necessary about the spread of holdings. The more we know about what others are holding the more effective collection policies will be. The next stage in this process is cooperative collection policies, and the final stage is a continuing programme of cooperative collection. Selection should ultimately be designed to lead to increased specialisation on several levels, local, regional and national.
3.10.4.5 This will encompass the idea that sound recordings will be appraised against the total holdings already accessioned within the institution and any gaps identified and the opportunity taken to fill these gaps. A sound archive should normally avoid acquiring recordings which will duplicate the recordings of other archives. This policy is designed to avoid duplication in the storage, cataloguing and preservation costs required.
Given the scope and amount of commercial recordings produced annually, as well as the longer list of unpublished recordings from radio and oral history, a scheme of appraisal on a national level becomes an essential and obvious requirement. This has already been suggested in other media, including the UNESCO recommendations drawn up by the Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) in 1980. Cooperation between established national and international sound archives is essential to reduce the amount of duplication in collection, documentation and preservation of materials. Such a network is already being formed in the US for sound recordings, where five institutions are cooperating to produce an index of holdings in 78 rpm recordings. This index will have a use not only for research but for selection staff in locating sound recordings and helping them to develop and rationalise suitable archive collections by applying tests of uniqueness, by allocating money for preservation facilities, and by eliminating duplication of effort.
3.10.4.6 Archives should be acquiring recordings for preservation as close to the original or of the best quality available. The form of the material acquired is of paramount importance and interest to the archivist once he has decided to acquire the material. The appraiser has to decide whether he is dealing with originals, copies, or copies of copies in various recorded formats. The acquisition of originals will influence the cost of preservation.
Preservation has fiscal implications for the archive and the situation may arise whereby the archivist has to investigate the value of one set of records as a substitute for another set which may be invaluable for preservation. In dealing with audiovisual material the impermanence of the modern record is an important consideration. In textual archives many records exist in faded or illegible photostat copies, on deteriorating microfilm and non-paper records; nitrate and colour film, magnetic tape etc., deterioration of the base on which the, record is retained causes analogous problems. In addition modern technology produces records which can be amended or updated, for instance the computer disc or the interactive videodisc, the magnetic tape, and also on media which are fragile and reusable. This presents the need to accession the records before the information disappears.
3.10.4.7 One of the aims of selection is to reduce the volume of material. The use of micrographics and data-reduction offers a reduction of the record to a smaller, more compact storage medium, but considerable caution should be exercised in this area. Poor quality storage media which have been offered in the form of VHS cassettes for film and video material, or compact cassettes for sound recordings, have to be treated carefully. It may appear to be a temporary solution to the storage problem but that is indeed what it is; a temporary solution and not a solution to the continued preservation and conservation of the record. We have been presented with disc technology in recent years, but even here there are important reservations. It may appear that the disc is a suitable permanent storage medium, but there are two major difficulties involved. Firstly, the recording quality offered by the disc often far outstrips the material which is recorded on it, and secondly, the disc carries no guarantee that it will last longer than magnetic tape.
3.10.4.8 Preservation costs are among the most important costs an archive has to bear, costs of staff and technical expertise and equipment necessary to preserve or restore audio recordings are an important consideration when drawing up selection criteria. These costs must be considered in deciding whether to keep recordings in their original format after an archivally acceptable preservation copy has been made; they also are important when considering the concept of intrinsic value.
3.10.4.9 The accessibility of recordings will also influence appraisal. The research value of recordings will only be realised by the records being made accessible for research. Long-term, indefinite or even perpetual restrictions on access and use may reduce the value of the material. This is not always a primary factor in deciding whether to accession material, but it must be taken into account.
3.10.4.10 Other factors which will influence how useful the material will be for future research, and how important the materials are to the archive, will include the uniqueness of the material and its age.
3.10.4.11 A determination of uniqueness, or the degree of rarity of the recording, requires certain prior knowledge in the selector and on the part of the appraiser and involves knowing whether the recordings offered are duplicated elsewhere, either in content or format.
3.10.4.12 The age of the material may prove to be a valuable guideline to its value and importance. But age is relative, and some recordings may be rare because of their survival value or because of their value as survivors on particular formats.
Reappraisal and if necessary de-accessioning are other vital steps in the overall process of appraisal. Records can, and should, be appraised at intervals for several reasons. Passive collection or archival activity is dangerous in the modern age, and reappraisal is an essential tool in the face of passive collection. There are dangers however in making this policy too public. One incensed donor may put an entire collecting programme in jeopardy as a result of a quarrel with an appraisal or reappraisal decision. Alternatively, fashion and ideology could wipe out an important part of the, historical record, if reappraisal is carried out too ruthlessly or too soon. De-accessioning however does not necessarily mean the destruction of records. It can instead have the much more positive result of reuniting divided collections by transferring material to the most appropriate archive.
3.10.4.13 This policy supports one previously discussed, that of national and international cooperation between archives to prevent duplicating collection and to conserve resources by concentrating relevant copies in only a few archives. Weeding and discarding are helpful because often material has been acquired over a period of years without ever having had proper evaluation. Many archives have begun as reference collections for one reason or another and only subsequently become archives with preservation responsibilities. Therefore reappraisal becomes an essential tool for rationalising holdings and reducing collections to manageable proportions. Reappraisal may be needed because the original appraisal proves faulty or standards of appraisal and opinions may have changed as to the worth of the material. Reappraisal is most necessary prior to permanent preservation with all its concomitant costs, or to expenditure of funds for documentation. Not all sound recordings held in an archive will have equal value, and therefore they should not receive equal preservation treatment or storage space. The concept of reappraisal at regular intervals is a healthy exercise in the archival process.
3.10.4.14 Reappraisal may be done at regular intervals. For example, the Public Television Archives in the US have ten year reappraisal reviews to determine the long-term significance and value of recordings. Others appraise at different intervals, 6 months, annually, 5 years, 10 years and at even longer intervals. The advantages of this type of programme are that the records keep coming up for comparison with new materials acquired over relatively short intervals. The collection holdings is not allowed to stagnate and to acquire a false value.
3.11 Closely related to the problem concept of appraisal is that of "intrinsic value". Some archival materials have intrinsic value, while others do not, and this includes many sound recordings offered for preservation. When the concept is applied to sound recordings it should be applied at the time of appraisal and selection, so that the recordings can be restored and retained for the value of their subject content, or, in some instances, for their intrinsic value as original recordings on particular formats. For example, sound recordings may have been recorded on deteriorating acetate based tape. If a collection of these tapes is offered to an archive the normal criteria of selection for that archive should be applied; if deemed of sufficient archival value to warrant continued retention, the appraiser may recommend that the recordings be transferred to an archivally acceptable medium and that the originals be destroyed, in much the same way that a film appraiser is forced to make such recommendations for nitrate film. Every sound archivist would quickly recognise those items in his collection which have "intrinsic value": the Mapleson cylinders, the wax cylinders, the Philips and Miller recording tapes and so on, but the deteriorating, not to say dangerously unstable, recording media will have to be transferred and then destroyed. Tapes may not be unstable, just in bad condition and need of restoration. In these cases the "intrinsic value" of the recordings may lead to the decision that they are worth saving until technology has improved to the point where better restoration can be achieved. The appraiser will need to have a knowledge of developing technology in order to make informed decisions in this area, but he would be well advised to seek technical advice in such circumstances.
4. conclusions and guidelines
4.1 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.
4.2 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 material 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.
4.2.1 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.
4.3 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.
4.4 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 cooperative 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.
4.5 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.
4.6 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.
4.7 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 cooperation among archives to achieve an international network of collecting institutions and to improve the general exchange of information, collection and preservation of sound recordings.
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.
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.
guidelines
4.8 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.
4.9 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. Legal 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.
4.10 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 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.
4.11 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.
4.12 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.
4.13 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.
4.14 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.
4.15 Selection out of the collection can have many end results. It may mean the destruction of the original record and retention of the first generation recording. It may mean the transfer of the material to another archive which has a more appropriate collection to house and manage the material involved, eg, 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.