Evaluarea si Selectionarea, o noua abordare

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Comma 2002.1-2

Proceedings of the XXXVth International Conferenceof the Round Table on Archives

Reykjavik, Iceland, 10-13 October 2001

Actes de la XXXVe Conférence internationalede la Table ronde des Archives

Reykjavik, Islande, 10-13 octobre 2001



Comma, 2002 - 1/2 –Duncan Simpson and Susan Graham 51

Appraisal and Selection of Records:A New Approach

This paper will describe the approach of the Public Record Office, the UK nationalarchive, to determining which government records merit permanent preservation. Thisapproach has changed radically over the past few years, moving from a non-interven-tionist approach and beginning to take a much more active part in the selection process.

The paper begins by describing the public records system of the UK government andits ‘traditional’ approach to appraisal. It analyses what we now see as the weaknesses inthat approach, and describes our new approach and its implementation.

The UK public records system

The Public Record Office (PRO) operates within a framework established by the PublicRecords Act 1958. Our remit covers the public records of the UK government, Englandand, for the time being, Wales. There are separate statutory provisions for officialrecords in Scotland and Northern Ireland, each of which has its own record office.Currently there is not a Welsh Record Office, but the Government of Wales Act 1998makes possible its future establishment by the National Assembly for Wales.

The Public Records Act defines a public record as “records conveying informationby any means whatsoever”,1 and covers the records of central government, the law courtsand a number of other government bodies. It does not apply to the records of local orregional government.

The Public Records Act 1958 sets out the responsibilities of the PRO, governmentdepartments and places of deposit in relation to public records. Although, according tothe Act, departments are responsible for the safe-keeping and selection of their ownrecords, they are required to do this under the guidance, supervision and co-ordination of the PRO. In carrying out this responsibility, the PRO supervises over 250 public recordbodies, which together hold in excess of 1400 linear kilometres of records at a combinedannual storage cost of over £35 million.2

We take into the archives fewer than 5% of the records created by government. Thisamounts now to about 2km per year and we have already in store 168 km. An additional42 km of public records are held in 240 other archives throughout the country, known as‘places of deposit’. We inspect and monitor these local archives, though we do not givethem any funding, or have any management control over them.

The PRO’s new approach to appraisal rests on a re-structuring of the PRO’s RecordsManagement Department, which we carried out in 1998. We re-defined the department’sstrategic objectives and all the roles and functions of the staff within it. This enabled usto begin to deal with the introduction of electronic records management systems intogovernment, and the implications this brings for the processes of appraisal, selectionand, eventually, preservation or disposal.

1 Public Records Act 1958, s 10(1)2 Records Storage Management , Cabinet Office / PRO. February 1997




Changing approach to appraisal

In the UK, the approach to the selection of records for permanent preservation in thearchives has evolved throughout the twentieth century.

Recent practice – for the last 40 years or so – has been dominated by the views of SirHilary Jenkinson, who was Deputy Keeper of the Public Records from 1947 to 1954 andmore recently by those of Theodore Schellenberg.

In The Principles of Archive Administration3 Sir Hilary Jenkinson stressed theimportance of preserving the evidential and impartial nature of archives. In Jenkinson’sview, administrators should carry out the selection of records for permanent preservationconsidering administrative need alone. The intervention of archivists in this processwould taint the evidential value of the record by applying an external set of values to therecords. In Jenkinson’s view, research values should be excluded from selectiondecisions, both to avoid destroying the evidential value of the records and also to protectthem from current trends and fads which might skew the historical record.

In the middle of the twentieth century, Theodore Schellenberg of the US NationalArchives and Records Administration wrote that archives should be selected, not onlyfor their value as evidence, but also for their informational content4. He set out ataxonomy of primary and secondary records values. Primary values were the value of therecords to the organization itself while secondary values were the research values of therecords, which could be further subdivided into informational or evidential values.Schellenberg separated the value of the records to the creating organization and theirvalue for research purposes. While administrators were best placed to assess primaryvalues, he argued that archivists should assess the secondary values.

The views of Schellenberg and Jenkinson are both represented in the findings of the1954 Grigg Committee, whose report underpins the Public Records Act of 19585. TheGrigg system has provided the basis of the procedures for the selection of records forpermanent preservation in the UK national archive from the end of the 1950s.

Based on the records life cycle, the system consists of a two-stage review processrelying on an individual examination of records. First review, conducted some 5-7 yearsafter creation, considers administrative need. Records which survive this review areexamined 25 years after creation to establish if they have sufficient value to meritpermanent preservation.

Traditional approaches such as this have recently come under question, not only inthe UK but throughout the world. A number of reasons underlie this:

The file-by-file appraisal process works from the bottom up, looking closely and ingreat detail at records. It is difficult to operate this system alongside any real strategicoverview of the appraisal activity. It is difficult to set selection priorities, and especiallydifficult to do so across or between different organisations or departments.

A system based on an individual examination of records is also increasinglyunsuitable for dealing with the large volume of records created since the 1970s asphotocopiers, word processors and computers became part of everyday office life. In onegovernment department, the volume of records due for review doubled over the period1970-1974.

Over the past few years, the universal move to creating electronic records has givenhuge impetus to the need to review our approach to the appraisal and selection of records. The UK government has set the target that by 2004 all new public records mustbe created and managed electronically. Electronic records cannot be kept for twenty-five

years before considering whether or not they should be selected for permanent

3 Sir Hilary Jenkinson (1922) A Manual of Archive Administration, 2nd ed pub 19654

T R Schellenberg (1956) Modern Archives: Principles and Techniques 5 1954, Report of the Committee fn Departmental Records (Grigg Committee) Cmd 9163 HMSO




preservation. A physical computer disk or tape can survive for twenty-five years, but it isextremely unlikely that the information it contains will be accessible at the end of theperiod. The technology itself demands that we make selection decisions at the earliestpossible stage. Ideally this should happen at the time of creation or even before, when thesystem for managing and storing the records is first set up.

The traditional model does not deal effectively with an increasing requirement foraccountability and transparency in government. It does not provide mechanisms forsystematically recording the basis on which appraisal decisions were taken and making itavailable to the public.

Finally, the values set out in our traditional approach reflected the priorities of the 1950s.Great emphasis was placed on the need to document the structures and functions of thecreating organizations and there was a tendency to select records showing thedevelopment of government policy without selecting those records which showed how itwas implemented in practice. By the 1990s new research interests, techniques anddisciplines had arisen. It was important to ensure that the selection priorities beingpursued in the 1990s accommodated this research.

These weaknesses were not only characteristics of the UK approach to appraisal.Across the world national archives have been querying their approach to the selection of records for permanent preservation, and a range of international responses have

developed, including the Canadian macroappraisal approach and the Australianfunctional approach which includes an element of stakeholder analysis.

The PRO’s new approach to the selection of records for permanent preservation restson the principles of transparency and partnership. In the modern governmentenvironment it is imperative that the decision-making processes of the state aretransparent to its customers. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 has reinforced thisrequirement. All our selection policy documents are the subject of public consultation;all are available to the public and all are on the PRO website. We accept comment evenafter they have been finalised and we have promised to review them regularly. Ourpremise is that we will always document clearly what we do and why, so that ourcustomers and successors will be able to track our decisions and understand them.

Furthermore, the PRO seeks to develop its approach to selection in partnership withgovernment departments, fellow professionals and the public. For many years the Officehas had a good relationship with government departments. Departmental staff havevaluable knowledge and expertise and the PRO is eager to develop further its

relationship with government departments. At the same time we are seeking to extendour relationship with fellow professionals, in the international and national archivecommunity.

We also aim to include our users in the development of our selection priorities – boththe academic community and the genealogical community which now makes up most of our regular users. The PRO staff involved in the selection of records for permanentpreservation are regular participants in a programme of seminars on contemporaryBritish history, at which academics are invited to speak about particular aspects of contemporary British history and to describe which areas they consider are likely to be of especial interest to posterity. In addition, we are developing the Office’s links withrepresentative user groups, such as the Royal Historical Society and the genealogicalcommunity.

In common with other national archives, the PRO has adopted a top-down approachto the identification of records for permanent preservation. Rather than following apurely functional approach, the Office’s approach involves identifying those themes

which are priorities for permanent preservation. It then considers the functions andrecord-keeping structures of the organizations concerned to establish where the recordssupporting these themes can be found. For existing records the approach is based onprovenance and content rather than function – our aim is to identify the lead records for aparticular area of interest. The analysis is verified by an examination of the individualrecords concerned.




Framework of selection criteria

In 1997 the PRO began a systematic review of our selection criteria with the aim of publishing a new policy and framework for the selection of records for permanent

preservation. The PRO’s acquisition policy was developed by undertaking research onapproaches to appraisal and by studying best practice in other national archives.

It was the subject of a substantial consultation exercise. Copies of the draft policywere sent for comment to every history teacher at a British university, to learnedsocieties, to local archives, to genealogical societies and to grant-giving bodies. Thedraft was placed on the PRO website and was the subject of a number of consultationseminars at the PRO and at universities. Responses showed that 97% were supportive of the overall thrust of the policy, which was amended in the light of comments received.

The policy sets out the overriding objectives governing the PRO’s selection work:“Our objectives are to record the principal policies and actions of the UK centralgovernment and to document the state’s interactions with its citizens and with thephysical environment. In doing so, we will seek to provide a research resource for ourgeneration and for future generations”6. It identifies eight themes in relation to whichrecords will be selected, grouped under two headings:

Policy and administrative processes of the state, covering the following themes:

formulation of policy and the management of public resources; management of theeconomy; external relations and defence policy; administration of justice and themaintenance of security; formulation and delivery of social policies; cultural policy.

Interaction of the state with its citizens, which covers the social and demographiccondition of the UK, as documented by the state’s dealings with individuals,communities and organisations outside its own formal boundaries; and the impact of thestate on the physical environment.

In the policy we are open about the resource pressures on us, and, in particular, thatwe have to limit the amount we take in each year and that the main reason for thislimitation is lack of resources. For the first time, the policy made the cost of selection andstorage an explicit element in selection decisions.

The policy also made a commitment to a cycle of review. The first review is due in2002/03 and thereafter the policy will be reviewed at least every 10 years. Consultationwith the research community and with other interested parties will be an integral part of this review.

Having set out the criteria for the selection of records for permanent preservation inthe PRO, we then developed a disposition policy, which sets out the circumstances inwhich public records may be transferred to other archives outside the PRO. These maybe regional or local archives, or they may be national organisations such as for examplethe national museums or libraries. This policy was also the subject of extensive andwide-ranging consultation with users, fellow archive professionals and governmentdepartments.

The acquisition and disposition policies are implemented through operationalselection policies (OSPs). These are more detailed policies, applying the criteria set outin the acquisition and disposition policies to particular departments or categories of records.

6 PRO, Acquisition Policy Statement




The PRO and relevant government departments develop OSPs jointly, with the PROpreparing the initial draft. Consultation with users forms an essential part of the process,largely with academics, researchers and special interest groups relevant to the subject of the OSP. So far ten OSPs have been produced, covering such subjects as Fiscal Policy,

the Security Service, Nuclear Weapons Policy, the Preservation and Use of theCountryside for Recreational Purposes. This is an ongoing programme with six more tobe produced by the end of March 2002. These will include UK diplomatic relations, thebudget process and the central direction of policies and programmes. Just as important isthe development of a framework of guidance for records managers working withingovernment departments through the provision of standards and toolkits, including oneon sampling techniques for the selection of case records. The relationship between thePRO’s records management staff and those in each department has to be effective andclose if this new approach to selection and appraisal is to work properly. This is part of the ‘partnership’ element I mentioned earlier.

Next steps

The acquisition and disposition policies are high-level statements, while OSPs are

detailed statements of selection criteria. We needed to develop a sense for how the OSPswould work in practice and how they could be of most use in the selection process. Nowthat we have real, practical experience in this area, we will define an overall framework for the Operational Selection Policy Programme. This will set out how each OperationalSelection Policy relates to all the others as well as how they relate to the selectionthemes. The work will be completed this year.

We have also now started to develop in detail our new appraisal methodologies toidentify the records we wish to keep. The Grigg method, based on a file–by-fileapproach, is no longer practicable, especially for electronic records. The new, moreflexible approach we are looking for is largely untested and unknown territory. There is arisk in abandoning such a well-established system as Grigg-based method but we haveno choice. We will, of course, consult with our government colleagues and clients, andalso with other users, as this work develops.

Over time this new work will need to be tested and refined. We will keep the wholesystem under regular review, while it grows and extends. Underpinning this new

approach are training and communications - not only for public records bodies, but alsowith our user communities and our professional colleagues, so that we can shareapproaches and best practice and promote debate with users and fellow professionals.

For further information on the implementation of the PRO’s new approach to theselection of records for permanent preservation, please see our website: http://wwwpro.gov.uk/recordsmanagement/acquisition/default.htm.

Duncan Simpson and Susan Graham




Bibliography

Other international approaches to appraisal include:

Canada: Terry Cook, “Towards a new theory of archival appraisal” in Barbara Craig (ed)The Canadian Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh Taylor pp 38-70Ottawa, 1992

Holland: R C Hol & A G de Vries, “PIVOT Down Under: A Report”, Archives andManuscripts vol 26 May 1998 pp 78-102

Australia : http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/disposal/appraisal/intro.html

Evaluarea si Selectionarea, o noua abordare

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