Arhivski vjesnik, Vol. 56 No. 1, 2013.
Ostalo
“We Are What We Keep, We Keep What We Are”: Archival Appraisal Past, Present And Future
Terry Cook
; Clio Consulting
Sažetak
Archival appraisal has its own history and is highly contested ground within the profession, and increasingly with our external communities. This article analyses the evolution of appraisal thinking through three well-established phases: the curatorial guardian assigning appraisal responsibility to the creator or administrator of records; the historian-archivist making appraisal decisions indirectly through the filter of trends in academic History; and the archivist as expert directly assessing contexts of function and activity to discern appraisal value. A fourth phase is now beckoning: participatory appraisal with various communities of citizens so that silences long haunting our archives may at last be heard. The article is a reworking of the opening keynote address the author presented to the Annual Conference of The Society of Archivists (UK), in Manchester, England, on 1 September 2010. He emphasizes the importance of appraisal as archivist’s first responsibility from which all else flows, as well as the need to remain extraordinarily sensitive to the political, social, philosophical, and ethical nature of archival appraisal, for that process defines the creators, the functions, and the activities to be reflected in archives, by defining and selecting in turn which related documents are to be preserved permanently, and thus are to enjoy all subsequently flowing archival activities (processing, description, preservation, reference, online posting, exhibition, and so on); and, with finality, appraisal also starkly determines which documents are destroyed, excluded from archives, their creators forgotten, effaced from memory. Among other things regarding appraisal, Cook tackles questions like how well do we mirror our societies, how in the past have we been defined by what we keep, or by what we have not kept, what do we try to keep now as archives, in following accepted appraisal concepts and strategies? He also challenges appraisal rules set by Sir Hillary Jenkinson and gives an overview of how appraisal evolved since Schellenberg’s times. Special reference is made to the various aspects of macroappraisal, which consciously attempts to document both the functionality of government and its individual programs that are themselves the creation of citizens in a democracy and to document the level of interaction of citizens with the functioning of the state: how they accept, reject, protest, appeal, change, modify, and otherwise influence those functional state programs, and in turn how these programs have an impact on society. Cook points out that in the concept of “total” archives, appraisal must include records of not only the wealthy, well known and influential in a society, but also the poor, deprived, marginalized, etc. i.e. it has to encompass all voices and allow them to be heard. As for the future, Cook predicts that appraisal will include citizen directly, as participant and partner, and perhaps as keeper. In that respect, he offers a vision of preserving these voices and sounds by “democratizing archives” and “archiving democracy”, in through participatory partnerships, with our fellow citizens, determining collaboratively and collectively with them of what society’s enduring archival memories should consist.
Ključne riječi
appraisal; archives; selection; acquisition; creator; value; macroappraisal; citizens
Hrčak ID:
117257
URI
Datum izdavanja:
11.12.2013.
Posjeta: 2.874 *