Appraisal Methodology
Background

In March 1997, the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) formed an Appraisal Working Group to evaluate SIA collecting policies regarding official records of the Smithsonian and to create appraisal criteria. SIA formed this group at the recommendation of an external review committee and in response to severe storage space constraints. The group submitted a report of its findings and draft Appraisal Criteria to the SIA Director for her review in August 1997.

The draft Appraisal Criteria is a theoretical document—a hypothetical outline of the records SIA should collect and from where they should be collected. Due to the constant flux of the Smithsonian's organizational structure, the Appraisal Working Group adopted a functional analysis approach—focusing first on what the Smithsonian was supposed to do and how it went about doing it, and then identifying which records document those functions. Starting from this premise, and using the staff's knowledge of Smithsonian offices and bureaus and records created by those offices, the Appraisal Working Group identified four broad functions of the Smithsonian Institution: 1) assuring institutional continuity; 2) acquiring and maintaining the national collections; 3) conducting and supporting original research; and 4) diffusing knowledge. Each function is further divided into subfunctions (see Appendix A). Within each subfunction, the Criteria includes detailed lists of record types expected to best document those functions, and the offices in which one might find those record types (see Appendix B). The Group did not devise a plan for implementing the Criteria, but did generate a priority list of offices to survey as a means of testing the Criteria. The survey results were to help determine whether the offices and record types within the Criteria lists were accurately identified.

Soon after the Appraisal Working Group disbanded, SIA reorganized into four functional teams. The Records Management (RM) Team, assigned with surveying and appraising records, writing disposition schedules, acquiring records, and managing temporary and permanent records holdings, inherited responsibility to implement a plan to use the draft Criteria. Among the members of the RM Team, there were no veteran senior staff, and two of the members had worked at the Archives for less than one year, combined. Given staff limitations, the relative inexperience of the Team, and other project commitments, the RM Team was unable to test the Appraisal Criteria as originally planned. When the Team did use the Criteria, its members found that the Criteria was an impractical and inadequate tool for making appraisal decisions efficiently and consistently. Team members had no guidance to apply the theory to practice. In addition, it was difficult to find justifications for past appraisal decisions. Documentation of appraisal decisions existed in extant disposition schedules and memoranda within the General and Agreements File, but no rationale was given for these prior decisions. Without experience or a long institutional memory, the Team relied instead on more intensive conversations with records creators, advice from senior Archives staff, and comprehensive records surveys of selected bureaus to conduct records appraisals.

The first step in the RM Team's appraisal learning process was to document and justify the appraisal decisions made by the Team. RM records disposition schedules included appraisal justifications for all retention decisions, and the Team also established an appraisal log to document all independent appraisal decisions made during bureau and office visits.

In October 1998, the RM Team began a project to revise the draft Appraisal Criteria to make it a more useful document. The Team held monthly appraisal retreats, which served as a forum for the Team to discuss specific record types and independent appraisal visits to bureaus and offices, to identify offices needing schedules, to reevaluate past accessions and the SIA appraisal backlog, and to compile and create resources and procedures the Team could use to be more consistent and efficient, and to document decisions.

During the retreats, the Team reviewed the hypothetical lists of record types and records creators in the Appraisal Criteria, and added to or deleted from the lists record types and records creators based on actual experiences (survey and schedule work, and decisions documented in the appraisal log), and on the basic premise of the Appraisal Criteria itself (identifying the functions of an office and what records best document those functions). The Team also added to the Criteria information regarding the types of records the Archives does NOT want to acquire.

The final step in revising the Appraisal Criteria was to describe the processes necessary to bring theory and practice together.

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