A STUDY OF THE THEORY OF APPRAISAL FOR SELECTION By ...

according to an ideological understanding of their "importance".
If certain administrative structures are assumed by archivists to
have primary importance in society, the inevitable result of such
thinking would, in fact, support the interests of tradiitonal
political and military history, as Zimmerman charges. Thus the
tautology of subjectivity is perpetuated.
A second problem with Zimmerman's argument is his focus on
research use. Hans Booms has articulated clearly that selecting
records for preservation on the basis of their projected value to
future researchers is speculative for two reasons. First,
subjects have no prescribed priority, for the value of records
necessarily fluctuates with the perspective of the researchers.
For example, what is valuable to a genealogist may not be
valuable to a lawyer attempting to establish the validity of
native land claims. Second, research trends change. When
Zimmerman was attempting to broaden the focus of the selection
process, he was responding to the research needs of the new
social historians. They were questioning the validity of
political history, which from their new perspective, was
understood to exonerate the political structures of the elite at
the expense of the rest of society. While archivists need to be
sensitive to the needs of changing research trends, they cannot
anticipate them.
Zimmerman's concern for meeting the needs of changing
research trends indicates a widespread responsiveness among
archivists from many traditions to the needs of researchers that
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