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

is, the political issue of extent and mix of public and private
records within a repository is better dealt with by developing a
acceptable acquisition policies, rather than clouding the already
murky picture of appraisal.
In 1964, Johannes Papritz echoed earlier attempts to develop
objective standards. Scientific principles should guide
appraisal and culling, he argued, and knowledge of the structural
form of the record body would serve as a precondition to such
scientific appraisal.34 He went on to insist that appraisal must
"never be made dependent upon the availability of existing space
in the repository."35 His words imply that, in his assessment,
appraisal is a theoretical problem that requires an intellectual
resolution. Practical problems are extraneous to the central
issue of deciding how archivists choose for society which records
should be saved and which can be destroyed.
Papritz, thus, attempts to revitalize the principle of
provenance for the appraisal process. The principle is derived
from the understanding that the records of an organization are
arranged together because the record body, by creation and
meaning, constitutes a logical unit in which each document exists
in relationship to the entire body of records. Papritz argues
that an understanding of the structural form of a fonds, which
34 Johannes Papritz, "Zum Massenproblem der Archive," Der
Archivar 17 (1964): col. 220; quoted in Booms, "Society," 94.
35 Ibid; quoted in Booms, "Society," 77, footnote 24. As
noted in the footnote, Booms considers Papritz's statement to be
"ideologically rigid."
46