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

necessary to maintain a corporate Memory must include records
that establish authority for action, as well as a record of past
and present action. His golden rule requires the identification
of vital records:
It appears then that the golden rule for the
Administrator, so far as concerns his papers,
must be to have them always in such a state
of completeness and order that, supposing
himself and his staff to be by some accident
obliterated, a successor totally ignorant of
the work of the office would be able to take
it up and carry it on with the least possible
inconvenience and delay simply on the
strength of a study of the Office Files.42
Jenkinson's important contribution to the problem of
appraisal is his "golden rule" of the identification of vital
records by which the permanent value of documents can be
determined. He entrusts the function of appraisal to the record
creator in order to ensure that the essential qualities of
archives will be preserved, not only for the judicial system, but
also for posterity.
A later assessment of Jenkinson's concepts of impartiality
and authenticity adds that "There is, indeed, something of the
supreme confidence of the last century about both these
concepts."43 With our increased awareness of the possibility of
tampering with the genesis of records by records creators
themselves, and the destruction of knowledge inherent in the
appraisal process, our understanding of archival truth must be
42 Ibid, 153.
43 Felix Hull, "The Archivist and Society," Journal of the
Society of Archivists 6 (April 1979): 125.
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