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

This definition of administrative value echoes Jenkinson's
"Golden Rule of Archive Making" in the preservation of an
organization's vital records, which document an organizations
mandate, functions, procedures and activities.
The Grigg Report repeatedly equates historical value with a
broad spectrum of research interests including, "historical,
economic, sociological, and other non-administrative needs of the
future (which for convenience we shall refer to as the
'historical' criterion)."49 The 1889 rules for preparing
destruction schedules enunciate the rationale of the historical
criterion by stating that "any documents which can reasonably be
considered as of legal, historical, genealogical or antiquarian
use or interest, or which give any important information not to
be obtained elsewhere" should be permanently preserved.50 By
1950, the preamble to the schedule stated that the departmental
officer responsible for the procedure should examine records
scheduled for destruction, and "withdraw for preservation those
containing matter likely to be of historical or legal importance
or to be useful for social or economic research."51 The Grigg
Report adds that the most practical method of identifying
historical value would be "to select documents in the light of
experience of the use made of earlier documents which have been
49 Ibid, 20, paragraph 31.
50 Ibid, 17, paragraph 24.
51 Ibid, 24-25, paragraph 44.
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