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

analysis are used in tandem to identify records useful to
administrators and researchers, and therefore, worthy of
preservation. The North American focus on use reflects a lack of
awareness of the importance of preserving the probative and
archival nature of archives in the context of their provenance.
The recent proliferation of electronic records has been a
catalyst for re-thinking the centrality of structural analysis to
the selection process.
There have been several notable attempts by North American
archivists to provide a coherent theoretical approach to the
entire appraisal process. The most extensive framework has been
developed by Philip Brooks and Theodore Schellenberg. Their
concepts of evidential and informational value combine structural
and content analysis, and have been widely accepted by many
archivists. The result has been well developed records
management strategies to cope with the modern reality of
information overload. However, the framework they have provided
avoids issues of objectivity and value, as well as the underlying
intellectual problem of how to preserve the probative and
archival nature of records throughout the selection process. In
light of the European discussion, their failure to adequately
eXplore these issues renders their approach inadequate.
In 1940, Philip Brooks, a senior archivist at the National
Archives, published an article that argued for a coherent
approach to appraisal throughout the entire life history of
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