Appraisal of digital records: continuities and ruptures

Abstract

In the last decades, changes in the dynamics of organizations and in the way documents are produced have generated new challenges for the archives area. The massive production of documents in digital format led the area to rethink some of its practices and theories, with repercussions on all archival functions. In this context, the need to evaluate to decide what deserves to be permanently preserved and what can be eliminated in the short, medium or long term becomes even greater. The difficulties and specificities associated with the management and preservation of digital records in the context of a highly connected society, with increasingly horizontal and less hierarchical organizations have led to new reflections and theoretical and methodological developments in the field of archival appraisal. In this article, some of these proposals in the context of contemporary archiving are presented and discussed, highlighting the continuities and changes in the archival appraisal contemplated by these proposals. It is concluded that, despite presenting themselves as ruptures, the theoretical constructions of contemporary archival science are strongly influenced by classical archival thinking and do not represent a significant rupture, at least in the scope of archival appraisal. Furthermore, such proposals do not provide significantly different answers regarding the evaluation of digital documents compared to the evaluation model produced in the mid-20th century by archivist Theodore Schellenberg.

Key Words: archival appraisal; records management; digital records; archival science.