The Documentation Strategy and Archival Appraisal Principles: A Different Perspective

North American archivists have recently witnessed an upsurge in writings about appraisal theory. This essay takes a different approach to this topic. It attempts to describe a set of basic principles, derived from the archival literature, that relate to the practice of appraising records. These principles bridge the gap between theory and practice, but they represent-in the author's view-something more than just methodology. The essay also seeks to relate the decade-old discussion to the archival documentation strategy, showing how the strategy both emanates from such principles and is consistent with them.