Back to the Strategic Roots: Appraisal Reform at the National Archives of Canada

Abstract

Towards the end of the 1980s, the National Archives of Canada recognized that the methods it employed and the criteria it used to pass judgment upon the archival value of government records lacked strategic focus and intellectual consensus. In essence, the NA was largely stockpiling government records in ad hoc anticipation of their potential for historical research or other secondary uses, and deferring real decision making about their value and benefit to future generations of Canadians. This essay describes some of the thinking, processes, and elements behind an ongoing corporate appraisal renewal that has changed-in the most fundamental and profound manner—the way the NA assesses the archival value and, coincidentally, the operational-business disposition of government records as a public information resource. Having originally introduced an archival strategy of macro-appraisal, the NA has subsequently been obliged to rethink and recalibrate some of its first assumptions towards the taking of more refined and difficult records preservation decisions.