Appraisal | The National Archives blog

Posts tagged 'Appraisal'

Wed May

2013

The Empire: A case study in records appraisal

Posted by Rob Johnson in Managing information

Question: How does the Government know which records to send to The National Archives?

Answer: Through a process of ‘appraising’ records to identify those likely to be worthy of keeping forever. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But when you consider how much digital information is created everyday across every Government department and agency, how do you do this without reading every single file?

To explain this process, I’ve prepared a short case study, one which is slightly more abstract than the normal ‘Department X’ or ‘Agency Y’ scenarios. Based on the feedback we got on the Information Management in the Movies piece last year, and in honour of 4th May later this week, I’m officially revisiting Star Wars.

Nuffield Astronomy Laboratories at Jodrell Bank

Looking for a galaxy far, far away? (catalogue ref: INF 14/250)

The fictional ‘Galactic Empire’ employs thousands of staff, has extremely wide ranging functions and must therefore generate huge volumes of records. How would it decide what to send to The National Archives? Let’s find out:

Mon Feb

2013

Finding the gold amongst the stones

Posted by Jo Moorshead in Managing information

Dear Information Agony Aunt

I need to start appraising my organisation’s digital information. There are several hundred thousand records and I don’t have the time to go through each individual record as we do with our paper records. What can I do?

Overwhelmed

Continue reading »

Wed Oct

2012

To keep or not to keep? Records appraisal and moving house

Posted by Rob Johnson in Managing information

So, last weekend I moved house. The word ‘stressful’ just doesn’t do it enough justice…

Anyone who has moved house will understand that when it comes to the logistics, size really does matter. Because my new home is smaller than the last, I had to ‘appraise’ my belongings to determine their value, and dispose of items accordingly.

As I sat there on a dusty floor with a bin bag, I realised that my home and working lives had suddenly collided…

The process of knowing what you have and how valuable it may be is fundamental to Information Management. Records ‘appraisal’ is a core part keeping an organisation running efficiently – without knowing what value your records hold, useless stuff will clog up your cupboards and servers, whilst useful information remains inaccessible and unexploited.

How did I know what to keep ahead of the big move? Today’s blog is about the types of value Government records and my ‘stuff’ at home may have in common: