APPRAISAL AND DISPOSAL OF ELECTRONIC RECORDS AND

THE PRINCIPLE OF PROVENANCE: APPRAISAL FOR ACCESS

- NOT FOR OBLIVION

Angelika Menne-Haritz
Director of the Archive School Marburg, Germany

I would first like to thank the organizers of the meeting for asking me to speak about appraisal
and provenance in electronic environments, since when I tried to find out, what the meaning
of provenance for electronic records might be, I was increasingly under the impression of
holding a key in my hand to several of the problems with electronic records.1 That is why I
added a subtitle to the paper indicating what my main theses shall be. I would like to show,
that provenance based appraisal of electronic records is the secret serious wish of archivists to
keep the complete whole, knowing very well that it is not possible physically. 2 But the reasons
for it are not space or money. The paradox is that only the destruction of parts of the records
opens access to the complete information potential of the original situation.3 The physical
whole of the records, be it on paper or in electronic form causes it to be inaccessible for
research. The forest cannot be seen because there are so many trees. Appraisal builds the paths
through the mass and constructs goals for investigations. So it makes accessible the original
information potential through the destruction of parts of its physical appearance.

The Importance of Ephemeral Notes

The Principle of Provenance is the distinct characterizing element that allows a differentiation
between records and information. This distinction is especially interesting considering the new
electronic records and electronic data collections. There is no physical form left that could
indicate the sort of writing. Is it just text, that serves as a message to a specific person? Should
it be kept secret or is it supposed to be published? And more than that lack of capacity to
control further use or alteration, other forms of writing are suddenly realized to be vanishing.
Such forms did not necessarily have the character of independent texts, but of annotations or
marks, even using other symbols than the letters of the alphabet such as crosses, lines, and
hooks. These are hard to be reproduced in electronic form. But when losing this possibility to
note something and attach it inseparably to another report, a certain loss is felt.

The paper world cannot be transferred on a one to one basis into the electronic world, instead
it is dramatically transformed, when analog or digital forms of writing can be chosen. Paper
based communication offers many more possibilities than just writing down texts. Electronic
writing cannot offer the same forms of writing, but it offers other and different functionalities,
which now allow new ways of communication. These experiences indicate that new
differentiations of working, communication methods, and functionalities are occurring. New
tools and instruments are possible and just need to be shaped for specific demands.

Considering the differences between the two forms of writing separated by the functionalities
of electronic media, there is an obvious sensation of losing something which is very useful for

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the moment, but may be considered ephemeral afterwards. Everything recorded or sent to
someone in electronic form has to have the form of text (or graphics) constructed by using
predefined letters or signs. And it cannot be attached to another message, if it is not integrated
into its text or combined by some software tools, that may not be available for someone else
who has to read it. So electronic writing can offer the function of written text. But is has great
difficulties in capturing the intention of doing something with this text, be it to change its
wording, be it another operation with the text or even simply the intention of some action
without any text. On paper notes can be laid down, that organize coming activities. They are
not meant for eternity. They are ephemera, just like a shopping list, that can be thrown away
after all the items are bought. These notes put down on a page or just a piece of paper, cannot
be reproduced in electronic form. And that is the situation when we realize, that ephemera is
important.4 Here is the link between electronic records and the principle of provenance.
Because the principle of provenance has meaning when the use of records is considered as
part of activities, not just of producing texts or information.5

The Principle of Provenance

The Principle of Provenance first developed as a research principle in the 19th century, when
historians started to ask: Why? Not only: What? They discovered developments and structures
and looked for the facts in their contexts of premises and consequences. It was used as a
structuring principle for the archival organization, when the whole archival system and its
institutions were arranged according to the original order and each archival institution was
defined by its area of responsibility, from where it got the papers that are no longer used for
business purposes. So the municipal archives care for municipal archives, the national
archives for the records of the central government and the records of a firm are kept by its
own archives. With this structure researchers know where records that emerged from certain
activities can be found.

It was adopted into archival science as the principle of original order at a time, when the
original order was the best means to show the contexts and the reasons behind development. It
was formulated in this sense by the famous Dutch manual and soon after enlarged, showing
that the reestablishment of the original order is also a means to an end, which is to show the
interrelating inherent structures of the archival material. Adolf Brenneke explained, that the
original order may perhaps not be the best medium to demonstrate, how a fonds grew during
the course of business. But that is what archives are expected to offer: Insight into the
processes and structures, which bring records into being.

The meaning of the principle of provenance was enlarged by the increasingly complex
structures of the paper work in modern administrations. Its usefulness was questioned in the
70s and alternatives for description and arrangement were discussed using indexes or
thesauruses. But it proved to be extremely valuable in building up the arrangement scheme of
fonds according to the activities carried out with their help. Meanwhile it is accepted as a
fundamental principle, not only for the arrangement, but for other archival processing as a
whole. It shows new capacities as an analytical tool, that helps in the understanding of the
structures of papers, documents and their composition to record groups.

With the more complex structures of organizations, their differentiated use of records and the
various forms of records and files that emerge out of their communication, archival processing

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techniques have put more emphasis on analysing. There is a growing need to understand, what
produced the records, before they can be described and arranged. The analytical approach, the
need to understand, is different from the need to act. It places the observer outside the scenario
he is looking at and frees him from the need to achieve the internal goals. The observer steps
aside and can see the goals as chosen and distinct from other possible goals. This
differentiation gives him the possibility of seeing reasons that are not accessible to the parties
involved in the actions. This position as an observer creates a neutral view on records
management, and it delivers a lot of knowledge useful for the formulation of advice for better
performance and improvement. The analytical approach, guided by the principle of
provenance allows the giving of advice simply because it separates the archivists from the
records managers and creates a possibility to better understand what is happening. From this
position archivists can see the administration as a whole. They can analyse the work of the
records management and its effects on decision making as well as the structures and contents
of the decisions themselves. And they can offer this insight to the public using the specific
tools of their profession.

It is the principle of provenance that marks the position of the neutral observer towards
administrations together with its records management. Such an observer can well distinguish
between the purposes of records creations and those guiding their transfer to the archives and
their presentation for public insight. This differentiation was reflected in the definition, that
Adolf Brenneke gave of the principle of provenance. For him it was in an abstract way the
“community of purpose on the basis of common origin.”6 The decision making process
coherently reflects the reasons for the creation of records and it is reflected in their structure
and their meaning. This definition formulated the intentions of the first definitions, which still
apply to the physical or organizational forms. It goes beyond this and explains their underlying
sense. This abstract formulation is the form by which the principle of provenance can guide
appraisal decisions and explains how to handle electronic records, which do not have any
physical shape. The core of it is the analysis and understanding of the decision making
processes7 and their need for communication tools, for writing and recording.

Provenance and Appraisal

Decision making processes use time to come to an end by constructing interrelated sequences
of activities. Starting with the explication of the problem to solve they can build up plans, that
structure the problem and prepare the integration of parts of the final solution into a specific
development, which brings together special knowledge and merges it into something which is
more than just the sum of their total parts. If such a process takes place in a conference setting
where people see and hear each other, the difference between intention and realization of
further steps, of planning and realizing is not merely visible. If it brings together efforts of
people in different places, working on the problem at different times, it needs recording. In
this constellation written organizational notes are useful to highlight certain intentions for
further action as well as the fact that they were already done. Writing builds bridges over time
and localities, over the gap between the utterance of activity needs and the indicators, showing
that they have been settled. It constructs the collaborative structures as they are needed at that
moment. For this effect the process needs a stabilized character on both sides, the intention as
well as the events, the aims as well as their results. The ephemeral note, as in the shopping
list, needs to be stable and well preserved until the action is done and the provisions are
brought together. It changes its functions while it is physically the same writing on the same

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piece of paper. As long as the writing is needed for reference allowing an action to happen, it
is of utmost importance. But when there is no need of it as premise for further action or for
further reference, it is completely useless. The actions choose their premises and not the other
way round. There is no way to know the future and also no way to decide on it today. But
awareness or expectation can be created today by assigning responsibilities that open the eyes
to possible triggers of own actions. But what was of highest importance becomes ephemeral
with the action, it supported.

Provenance means the purposeful process leading to the solution of a specific problem. It
delivers the appraisal criteria. They apply first during the course of affairs to identify
necessary recordings for its planning and control. After it is finished those criteria derived
from the control of the actual work are used to decide which files are necessary for third
parties to understand the work processes. This is the practical basis for the development of
rational criteria for appraisal, that Schellenberg suggested in his bulletin on the appraisal of
modern public records.8 With the organizational functions of the notes vanishing they offer
the new function of showing how they were used to make the intentions visible together with
the effects they caused on the consequent actions. He distinguished between primary and
secondary values of records, that don’t change their physical shape and just because they
remain the same, can offer the understanding of how they emerged from collaborative
activities. The primary values are the organizational functions and the secondary values are
the insights they allow into their original life. Records for archiving can be chosen by the
evidence they give about their own creation, which in turn explains why and how information
was needed during the decision making processes. The unity of the intentional and the
completing remarks represents the activity, organized with their help and explains the sense of
the observation of environment, which was undertaken during the decision making process
and the relevance of the recorded information for the process. It tells the “Why”, explaining
the meaning of the “What” for later readers of the records.

With the principle of provenance as a basis for appraisal such criteria, that have the
characteristics of being neutral towards the meaning of the records and are technically
operational can be found. They can guide the construction of strategies. These criteria are the
basis on which different strategies or methods can be conceived, starting with the question,
which records are useful for secondary purposes.

- The piece by piece approach

It regards each file and examines it separately. Analysis and decision are integrated. This form
of work is difficult to plan. The advantage is a thorough knowledge of the records. The
disadvantage is that the overview of the whole may be disturbed. In electronic environments a
difficult question is to identify the single record as a unit. What about attachments or
corrected versions? The principle of provenance may help in transferring the unit of a decision
making process to the unit of the records it produced and thus defining what belongs to a file.
The term “action-file” may describe this unit, which is opened when the process starts and
closed when it is finished.

- Disposal schedules
The records, that are no longer needed by the administration, are listed and the appraisal uses
such registers to find and mark the decisions. Each single decision may well be based on
catalogues or on examination of examples. Former lists can be consulted. The advantages
result from the possibility to react very flexibly to the demands of the administration, but the

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overview of the whole complex of archived records of an agency is needed very quickly to
come to final decisions. This approach also delivers as a useful supplement a register of
disposed records and builds up a good instrument for the virtual reconstruction of the
destroyed parts. Here the leading question is, which records are not needed any more and the
identification of these units is left to the administration. It may be a good instrument for the
administration to decide itself on the ending of the work process but it also needs a lot of work
to list all the records, most of which will be destroyed afterwards.

- Disposal catalogues
They are made up in collaboration with an agency and the responsible archives for whole
groups of records with similar structures and provenance. They contain comprehensive
permission for destruction. Prerequisites are stable organizational and records management
structures. Technical administrations usually work under such conditions. The establishment
of catalogues is preceded by a thorough analyses and further developments must be examined
on a regular basis. It is a sort of package appraisal with decisions based on the conformity of
records structures for certain areas of administrative work. The advantage of this system is a
well structured, predictable workload and the continuity of decisions over rather long periods
of time. The disadvantages are little flexibility and sometimes late reactions to changes inside
the administrations together with the loss of information on the actually existing records or
files, that are destroyed without further notice to the archives. The leading question here is,
where can stable structures be found and how often they have to be reexamined.

These different strategies allow differentiated concepts of workload, but they are all archival
strategies and not integrated into the administrative work and the records creation. They start
when the records exist as paper or electronic artifacts and appraise them when they have
fulfilled their original mission. Records remain the target of appraisal because they are the
traces and left overs, that researcher need for their investigations. Abstract concepts of records
creators or functions cannot be used for research.

The Appraisal of Electronic Records

This concept of appraisal, based on an understanding of the principle of provenance as an

analytical tool for business processes and their communication instruments, give records a
central importance. They are what is appraised, because they are the means with which the
finished processes can be made apparent and transparent, because they bring together
intentions and results as representatives of actions.9 Electronic records can be appraised the
same way if they have the same functions, even if their appearance and forms are quite
different.

What makes a record a record? To resume the characteristics of a record: It consists of

emerged and stabilized tools for the construction of processes. It came into being because it
served as an instrument for the organization of collaborative decision making. By organizing
common activities it created a composition of subdecisions using self found information.
Records emerge purposefully from the processes. They are not the product of the activities,
but their self created tools. In practical work the representation of the purposes of actions may
be reduced to almost complete invisibility, because people took their papers to meetings or
used the telephone. But even then, the common operations created the links that tie together
the writings and give them their structure. The copies of outgoing answers cannot be

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understood without knowing the incoming letters. The links are especially hidden in the case
of electronic records, but they distinguish them nevertheless from machine-readable data. This
rather abstract concept of a record is independent of its shape and physical form. It requires
certain prerequisites also valuable in electronic environments.

Electronic recordings are neither oral nor written.10 They do not have a history while they are
changing all the time. They are independent from physical formats and can be accessed from
any place at any time. They do not have intrinsic value conveyed by certain physical
phenomena.11 Electronic recordings are pure messages and are hardly combined with or used
as organizational notes. They are fluid, and that is the reason why they are electronic. As
records are processes, electronic records cannot be digitized documents. Their origins are
cooperative decision making processes using electronic tools for their internal
communication. The electronic forms make the links disappear. Can they be replaced by
electronic forms like metadata? But were the hooks and crosses in the paper world really
metadata?

Electronic records have certain characteristics that distinguish them from machine-readable
data. While data are used for single decisions, records organize the communication inside the
process. Records are born from organizational needs while data keeps and conveys
information. Records construct processes that are supported by them and that produce data as
their results. Records are dynamic while data are static and lack process building capacities. If
records emerge from the organization of common processes, what then can electronic decision
making processes be? Are there any electronic means or tools that may help to organize
common operations in a comparably simple way as underlining or annotations can do?

Processes need internal reference on own past events to construct further steps. Therefore the
events must be available even after they are completed, not only their results alone. If the
shopping list has served to bring home all the necessary provisions and its physical shape
perhaps shows that it did serve its purposes, it can give to other members of the family the
evidence, that someone did the shopping and other activities, perhaps cooking, may be started.
So the activity of shopping as a whole serves as reference for the continuation of the
preparation process of the meals. In the same way organizational notes for later actions,
marked as fulfilled, can serve as a reference point for starting further activities on the way to
the final decision. But for that function they must be stabilized. They need the capacity to
create a history of their own without further versions of recordings replacing their
predecessors and with the capacity of automatically creating the links between intentions and
their realizations.

Office systems actually available on the market do not offer these functionalities. Workflow-
Management Systems (WFMS) normally separate the construction of the process from its
application and thus hindering the development of its own history. Group Ware Systems
(CSCW) on the other hand offer a lot of tools for communication but do not allow the
construction of dependencies between communicative operations. They replace the oral
messages exchanged during physical meetings, but not the links created by organizational
activities. Only if a preceding operation allows the emergence and use of stable tools for their
own organization, later operations can refer to their own past - combined they can create their
own history and that makes them interesting for investigation.

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The construction of processes needs stability of traces of operations - and not so much of their
results - as a prerequisite for an own history as reference for planning an own future. It does
not mean either authenticity nor reliability of the message a document conveys. Stability
means that the operations that change the text or the appearance of a writing create
comprehensible visible evidence indicating what and how something happened to the
recordings. The activity that created the evidence then offers connectivity for further
operations. That very often happens without provision or thinking about it with analog forms
during each communication. But it is not available with today’s electronic forms. Until now it
was not possible to choose between stable and fluid forms of writings. Today with the
different forms available it is necessary to make the choice. This choice needs new
formulations of criteria.

Business processes in electronic environments need for their own construction stable
references to former operations. The best way to create interrelated dependencies is to design
structures of labor division and responsibilities, that need to work together in producing the
solutions. Intelligent divisions of responsibility create internal plausibility that can even
replace authentication efforts. An important step would be to design instruments for the
internal construction of processes, that help to make up plans for a specific decision making
process and to keep track of its achievements. Those instruments should be stable during the
process and like traditional organizational notes they become ephemeral after the process has
produced the decision. Then as with the paper records the archival appraisal identifies those
processes, which are needed for insight into the work that produced them.

Guidelines for the appraisal of electronic records should formulate as a first step an analysis of
the structure of the materials to be appraised by understanding the business process from
which they emerged and the methods of records management, that shaped their actual
appearance. This operation aims at the identification of records in contrast to collections of
data, that means of recordings produced for other purposes than information. The next step
should be to choose the working methods and that means the degree of generalizing appraisal
decisions. It depends on the structure of the decision making process and of the records.
Finally the decisions on appraisal strategies and the decision to effectively make the choice
should be documented and made available to the public in the finding aids.12 Together with
such documentation the part that is finally kept helps to reconstruct the original situation and
its informational potential for users.

The principle of provenance is especially useful for the appraisal of electronic records. As
with paper records it assures the access to the archives. In this sense appraisal is not the
destruction of information. Instead it creates accessibility. Records, that are not accessible
cannot be used and don’t convey information in spite of all writings in them. Appraisal
concentrates and structures the records so that they are open for investigations. For this the
anticipation of future informational needs is not necessary, because it is not done for the
future, but for the present. No historical research would ever accept sources prepared and
selected for it in the past. It is much more interesting to ask why just those recollections are
left over, why they were selected, than to accept this selection. The choice of sources is an
important first step in all historical research and the researcher is responsible for it himself.
Appraisal that creates a representative model of the processes and allows through the
supplementary information about its own decisions to reconstruct where it started from, can
give those answers. Archives thus can offer activities and operations, linked together to
decision making processes for memory, whenever it is needed. And they can also offer
oblivion without destruction for those times, when new initiatives and new experiences are

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necessary. Both, memory and oblivion are needed at different times. With archives opening
collaborative experiences for reference, when ever they are needed, societies can choose
between both.#

1
For an overview on the recent literature on appraisal and the problems of electronic records see Peter
Horsm an, The Need to Memorize - The Right to Forget. Appraisal of Electronic Records (paper presented at
the European Archival Conference, Barcelona, 1997, manuscript).

2
Marga ret Hedstro m, ’New Ap praisal Te chniques: T he Effect of T heory on P ractice’, Provenance 7 (Fall
1989), pp. 1-27.

3
Angelika M enne-Ha ritz, ’Appraisa l or Docu mentation: C an we Ap praise Arc hives by Sele cting Conte nt?’,
The Ame rican Archivist 57:3 (Su mmer 19 94), pp. 5 28-542 .

4
Peter H orsman, The Need to Memorize - The Right to Forget, p. 14.

5
The first realizations of this loss has lead to the distinction between o fficial documents and perso nal notes,
which was not necessarily like this in the paper world. But then it is realized that the personal notes are not
just appointments for lunch but also for meetings with attached agendas and preparative notes. They must be
part of the records, because they show how things developed.

6
Adolf Brenneke, Archivkunde (Leipzig, 1953), p. 87.

7
“Decision making pro cesses” is here used in the sens e of Herb ert A. Simo n, Admin istrative Beh avior. A
Study on Decision Making Processes in Administrative Organizations (New Y ork, 5 th ed., 1958).

8
Theod ore R. Sc hellenberg , The Appraisal of Modern Public Records, Bulletins of the National Archives,
number 8 (Washington, D.C., October 195 6).

9
This is the problem of the macro appraisal approach, that wants to develop more effective strategies, but
loses the confrontation of intentions and their results. Cf. Terry Cook, ’Mind over Matter: Towards a new
Theor y of Archival A ppraisal’, The Archival Imagination. Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor. Ed. Barbara
L. Craig (O ttawa, 199 2), pp. 38 -70, esp. p. 4 7.

10
For the func tional differenc es between oral and writte n commu nication and the possibility to u se time cf.
Niklas Luh mann, Social Systems (Stanford, 1 995), p. 8 7 and also , Walter J . Ong, Orality and Literacy. The
Technologizing of the World (Londo n, 1982 ) and Eric A . Haveloc k, The Literate Revolution in Greece and
Its Cultural Conseq uences (Princeto n,1982 ).

11
Angelika Menne-Haritz and Nils Brübach, The Intrinsic Value of Archive and Library Material,
http://www.uni-marburg.de/archivschule/intrinsengl.html.

12
See also M argaret H edstrom, ’New Appraisal Techniques: The Effect of Theory on Practice’, p. 12. She
argued for guidelines or professional standards and for more formal written information about the appraisal
process to gether with a m ore prec ise vocabu lary, explaining w hy records were app raised as pe rmanent.

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