Archive Appraisal Policy

The Appraisal Policy listed here will be for the creation of the Cherokee Language

Teaching Archive at Western Carolina University. Ideally, this archive will be fully digitized,

offering a repository of items that instructors of the language and members of the tribe can

access to teach (and learn) the Cherokee language.

The appraisal team will be comprised of 1-3 teachers. If there is only one educator, that

educator must either be the Cherokee language professor at WCU or a first language speaker and

instructor of the Cherokee language, as decisions on what teaching materials would be included

in the archive will require knowledge of the language, culture, and teaching experience.

This archive will follow The American Philosophical Society’s Protocols for the

Treatment of Indigenous Materials in the handling of all items received. In some cases, historical

records and documents may be used for teaching purposes. The documents that appear in this

archive are copies of the main documents. The original documents are housed in other archives

across the country as they would be important to other historical events (I.e., the Dawes Rolls

with the names to show your Cherokee lineage). We do not and will not house the original

documents at this or any other locations, should we expand in the future.

As this is an archive for the teaching of the Cherokee language, it is understood that this

will facilitate all levels of learning. In order to facilitate that learning, the archive, those behind

its creation, and those involved in its continued work will support a clear and open channel with

Tribal Leadership and Institutional Review Board to verify that any culturally sensitive material

has either:

1. been given permission to be used within the archive for teaching,

 2. been given permission to be archived for restricted access by tribal members only (this

would be insured with a member only section and proof needed of tribal membership for

access) 

3. Removed from the archive completely per the wishes of Tribal Leaders 

General Guidelines

To provide a clear understanding of the decision-making process when accessing an asset

and to provide consistent appraisal guidelines that are available to all interested parties, we base

our decisions on a set of unlisted questions used to generate this consistency. These questions are

listed below:1

 Where is the asset from?

 Who was the asset created by?

 Can the asset be digitized? 

 Who holds the copyright to the asset?

 Can the asset be reproduced for teaching purposes?

 What type of media is the asset? 

 Can it be digitized? 

 Is it being loaned to us to digitize?  

 If not loaned, but donated, how will it be stored? 

 
1
 This list of questions is based off of the National Archives and Records Administration's appraisal policy.  
“Appraisal Policy ‐ the National Archives.” Appraisal Policy of the National Archives and Records 
Administration. National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed May 2, 2022. 
https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information‐management/appraisal_policy.pdf. 
 
  Does the asset have any special limitations? (I.e., if it is a game, does it have

game pieces that would be hard to keep track of) 

 Are they files 

 If files are audio, do we have permission from all recorded to use the file? 

 If not, can we get that permission? 

 If files are video, do we have permission from all recorded to use the file? 

 If not, can we get that permission? 

 If we cannot get these permissions, according to public domain laws, we are ok to

use them if there were never any copyrights on them. (We just want to make sure

we have all our bases covered) 

Types of Assets

This archive will accept all assets that can assist an individual in an instructional

environment. This includes, but is not limited to: 

 Movies 

 Music  

 Worksheets 

 Lesson plans 

 Coloring pages 

 Dictionaries 

 Story books 

 Games 
  Board books 

 Etc.  

Value

All items have value. Archival materials have inherent (intrinsic) value, never mind

origin. These artifacts can be rare and possess qualities that make them unable to be digitized for

whatever reason. In the case they are unable to be digitized, those items will be kept in their

original form and either returned to the original donor in that form or stored for viewing by

researchers and visiting instructors.

Definitions

Appraisal - the process of identifying materials offered to an archives that have sufficient value

to be accessioned2

Inherent (intrinsic) value - the usefulness or significance of a record derived from its physical or

associational qualities, inherent in its original form and generally independent of its content, that

are integral to its material nature and would be lost in reproduction3

 
2
 “Definition for Appraisal.” SAA Dictionary: appraisal. Society of American Archivists. Accessed May 1, 
2022. https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/appraisal.html. 
 
3
 “Definition of Intrinsic Value.” SAA Dictionary: intrinsic value. Society of American Archivists. Accessed 
May 1, 2022. https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/intrinsic‐value.html. 
 
Culturally sensitive material - Tangible and intangible property and knowledge which pertains to

the distinct values, beliefs, and ways of living for a culture. It often includes property and

knowledge that is not intended to be shared outside the community of origin or outside of

specific groups within a community.4

Tribal leadership – Tribal leadership consists of the Principal Chief, Vice Principal Chief, and

the Tribal Council.

Institutional Review Board (IRB) - The Institute’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) is a peer-

review body that is responsible for ensuring that research at the Institute safeguards the rights of

human research subjects.5

Future

This archive is in its infancy. As it changes and grows so will its appraisal policy.

Everything above is what has been used up to this point to begin its creation. As the appraisal

team moves forward to secure more items, the policy will change to adapt to the types of items

they will be receiving. Until further notice, this policy will be readdressed every quarter to verify

 
4
 “Definition of Culturally Sensitive .” Protocols for Native American Archival Materials. Accessed May 1, 
2022. https://www2.nau.edu/libnap‐p/protocols.html#Sensitive. 
 
5
 “Institutional Review Board Definition.” The Institute RSS. Accessed May 1, 2022. 
https://institute.org/research‐publications/institutional‐review‐board/. 
 
that it is still appropriate, until such a time as growth evens out or the policy is at its most

definitive needed for the archive.

Implementation Policy

Project: Cherokee Language Teaching Materials Archive

Why it’s important: Cherokee is a dying language. As of 2017 there were less than 150

speakers left in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians that are first language speakers of

Cherokee. Since that time there are more dying each year. This project is an effort to teach the

language to anyone willing to learn to prevent language and culture death. Specifically, this

project is an attempt to encourage the Cherokee people to learn the language while their students

are taught it in the Emersion School (Kituwah Preservation and Education Program).

Who is involved: Western Carolina University’s Cherokee Language Program (Dr. Sara

Snyder-Hopkins), James Hopkins, and Raven Smith

Roles of Each Person:

Dr. Sara Snyder-Hopkins – Program Director, Supplier of Media, Funding, Appraiser

James Hopkins – Programming, IT support

Raven Smith – Appraiser, Scanner, Accessioner, Archive Creator, Content Creator,

Foreseeable Obstacles: There are several issues that I could foresee as possible obstacles

for this archive. Currently, we have support from the tribe, but that could change at any moment
depending on the political atmosphere. Since we are a third party it would only be in a social

sense, but that could be detrimental to the language program and the work within the tribal

community.  

Another possible issue would be disagreement among speakers on words. While, yes,

words are the same everywhere, there are disagreements between elders on which words would

work better in certain situations. Therefore, worksheets and articles that have been archived will

have to be re-archived over and over, depending on who is teaching because of what an elder

feels needs to be changed. To prevent this, a note will be placed on all worksheets that are more

than 5 years old stating that “a revision will be accepted to update this worksheet, however, this

worksheet will still be available to use” and uploading a new version if one is given. If a

worksheet is less than 5 years old, no comments or revisions will be considered as it will be

verified that the instructor that donated the document to us will have verified all the information

beforehand.

The biggest issue to deal with so far is storage. 15 bank boxes (10“x 12"x 15") full of paper

materials is hard to house, much less keep safe from the elements in an area of the university that

is constantly moving offices and changing storage spaces; with dehumidifiers running at all

times. To overcome this issue, we are currently working with the library to find a climate-

controlled location for the boxes within their archival space.

Resources
I do not have access to funding information for this project if there is any. At this time this

proposal is being written as if there is no funding and that this is a goodwill project being done

with resources that are already available to us as faculty and staff of WCU.

Digital Storage Space:

Online: Up to 5 TB if needed. We will need to pay the WCU for more storage space if needed.

Offline: 4 TB SSD times 2 for redundancy storage. The first one is backed up each time

anything new is added to the other.

There are several smaller hard drives (236 G thumb drives and 1TB SSD drives) that are used for

file transport, so the larger drives are not moved and put at risk. Once items are uploaded to the

online space, those drives are placed in a safe location and checked periodically to verify that

files have not suffered data loss.

Archival Program: The archival program being used is Collective Access. Currently we are

using just the backend called Pawtucket. User access has not gone live at this time.

Metadata: This will be the Dublin Core standard as well as Library of Congress grouping.

Security: To upload anything to the archive at this time, you will need to know the web address

and have a username and password. To secure a user name and password, you will need to

contact James Hopkins. From the front end of the archive, you cannot make any changes

whatsoever.
Progress/Plan

1st Goal: The first goal of this project is to have 100 items uploaded to the backend of the

archive by July 2022.

Progress: Progress has been slowed due to Raven being full time in school and classes. With the

summer approaching and no classes, work will continue, and the uploading will resume on the

archive. Target is expected to be reached on time.

2nd Goal: The second goal is to have the user end (front end) installed and running by the first of

August 2022.

Progress: James is aware of the goal and will be working on it starting in the middle of May,

once all of the classes have left out for summer. He will be able to focus on the programming for

the archival front end at that time. Expected to be on track but will update if he foresees any

issues.

3rd Goal: The third goal is to open up user access by the end of the year.

Plan: Once the front end has been installed and everything has been tested, the goal is to open

the archive up to the public. There will be 2 areas, one for the language instructors and one for

tribal members. Instructors will have access to all of the files that will enable them to teach the

Cherokee language with the goal of creating students who are experts in the language. Tribal
members will have access to all the language materials plus any culturally sensitive material that

we have been given permission to maintain for their access.

Going Forward:

Once these goals have been met, the focus will be on adding 10 new items per week. After we

have hit 200 items we will begin to focus on the metadata. Structuring metadata work one week

and 20 items to upload the next. Once we have all items in our collection loaded, we will begin

to accept items donated from other programs.

Maintenance: After all the items have been uploaded to the database, it will be maintained by

James Hopkins and the WCU IT dept. Provided nothing detrimental happens to the web

locations holding the archive, then there will be no issues and just proper upkeep will be all it

needs for standard maintenance.

There will need to be quarterly sample checks of integrity among the files. This means

downloading 15% of the files that are housed on the web archive and checking them against the

original files to verify there is no data loss. If data loss is shown, then the file in the web archive

will need to be replaced with another upload of the original file.

With hope, we will be able to offer plenty of materials for students, instructors, and tribal

members alike to overcome the death of this language. The end goal being to push for creating

language experts from the Cherokee tribe and those that choose to learn the language themselves.

With this archive we at least hope to start that path.

Bibliography

“Appraisal Policy ‐ the National Archives.” Appraisal Policy of the National Archives and Records  

  Administration. National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed May 2, 2022. 

  https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information‐management/appraisal_policy.pdf. 

“Definition for Appraisal.” SAA Dictionary: appraisal. Society of American Archivists. Accessed May 1, 

2022. https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/appraisal.html. 

“Definition of Intrinsic Value.” SAA Dictionary: intrinsic value. Society of American Archivists. Accessed 

May 1, 2022. https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/intrinsic‐value.html. 

“Definition of Culturally Sensitive .” Protocols for Native American Archival Materials. Accessed May 1, 

2022. https://www2.nau.edu/libnap‐p/protocols.html#Sensitive. 

“Institutional Review Board Definition.” The Institute RSS. Accessed May 1, 2022.    

  https://institute.org/research‐publications/institutional‐review‐board/.