This book brings further attention to activists’ challenges and opportunities in their recordkeeping, with cloud platforms becoming the primary access and communication tool. It also prompts collecting institutions to think about archival appraisal in new ways. Overwhelmingly the nature of organisational structure has been a concern for academia, such as organisational analysis (particularly related to recordkeeping cultures).^[1] Rethinking these traditions for a community centric approach, called critical functional appraisal, respecting the potential for anti-structure ideals of an activist network, has the possibility to empower actors in a multiplicity of ways.

Exclusionary power that collecting imposes upon community representation and marginalised groups have been highlighted by writers such as Sue McKemmish, who notes the possibility of a more representative archive through the disruption of exclusionary practice.^[2] The intention of records continuum understandings for nuanced activities, trace and person-centric approaches in recordkeeping means that redressing retention of activist narratives can be consciously and consistently planned for the future at all non-linear points of appraisal.

          Archives Power for Social Justice

But why plan for future social movement archives? The articulation of society’s archival grand challenges^[3] begins to consolidate decades of identifying social justice improvements in the archive for the benefit of equal representation and balanced narrativity for society. Authors have progressed an equality agenda and social justice imperative through archives^[4] and participatory archiving^[5] extending over a forty year period.^[6] 

This has led to growing community and participatory archival movements … and increased questioning   of   traditional   archival   principles   and   practices   which   privilege ‘‘administrative and juridical significance’’ over ‘‘symbolic and cultural values’’.^[7]

In the library and information science field, social justice has been considered both metatheory^[8] and a framework for education and research.^[9] While the power of appraisal and its social justice impacts are observed by archivists^[10] understanding how appraisal operates in a community for achieving social justice goals is yet to be investigated in depth in continuum terms.

Continuum researchers have researched community recordkeeping and archiving needs through case studies.^[11] The development of Critical Functional Appraisal will build upon previous critical continuum projects such as the rights of the child,^[12] addressing distrust of the archive,^[13] adequately redressing the dangers imposed by libraries and archives^[14] and the need for digital equity through data sovereignty.^[15] These researchers and writers contribute to the development of rights, the archival multiverse and the participatory archive and most recently, the concept of archival autonomy and self-determination.^[16] These researchers and writers contribute to the development of rights, the archival multiverse and the participatory archive and also, the concept of archival autonomy and self-determination.^[17] These are foundational concepts to the nature of radical recordkeeping.

Supporting Rights in Recordkeeping

In this interconnected world, the responsibility to accurately record, use our agency and document society from multiple viewpoints is seen as supporting human rights (and in the context of animal liberation, advocating liberty for those without a voice). ‘Dignity in design’ is also being recognised in archival circles, acknowledging that the custodial archival paradigm often disassociates content from its context and therefore abstracting individuals’ personhood. In today’s data-centric world, maintaining record integrity and personhood requires designing systems that preserve the dignity of those depicted in records.^[18]

The human rights in societal recordkeeping practices builds on the archival grand challenges and the concept of social justice in archives has extended to “rights in records” across the records continuum.^[19] The movement for respecting the rights in recordkeeping for the communities themselves as “complex adaptive systems” that can be compromised by ingestion into institutions.^[20] The organic nature of this recordkeeping, rather than imposing outside order, is a participatory way of thinking about communities’ right to record.^[21] The adoption of appraisal, description, access and disclosure rights for individuals and communities is needed, along with the development of principles, policies, strategies and tools for managing appraisal and description to support

… multiple provenances, differentiated access, and the exercise of mutual rights and responsibilities.^[22]

Continuum researchers and activist partners expand on this need for rights in recordkeeping, particularly for care leavers, in developing rights-based policies.^[23] The rights of the child projects in Australia exemplify a continuum-based participatory recordkeeping project. With the close partnering of archival activism and justice for care leavers, evidence for transformation is strengthened through relationships and knowledge sharing, supporting the argument for change. The relationship between academics and the Care Leavers’ Australia Network, for example, can be considered a radical partnership that can achieve what Evans et al. call “transformative justice”.^[24] Such transformative techniques can provide critical insights into risks and reformation of activist rights in recordkeeping. Chris Gauld describes this implementation of transformative justice as an “underutilized perspective”.^[25] This is particularly needed for activists (like those advocating for animals) who have no dedicated or supported infrastructure for archiving, as well as legislative obstacles faced in sharing their narratives.

Understanding Appraisal

This book builds on macroappraisal and documentation strategy as forms of functional appraisal. Macroappraisal introduced the idea of holistic societal appraisal through analysing citizen interactions with the state. Like proposals for appraisal to be person-centred,^[26] macroappraisal was conceived to put people and context as the focus of valuing records rather than organisational provenance as guiding recordkeeping decisions.^[27] Nevertheless, macroappraisal has not achieved holistic archiving across society in practice.^[28]

In her alternative approach of documentation strategy for functional appraisal, Helen Samuels argued for a balance of multiple voices and perspectives, using the university context to demonstrate lost student narratives to advocate for a holistic view of education in archives.^[29] Voices of the faculty, students, other institutions and the broader education sector were included in the functional appraisal steps.^[30] Although there have been some successful applications of documentation strategy in Germany, for example^[31] there has been a lack of uptake of this methodology. Reto Tschan points to the value judgments still being made in documentation strategy as a reason for worldwide stasis, claiming that ‘societal importance’ replacing ‘historical importance’ was not enough of a transition to make transformational changes in this functional appraisal technique.^[32] In this book, functional appraisal takes a societal-based approach and uses this inclusive worldview as a starting point to rethink or counter traditional frameworks to suit an activist community. The following sections describes approaches we already have now.

Rapid Response Collecting as Appraisal

There are debates about how to best include community voices in archives at risk of loss or decay as events and groups recede into history. Proponents of “rapid response collecting”^[33] collate artefacts of protest after the fact and are often reactionary when faced with records at risk. For collecting activist archives of disruptive groups, decision-making by the community itself is not guaranteed to be respected as part of the transfer, appraisal and description for an archive.^[34]

Web and Social Media Archiving Appraisal

Social movements have distributed community recordkeeping online. Since activists are using social media and websites as their place of record, the technical and practical inability for archival collection introduces complexities in ownership, power and control of records over time.^[35] Web archiving attempts to collect a cross-section of human experience, but a transparent and agreed model for this appraisal is yet to be sought. Recent studies have shown that archivists are only sometimes part of web archiving appraisal.^[36] Large-scale proactive web crawlers relied upon as programmed proactive gatherers of records are an “anomaly”.^[37] Authentic replication is also technically challenging. There is an acknowledgement that appraisal of web content is currently understudied in a practice where gaps and silences are inevitable in web archiving^[38] and social media collections.^[39]

Also inevitable are missteps in deciding what to keep where communities themselves are not consulted in an “archive now ask questions later” approach.^[40] Some have argued that there needs to be a theoretical underpinning and conceptual tools for the complex challenge of web archiving.^[41] The view provided in this book is that records continuum theory can be this conceptual and theoretical guide for all kinds of records, regardless of format.

Appraisal in Personal Recordkeeping

In her seminal article “Evidence of Me”, McKemmish acknowledges the equity gaps in archiving personal records compared to governmental or corporate ones and that functional analysis used in traditional appraisal can be used outside institutional settings.

Just as [archivists] can identify significant business functions and activities and specify what records are captured as evidence of those activities, so they can analyse socially assigned roles and related activities and draw conclusions about what records individuals in their personal capacity capture as evidence of those roles and activities.^[42]

This view of personal functional appraisal in the continuum has been confused as similar to other methods of appraisal.^[43] However, McKemmish’s vision is tied to the definition of appraisal based on Records Continuum Theory – with integrated recordkeeping practice as part of the ‘capture’ of a record (and possibly at multiple points throughout the recordkeeping process) as opposed to reactive collecting and assessment. This is the difference in the theoretical basis compared to each of the approaches described by traditional macroappraisal of personal records.

Appraisal of Community Collections

When collecting communities’ history, traditions in institutions or retrospective projects often involves ceding control over records and can impose decontextualised representation.^[44] The participatory archival movement has changed the way we think about ownership and control in the fields of recordkeeping and archiving. This movement emphasises the involvement of communities in managing their own records. Research has shown that community archives can effectively challenge and transform traditional archival practices and structures.^[45]

A Continuum View of Appraisal

With a call for dignity and rights becoming part of systemic design, appraisal is part of this vision. The records continuum definition of appraisal recognises it is non-linear, recursive and informed by contextual action.^[46] The application of continuum-based critical theorising, to build and sustain an archive, is an opportunity to influence the design of new appraisal tools. The shortcomings of equitably documenting entire societies with old approaches is well known.^[47] A critical continuum view of appraisal can combat these narrow approaches.^[48] The archival profession has the opportunity to embrace inclusive innovation and engagement by working in partnership toward a participatory paradigm.

A corporate organisational understanding of appraisal cannot be assumed to translate into a community context. To address this, continuum-based approaches to research and practice are proposed as a way to recognise that communities have autonomy and self-determination in their recordkeeping and decision-making.^[49]

Human-centered and Values-based Design for Appraisal

To some, “to classify is human”.^[50] However, functional analysis and classification have been criticised as impractical,^[51] particularly to organisations that move beyond bureaucratic routinisation.^[52] Mokhtar and Yusof,^[53] responding to the gaps in research and modeling of recordkeeping classification, wrote a book on transforming classification to IDEF0-based representations for Malaysian government agencies. Here, IDEF0 modelling is proposed as a potential solution to bridge the gap between IT and records managers – perhaps a first step to considering human relationships in appraisal. Nevertheless, human-centric design is still missing from functional appraisal in practice. For example, Fiorella Foscarini’s research participants^[54] suggested terms like ‘purpose’ should be considered in the functional hierarchies, but have yet to translate to new models for appraisal. This research can take this idea further for a grassroots community context, modelling shared understandings based on principles that matter most to the group itself.

One example of archivists disrupting inequitable appraisal practice was seen in an event called “Rethinking Appraisal”, where it was argued that the human dimension of archives needs new methods to put emotion and humanity at the forefront of practice.^[55] Looking at appraisal from both a continuum and community-focused perspectives can transform the idea of collections-focused classification and assessment of records being transferred into an archive. Instead, systems thinking and design of recordkeeping infrastructure is reflected in the Australian-led Records Management Standard ISO 15489 (Standards Australia, 2017). Appraisal in this Standard can be potentially applied to a community context. ISO 1589 describes appraisal as

… the recurrent, analytic work that underpins decision-making … described in the Standard as recurrent analysis of business context, business activity, processes and risk for the purpose of determining what records to make and keep and how to manage them.^[56]

The importance of community purpose and values is also emphasised in librarianship^[57] and animal liberation literature. For example, animal activist values are culturally approved, internalised wishes that motivate action. Such a definition of values can be tested using critical continuum methods, assessing community appraisal goals and in practice. Values inspire beliefs and attitudes and determine what activists strive for.^[58]

Complex Ambient Recordkeeping Across Functions in Society

Archival description is essential for systematic organization and easy retrieval of records, preserving historical integrity and facilitating research. Effective description practices contextualise records, making them accessible and understandable. In this context, the Australian series system, developed by Peter Scott, stands out as an innovative framework. Unlike traditional methods that prioritise the fonds – the entire collection from a single creator – Scotts’ system focuses on the series as the primary unit of analysis. A series groups records by common function or subject, providing a more nuanced understanding of the context and process of record creation. This approach has significantly influenced modern archival practices and standards, particularly in managing electronic records and addressing the complexities of provenance and context, ultimately enhancing the precision of record descriptions and improving access for researchers and the public.^[59]

Description plays a crucial role in archival appraisal by providing detailed metadata that captures the context, content, and structure of records. This metadata facilitates the assessment of the value and relevance of records, ensuring that communities can make informed decisions about which materials to preserve. Effective description aids in identifying the provenance, original order and relationships among records, which are essential for maintaining the integrity and authenticity of records. By documenting the context in which records were created and used, description supports a nuanced understanding of their significance to individuals and the groups in which they are a member.

Descriptive entities can be seen as having a Doers-Deeds-Documentation triad (Fig. 2.1) to show ambient relationships and entities within a recordkeeping framework.^[60] An organisational hierarchy of descriptive layers can be reimagined as interconnected agents, activity and records across society (including social movements).

Fig. 2.1 by Chris Hurley 2013.^[61]

image description

This view can support the participatory idea that: “Contributor(s) responsible for adding and managing entities from their own descriptive systems” can take action in the archival endeavour without extraneous intervention by archivists.^[62] Taking these descriptive lessons forward to appraisal, it would be possible to incorporate ambient appraisal functions and their networks of entities, relationships, communities and individuals, a more holistic picture of society.

Fig. 2.2 by Chis Hurley, 2013.^[63]

image description

As a critique of archival practice, Hurley advocates for ‘multiple simultaneous provenance’ urging recordkeepers to move away from a single records creator to a more broadly defined view of inter-relationships, creators and provenance over time and space. In Figure 2.2 above, the red archivists are interconnected in simultaneous multiple provenance using a standardised format of description, describing an event or person from layers of ambient viewpoints. While these ideas have been discussed in terms of archival description, these ideas could extend to societal appraisal too. What gets created, kept or shared across a social movement can take into account multiple doers, documents and deeds from interconnected but different narrative contexts.

Conclusion

Collective and interconnected community recordkeeping is yet to be viewed with appraisal in mind as a core activity for keeping and collecting future equitable archives. Diving into the intricacies of appraisal, the chapter explores various types, including macroappraisal, documentation strategy, rapid response collecting and appraisal in personal recordkeeping. It scrutinises the challenges presented by web and social media archiving, acknowledging the need for theoretical underpinnings and conceptual tools. The discussion on the human-centered and values-based design for appraisal reflects a call for inclusive innovation and engagement in the archival profession.

There is an inherent role of recordkeeping in supporting human rights, here emphasising the interconnected responsibilities of accurately documenting society from multiple perspectives. Rights in recordkeeping for communities, conceptualised as ‘complex adaptive systems,’ are part of reframing restrictive collecting tradition of description and arrangement that support retrievability in an archive. Archival rights advocates for the adoption of flexible and supportive appraisal, description, access and disclosure rights for individuals and communities, underscoring the importance of a models like the records continuum that elucidate frameworks of mutual rights and responsibilities.

This chapter advocates for a paradigm shift in archival appraisal – one that is inclusive, community-centric and responsive to the diverse needs of activist networks. By challenging traditional hierarchies and embracing a continuum-based approach, the book contributes to the ongoing discourse on how archives can play a transformative role in fostering social justice and equality. The call to rethink appraisal practices resonates as a foundational step towards building collective and interconnected community recordkeeping for a more equitable archival future.