The Power of Appraisal: Selecting Archives

New date! Rescheduled from January 21, 2025.

Before donations arrive in your archives, the first step is appraising the item - does it fit your organization's mission? Can the item(s) be stored appropriately and cared for?  What if this did not happen before you accepted the collection, and it’s on the shelves—it happens to everyone.  Appraisal often refers to the time spent assessing existing records for their potential to be retained as part of the historical record in your archives. Sometimes, this is done as part of surveying one’s holdings or even when processing a collection.  

This 2-hour webinar will discuss the different values assigned to archives to help you better understand the appraisal principles and introduce techniques to identify records necessary for adequate documentation. A case study will be presented on a recent appraisal project, followed by a discussion and questions.

Our panel will discuss the following topics:

• Overview of appraisal, including appraisal considerations (basic concepts)
• What can you get rid of, and how
• Case study on an appraisal project with discussion
• Share tools, resources, documentation

This will be recorded and added to our CARLI Archives and Special Collections Resource Page.

Speaker:

Ruth E. Bryan, CA, is a University Archivist in the Special Collections Research Center of the University of Kentucky Libraries, Lexington, Kentucky, USA (2011-present). Before UK, Ruth was the Archives Program Manager for the Ruth Mott Foundation/Applewood, Flint, Michigan (2006-2001), and Head of Collections Processing and Encoding for Duke University’s Rare Book, Manuscripts, and Special Collections Library, Durham, North Carolina (2000-2006). A Certified Archivist, Ruth holds master’s degrees in public history from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina (2000), and cultural anthropology from the New School for Social Research, New York, New York (1996).

Moderator: Matt Gorzalski, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Register to attend.

Sponsored by the CARLI Archives Task Force.