Reappraising Appraisal Watch Party

Check your local time for the event here.

In the spring of 2024, the DPC asked its Full Members what topics they’d like to explore during the coming year, and “appraisal” came right near the top of the list of responses.

Appraisal is a well-established, core function of digital collecting organizations and archives. We all do it, but we all seem to worry about whether we’re doing it right, how other people are doing it, and whether we could be doing it better. It’s not even clear that we all agree on what we mean by “appraisal” when it comes to dealing with digital data and records. Do conventional ideas of selection and collection development still have a place? Can we reliably and consistently separate the appraisal of intellectual content and perceived value to the organization or users, from issues of file format or carrier? When it comes to the appraisal – or reappraisal – of digital materials, how can we do it at scale? Will automating some aspects of our appraisal workflows help us deal with the deluge of digital data?

This watch party follows a webinar originally held on the 4th of September event which brought together organizations facing new challenges around appraising digitized and born-digital data. We also heard from practitioners who have developed new appraisal workflows to cope with the challenges of digital materials and learned about some of the latest work to develop checklists and selection criteria, that we can take up and adapt in order to help make our appraisal processes more consistent and manageable.

We will also be joined by three local speakers, who will briefly offer their thoughts on the topic of appraisal:

• Appraisal - Cassie Shaw, Digital Archivist, RMIT

• Appraisal and Collection Development in Government Archives - James Doig, Digital Preservation Manager, National Archives of Australia

• Appraisal of born-digital unpublished collections - Roxi Ruuska, Digital Archives Analyst, State Library NSW

Recordings (DPC Members and Supporters, login to view)

Recordings from the previous event can be found here.

DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy

The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in our Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. We encourage diversity in all its forms and are committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation, whilst remaining technology and vendor neutral. We ask all those who are part of this community to be positive, accepting, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others in alignment with our DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy.