n.a technique for appraising and processing materials based on the relative importance of the activities performed within an organizationSamuels 1992, 1A functional approach provides the means to achieve a comprehensive understanding of an institution and its documentation: a knowledge of what is to be documented and the problems of gathering the desired documentation. Such knowledge enables the archivist to establish specific documentary goals and collecting plans. Institutional functional analysis, therefore, is the appropriate first step for all institutional archivists.Cook 1996, 142–143, fn. 12Such an approach to strategic appraisal, while first envisioned by Gerald Ham, has had its most extensive North American analysis and practical exposition from Helen Samuels, especially in her new concept of institutional functional analysis (as contrasted, in part, with her early concept of the documentation strategy). For an introduction to the concept, an example of its application in one kind of institution, and a practical plan to follow for others wishing to implement the same strategy in any kind of institution, see Helen Willa Samuels, Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities (Metuchen, N.J.: The Society of American Archivists and The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1992). Her institutional functional analysis is very complementary, at least by analogy, to my own macro-appraisal approach, although she and I would define functions rather differently.Robyns and Woolman 2011, 247Institutional functional analysis requires the archivist to weigh the relative importance of each office’s function in achieving the institution’s mission and broad institutional functions and then to identify the records necessary to document those functions.Robyns 2014, 29This work introduced institutional functional analysis that Samuels described as a “new tool that supplements archival practice and turns it around.” The methodology “turned around” the process of appraisal by focusing on the identification and evaluation of the function that created a record rather than on the record itself. Essentially, archivists first determine what an institution does and how it does so. They then identify and decide the relative value of the institution’s key functions and from this analysis resolve the location and relative value of the records that document these functions.Duranti and Franks 2015, 219Methodologically, institutional functional analysis is stated as applicable to both individual organizations and types of organizations, such as scientific institutions and colleges/universities. However, no general methods for carrying it out were introduced [in Varsity Letters].
Notes
Current usage emphasizes appraisal within individual institutions helping to set priorities for processing records.
