APPRAISAL AND INFORMATION THEORY

Mats Burell Principal Administrative Officer, Government Offices, Office for Administrative Affairs, Sweden

Introduction In this paper I will give my view on the relationship between the appraisal of records and information theory. I will use this opportunity to show how I look upon the concept of information used in archival appraisal methodology today in a multidisciplinary environment. The main purpose of my presentation is not primarily to try to give some answers on the nature of the relationship between information theory and appraisal. Instead I will try to present some ideas on how to develop the archival appraisal methodology through the interaction with information theory. First I will give a general description of different approaches to information theory in different disciplines without pretending to give the complete presentation of each disciplinary approach. Then I will present some conclusions on where to find the concept of information in archival appraisal methodology today. I will finally present my opinion on the possibilities to further develop archival appraisal methodology using a multidisciplinary approach to information theory to enhance the application of the methods on electronic records.

Different approaches to information theory One way to look upon information is to see it as three different kinds of information. The syntactic information, the semantic information and the pragmatic information. Let me in short try to explain the differences by using an illustrative example originating from the Dutch computer scientist Jan van der Lubbe. Consider the following sentences: John was brought to the railway station The taxi brought John to the railway station There is a traffic jam on highway A3 between Nuremberg and Munich in Germany There is a traffic jam on highway A3 in Germany The first and the second sentences are syntactically different. However, semantically and pragmatically they are identical. They have the same meaning and are both equally informative. The third and fourth sentences do not differ only with respect to their syntax, but also with respect to their semantics. The third sentence gives more precise information than the fourth sentence. The pragmatic aspect of information mainly depends on the context. The information contained in the third and fourth sentences may be relevant for someone in Germany, but not for someone in the USA.1

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Theories on syntactic information are sometimes referred to as the American tradition of information theory. The person traditionally seen as the founder of this tradition of information theory is the American engineer Claude E. Shannon who published his revolutionary article A mathematical theory of communication in 1948.2 Shannons great contribution to present-day information theory is that he associated information with uncertainty using the concept of chance or probability. He proposed that methods for measure could also be used for the measure of the amount of information. Information theory - or communication theory - is one of the most important basic theories in computer sciences. Shannon stressed that information content did not have any relevance to theories of information. He wrote in 1948 These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.3 Fundamental in computer sciences ever since has also been the full abstraction from the meaningful aspects of information. The basic questions to be answered is just how to measure the amount of information as well as the theoretical limits of the compression of information. A very technical approach to information indeed. Sometimes computer scientists have tried to make a distinction between the technical meaning of information as being called data and other aspects of information as being called information, meaning information content. Computer sciences have of course developed immensely since 1948. Several scientific concepts from other disciplines have been implemented and developed with computer sciences. Central within computer sciences is also the scientific tradition of cybernetics as a whole. Mathematical methods are used to solve problems concerning the management of electronic systems. The systems concept is as important to computer sciences as the information concept, combined into information systems. There is a very functionalistic, technical and user-driven perspective in computer sciences. I will not try to go further in characterising the development of information theory within computer sciences. Instead I will move on to the other traditions. Representatives of the American mathematical tradition of information theory sometimes refer to other traditions of information theory as the British tradition of information theory. 4 But in my opinion it is important not to consider the other information traditions as one single complex of information theory. First one has to look at the differences between the theories of semantic information and the theories of pragmatic information. The very clear statement by Claude E. Shannon in 1948 that he excluded the semantic aspects of information provoked the two philosophers Rudolf Carnap and Yehoshua Bar-Hillel to present a first outline of a theory of semantic information four years later, in 1952. Inspired by Shannon they tried to define an analogous theory on how to measure the meaning of information (semantic information) based on logical probability functions. Their conclusions of the study, however, were that the measurement of semantic information is a concept more readily applicable to psychological and other investigations than its communications counterpart. 5 And this other tradition of information theory has traditionally been closely related to disciplines such as psychology and biology. Being in Finland one cannot avoid mentioning the famous Finnish philosopher Jaakko Hintikka who has contributed a lot to this tradition in information theory in his research on the relationship between logic and semantics. So, finally we have the last aspects of information; the pragmatic aspects of information. In this tradition we are discussing theories on the effect of information, the economics of 41

information. The effect of information has been an issue for research among information scientists since at least the beginning of the 1970s. One of the major scientists in this field is in fact a Finnish researcher, Aatto J. Repo. The main forces behind the development of theories about the economics of information has been the work to make libraries more effective and the general trend to introduce Information Resources Management within the business economics disciplines.6 A large number of economic theories of information have been presented during the last decades. I will also not discuss these theories in detail here and now. But I have to mention the recent trend to look further and focus on the product of information - the knowledge and the management of knowledge. And another important quality of pragmatic information theory I have to mention is that it focuses mainly on the value of information. There has been quite a lot of discussion among researchers in economics on the nature of the value of information as it has been quite clear that information does not only have a market value (or a practical, instrumental value), but also a social value (or a philosophical, intrinsic value). There has also been a discussion on whether the value of information is not only user-driven, but also driven by the producer taken from the broader context, from an increase in citizen well-being.7 But as far as I have understood there appears today to be a consensus among economic researchers in that the value of information can only be considered in the context of its use and it is therefore a user-driven concept not a producer concept. This means that the value of information can be determined post facto - but not before its use.8

The concept of information in archival appraisal methodology I will finish this short overview of the different approaches to information theory and continue with my next topic; the concept of information in archival appraisal methodology. Is there a specific concept of information and an information theory within the archival sciences and the archival appraisal methodology. My answer to this question must be No. The main reason for this is quite simple. The basic concepts in archival sciences are much older than the basic concepts in information theory of every kind. And one of the main trends within the theoretical debate in the international archival community during the last decade has been primarily to try to identify the archival perspective within the evolving information society, focusing on the very important issue of identifying the fundamental business processes. One just has to mention one international research project within archival sciences today, the InterPARES Project concerning the authenticity of electronic records, led by Dr. Luciana Duranti and based on such ancient traditions as medieval diplomatics and Roman law, even if the project really has a multidisciplinary ambition too.9 A Swedish archival colleague of mine, Hkan Lvblad, recently presented a paper within the Archival Sciences Programme at the University of Stockholm, discussing the multidisciplinary character of archival sciences today.10 After analysing the theoretical debate within three major international periodicals in archival sciences during the 1990s he classifies the approaches of the different articles into three major scientific traditions - a positivistic tradition, a cybernetics tradition and a hermeneutics tradition. He shows in quite an interesting 42

manner to what extent archival sciences today in itself is a true multidisciplinary discipline where perspectives from different disciplines are confronted and discussed and implemented into archival sciences. The analysis of Hkan Lvblad clearly shows that the main conflicts within archival sciences today especially concern the appraisal of records. Dependent on the tradition the author primarily belongs to in terms of a positivistic, cybernetics or hermeneutics tradition there is completely conflicting conclusions on the question of appraisal today. The concept of appraisal in itself is under debate. Is it possible to appraise the records and put a certain value on the records at all? Especially in Germany and the United States the traditional answer to this basic question is yes, I guess. Having a functionalistic user-driven perspective to the selection process it has been a given that the appraisal process is one of the most basic functions within archival theory as well as within archival practice. The US model for appraising archival records, primarily starting out from the ideas of Theodore Schellenberg, as presented in his important article on the subject published in 1956, has influenced archivists all over the world.11 But not the whole world at all. In my own country, Sweden, for instance the concept of appraisal still has not really been included in the national archival terminology. The selection process in Sweden has traditionally mainly been very pragmatic, a risk management process focusing on the disposable records, not on records of permanent value. Archivists and public administrators have worked closely together in investigating the possibilities to destroy certain hypothetically disposable specific records series or files. The main question has been to what extent an erasure does or does not damage the activities for the users of today and tomorrow. The archivist, preferably educated with a doctors degree in history, is seen as the representative of the researcher of tomorrow, analysing the future research potentiality in a certain records series. Furthermore in Sweden this decision making process concerning the selection of records to be disposed of has been seen as a process entirely independent of the archival acquisition process. There has never been any appraisal of records at the time of the acquisition or after the acquisition. The disposition decisions concerning the records should have been completed and issued as legal governmental regulations many years before the acquisition, even a long time before the creation of the specific records. As far as I understand Sweden is not unique in the world in not having an appraisal tradition within archival sciences.12 The concept of appraisal has also been questioned even within the Anglo-Saxon and German archival traditions. The influential American debater and innovator, David Bearman, has openly questioned the whole concept of appraisal. He calls the concept of values inherent in records as inadequate for coping with the mass of records available for selection and believes it leads to a false impression of being based in cost-benefit analysis.13 Despite this criticism there has been quite a number of projects the world over during the 1990s wrestling with the identification of taxonomies of value for the formulation of appraising methods. Even the InterPARES project does have the need to find professional and impartial methods to appraise records as an important motivation for doing research on the authenticity of electronic records.14

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With the appraisal model of Schellenberg as a starting-point there has been debate concerning the appraisal focusing on the identification of the business processes and the importance of the concept of evidence and the idea of evidential values. There has been a lot of important theoretical development on the concept of evidence within archival sciences during the 1990s. Besides the Anglo-Saxon tradition around David Bearman I have to mention especially the German archivist Dr. Angelika Menne-Haritz.15 There has been a very important trend to rediscover the fundamental theoretical background to records and archives during the 1990s. After this short presentation of the recent theoretical developments regarding the appraisal question one very obvious question must be: Does information theory have anything to do with archival appraisal at all? This question brings me to the third and last part of my presentation. The possibilities to develop the archival appraisal methodology by implementing information theory from a multidisciplinary view into archival sciences.

The possibilities to develop the archival appraisal methodology The fundamental question once again is: Where is the concept of information in modern archival appraisal methodology? Many archivists today indeed recognise the informational values as important as the evidential values following the taxonomy of Schellenbergs secondary values. But I think archivists consequently tend to neglect to define the concept of information even when they use it in texts. As a consequence there sometimes occur such strange discussions among archivists as if evidential values should not have anything to do with information. As I see it, the question is not information or not information but the value of evidential information contra the value of factual information. Even the identification of evidential records values is indeed a kind of identification of records containing a certain type of information information as a result of business processes and decision making. In the Schellenberg model informational values, meaning factual information and information content, is seen as the part of the appraisal process where the archivist has to ask the outside world - the users. Dr. Angelika Menne-Haritz and others have very clearly stressed all the dangers of relying on recent trends and ideologies in todays society in appraising informational values.16 One could also argue that identifying evidential archival records should be enough for the archivist and that there is no need to try to appraise records according to the value of factual information. I can understand this opinion in one way. Especially when it comes to electronic records one might theoretically very well get to the standpoint that what is to be preserved is electronic archival records. Nothing more, nothing less. But I believe it is important for an archivist within the evolving information society to be able to look upon archives from several perspectives, from a multidisciplinary perspective. As I mentioned earlier one might very well look upon archival sciences of the 1990s as a truly multidisciplinary discipline. But my impression is that the influences from other disciplines 44

have mostly come from other disciplines within the Humanities, and not so much from the other disciplines outside the Humanities belonging to the rapidly growing Information Society. I believe that these other disciplines should gain on learning more about fundamental archival theory as well and archival theory could be developed by implementing theories from other information sciences. Let me present three examples where I think an exchange of ideas concerning information theory and the appraisal of records between the different disciplines within the Information Society would be fruitful. 1. My first example deals with the appraisal concept itself. Discussing the very basic question whether it is possible to appraise archival records at all I believe it would be fruitful for a multidisciplinary cooperation and exchange of ideas between archival sciences and economics and informatics. What is the relationship between the Schellenbergian distinction between primary and secondary values and the theories of value of information within informatics as well as general value theory within economics? Does the research within economics on the possibilities to determine the informational value have any impact on archival appraisal theory? How does the identification of archival records emanating from business processes fit into economic theories on the value of information? My first hypothesis is: by studying questions just like those mentioned, there could be a closer relationship between the theories of information within economics and archival theory, promoting the development of information sciences as a whole. 2. Without turning entirely into museums or libraries I think it would enhance the value of archives as a whole if some kind of knowledge based professional archival methodology was also developed. I think that an archivist has to be aware of the fact that archives may be seen as an information resource for documenting the universe as well, even if the basic selection criteria should be founded on business processes. There has been a number of not so successful projects trying to entirely base the appraisal on documentation strategies. My impression is that these efforts have been lacking very much from the absence of a relevant multidisciplinary perspective regarding the other disciplines within the Information Society as well as a negligence of the fundamental archival theory. Let me try to explain one topic where I think it could be useful to build a bridge between archival sciences and other information sciences as a part of knowledge management. Modern developments in all areas tend to cross the boundaries between disciplines; that is, new topics develop not merely by the splitting up of established disciplines, but also by the merging of previously distinct disciplines. Clearly the old barriers between disciplines have now effectively disappeared. In conventional disciplinary systematics it is difficult to take account of changes in relationships between existing disciplines.17 As far as I understand one of the American experiments with a systematic content-oriented appraisal - the American Documentation Strategy Project in the 1980s - did not consider this disciplinary development. They tried to analyse the content within specific disciplines, as physics for example, which is a big lack in their theoretical approach, as I see it.18 Within information and library sciences there has evolved a greater understanding of the multidisciplinary character of todays information society. Within library classification it was 45

already demonstrated in1958 by Kyle that it was possible to classify at least the social sciences into two large facets, persons and activities. The logical development of this line of thought was the premise that we can allot every concept in the whole universe of knowledge as being either an entity or an attribute. As the information theorist Foskett has said these theories are necessarily rather vague, but have a very respectable ancestry (they go back to Aristotle).19 As far as I know the most prominent example of implementing these theories has been produced by the British Classification Research Group. The Classification Research Group chose to classify all entities into seven categories.20 And they also chose to classify all the activities into these other categories. The questions to be answered could be: What kind of activities or entities are documented through archival records - and to what extent? And what kind of activities or events are not documented through records, but should be documented through other parts of the information society? My hypothesis is that by studying the possibilities to apply knowledge based classification theory from library sciences into archival sciences it could perhaps result in the development of tools to analyse the knowledge based effects on archival selection and acquisition decisions. I also believe that a cooperation between library theorists and archival theorists should enhance the librarians understanding of fundamental archival theory. 3. My last example deals with the most important multidisciplinary relationship of them all, as I see it: the relationship between computer sciences and archival sciences. Due to the immense commercial potential linked to computer sciences the concepts within computer sciences tend to get more or less a monopoly within the growing information society. In the archival community of my own country, as in other countries, there has been a somewhat confused discussion during the last decade between computer scientists entering the archival institutions and the archivists, depending on the fundamentally different perspectives on information. Computer scientists within the Swedish National Archives have argued that they should have the responsibility for the technical aspects of information - the data - and they also tell the archivists that their role should be to manage the information, meaning the information content. Swedish archivists, who have learnt that records and archives are not just simple information, but something of a higher value; the evidence of business processes, usually do not shout for joy when listening to these ideas from computer scientists. Indeed there is a great need for computer sciences to better understand the special character of archival information. What has been implemented in computer sciences about the pragmatic effects of information derives today more or less completely from economics. The influence of archival sciences on computer sciences has never been that significant, to say the least. But there is also indeed a need for archivists to better understand fundamental information theory within computer sciences and how it could be implemented into archival theory. My last hypothesis is that the best way to reduce this gap between computer sciences and archival sciences is to further develop the models and theories in finding the technical solutions to reach the ultimate goal of cost-efficient appraisal (selection/acquisition), preservation and presentation of archival electronic information - electronic records. There is much work already going on the world over in this respect. I just have to mention the fast 46

development within the metadata area and the XML/SGML standards to mention some important trends. But, indeed, much work is still to be done. *** The end of the 20th century has been dominated in archival sciences by the very important rediscovery of the fundamental origins of archival science and what that means to the archival appraisal methodology. Let the beginning of the next century be the starting point for a selfconfident archival science able to explore the possibilities to develop its appraisal methodology through a truly multidisciplinary cooperation within the other disciplines of the information society. #

J.C.A. van der Lubb e, Information T heory (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 1-2. Claude E . Shannon , The Mathematical Theory of Communication (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1949). Shannon , The M athema tical Theo ry of Com munica tion, p 3. Lubbe, Informa tion Theo ry, p 2.

Rudolf C arnap & Yehosh ua Bar-H illel, An outline of a the ory of sema ntic informatio n, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Reseach Laboratory of Electronics, Technical Report No 247, Oct. 27, 1952.
6

Aatto J. Re po,The dual app roach to the value of inform ation: An ap praisal of use a nd excha nge values, Information Processin g & Man agem ent 22 (1986), pp. 373-383.
7

Repo, The dual approach to the value of information: An appraisal of use and exchange values, p. 374.

International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Sciences, ed. John Feather & Paul Sturgos (London & New York, 1997), p. 191.
9

Information concerning the InterPARES project is to be found at http://www.interpares.org

10

Hkan L vblad, Munk, kn ekt eller konstnr? O m arkivarien som paradigm ryttare (Unpublished paper, Archival sciences programme, Department of History, University of Stockholm, 1999).
11

Theod ore Sche llenberg, The Appraisal of Modern Public Records, Bulletins of the National Archives, number 8 (Washington, D.C., October 1956). See also O le Kolsrud : The Evo lution of Ba sic Appra isal Principles - Some C ompara tive Obser vations, The Americ an Arch ivist 55:1 (Winter 1992), pp. 26-57.
13

12

David B earman, A rchival M ethods, Archives and M useum Informa tics,Techn ical Repo rt, 3 (1989), p. 16.

14

Luciana D uranti, The C oncept o f Appraisa l and Archiv al Theo ry, The Am erican A rchivist 57:2 (Spring 1994), p. 329-330.
15

Angelika M enne-Ha ritz, Appraisa l or Docu mentation: C an We Appraise Archives b y Selecting Co ntent?, The Americ an Arch ivist 57:3 (Summer 1994), pp. 528-542.
16

Ibid., p. 535.

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17

A. C. Fosk ett, The subject approach to information, 4th ed. (London, 1982), p. 3 & p. 183.

18

Larry J. Ha ckman & Joan W arnow-B lewett, The D ocumen tation Strategy P rocess: A M odel and a Case Stud y, The Americ an Arch ivist 50:1 (Winter 1987), pp. 12-29.
19

Foskett, The subject approach to information, p. 231. Ibid., p. 23 1; Brian B uchanan, Theory of library classification (London, 1979), pp. 105-118.

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