Appraisal
The process of evaluating records to determine their value and how long they should be retained, weighing administrative, legal, fiscal, and historical considerations.
Appraisal is the analytical process of determining the value of records and, from that, how long they should be kept and what their final disposition should be. It is the judgment that turns a records inventory into a retention schedule.
Appraisal weighs several kinds of value: administrative (needed for current operations), legal/regulatory (required by law or contract), fiscal (needed for budget, audit, or tax purposes), and historical (of enduring value warranting permanent preservation). The highest applicable value generally drives the retention period. Records appraised as permanent are preserved indefinitely or transferred to an archives; the rest are scheduled for eventual destruction. Sound appraisal is what keeps an organization from either discarding important records or keeping everything forever.