How do you appraise records to decide what gets permanently archived versus destroyed?

Appraisal is the process of evaluating records to determine how long they should be kept and what their ultimate fate should be: permanent preservation in an archive, or authorized destruction once they are no longer needed. It is one of the most consequential decisions in records management, because once records are destroyed they cannot be recovered.

What appraisal weighs

Appraisers look at two broad categories of value:

• Primary (operational) value — how long the record is needed for the business, legal, fiscal, or administrative purpose that created it. This drives most retention periods.
• Secondary (enduring) value — whether the record has lasting significance beyond its original purpose. This is what justifies permanent retention.

Secondary value is usually broken down further into:

• Evidential value — the record documents how an organization was structured, made decisions, and carried out its core functions.
• Informational value — the record contains significant information about people, places, events, or conditions, useful for research long after the original need has passed.

How the decision gets made

Most appraisal decisions are not made record-by-record. Instead, organizations build retention schedules that group records into series and assign each a disposition: destroy after a set period, or transfer to an archive for permanent keeping. Schedules are informed by legal and regulatory requirements, fiscal needs, and the assessed value of the records.

A typical workflow looks like this:

1. Identify and describe the record series.
2. Determine legal, regulatory, and operational retention requirements.
3. Assess any enduring (archival) value.
4. Assign a retention period and final disposition.
5. Apply the disposition consistently, with documentation of what was destroyed and when.

Permanent versus temporary

Only a small fraction of records typically warrant permanent archiving — those with enduring evidential or informational value. The majority are temporary: kept for as long as they are needed, then destroyed under an approved schedule. Routine, duplicate, or transitory material is generally appraised for short retention.

Sound appraisal is principle-based and documented, so disposition decisions are defensible and applied uniformly. For more on long-term preservation and archival practice, see the archives and preservation hub.