1. The idea of archival appraisal representing a “foreign country” is a play on David Lowenthal's ideas in hisThe Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Lowenthal's work challenges the more complacent view that the past is a stable, placid, completely rational place to visit or understand.
2. Some of this equivocating has been captured in my essay examining the primary archival appraisal literature of the twentieth century; see my “The Documentation Strategy and Archival Appraisal Principles: A Different Perspective”,Archivaria 38 (Fall 1994): 11–36.
3. H.G. Jones,The Records of a Nation: Their Management, Preservation, and Use (New York: Atheneum, 1969), pp. 80, 82, 85.
4. That this kind of debate continues can be seen in the more recent exchange between Frank Boles/Mark Greene and Luciana Duranti. See Luciana Duranti, “The Concept of Appraisal and Archival Theory”,American Archivist 57 (Spring 1994): 328–344; and Frank Boles and Mark
5. A. Greene, “Et Tu Schellenberg? Thoughts on the Dagger of American Appraisal Theory”,American Archivist 59 (Summer 1996): 298–310.