The Library of Congress

Lesson 3 - Archives and Appraisal

By working with materials which are no longer personal, but are still locally relevant, students will begin to understand what archives are and the role of the archivist. The Dalton School has extensive archives which are used in this lesson and the next. Other possible sources for archives might be local historical societies, archives, and museums.

Part 1:

1. Ask if any students have ever heard of appraisal. If they have not, explain that appraisal often means determining how much money something is worth.

2. Ask students why people might want to know how much something is worth. Refer back to the children's personal mementos. Do they have monetary value? Do they have other kinds of value?

3. Explain that, as primary sources, the mementos tell us about something that has happened in the past. This is called historical value. In archives, primary sources are appraised for historical value. Archivists cannot save everything because there is just too much stuff in the world. They only save the things that they think will have some kind of historical value.

4. Ask students to come up with a list of things an archivist might think about when deciding what to save and what to throw away. This can be done as a group activity.

Part 2:

1. Photocopy 15-20 documents of different types (correspondence, diary entry, photograph etc.) from a manuscript collection in your local archives.

2. Divide the class into groups of three students and give each group a set of documents.

3. Explain that [name of collection] has just passed away and his/her family donated an important collection of documents to the local archives. Unfortunately, there is not enough room in the archives’ storage area to keep the entire collection.

4. Students are told that each group will have to get rid of approximately half of the documents in their collection. They will have to appraise the documents for historical value and decide which items are worth keeping.

5. Hand out an Appraisal Worksheet to each group with two categories, "Reasons to Keep" and "Reasons Not to Keep."

6. Ask each group to review the documents one at a time and make a pile of the items they think should be kept and the ones they think should be thrown away. Remind the children that historians will only be able to use the items they decide to keep when they write about this person in the future.

7. One student in each group acts as the "recorder" and writes down important reasons why they decided to keep items and reasons why they decided not to keep other items.

8. Collect the items which were kept by each group and save them for the next lesson. Colored folders can be used to help students (and the teacher) keep documents organized.

Part 3:

1. Bring the students together as a class and have each group read a few of the items from their Appraisal Worksheet.

2. Ask students if the documents kept by each group would tell a different story about the person's life. Would some of the groups be able to tell a more accurate story? Why? Could you tell who created the records in your collection? When were they created?

3. Ask students how they would compare working with primary sources and reading books or magazines. What was surprising about the documents? What seemed familiar?

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Lesson 4 - Arrangement and Description

1. Hand out the saved items from the last unit to each group of children. Ask them to look at the documents and write down some of the attributes the items share.

2. After about ten minutes reconvene class and compile a master list of the attributes students identified. This list should include the fact that somebody created each item, they were created at a specific time, and each item is "about" something or has a subject.

3. Explain that primary sources can be organized in many different ways. In archives this is called "arrangement and description." Why do they need to be organized at all?

4. Explain to students that they can organize their collections by using some of the attributes that have been identified as a guide. Ask each group to put their collection in the order that will be most useful for a historian who will be using the collection in the future. Each group will have to discuss this before organizing the documents.

5. When they are done organizing, have the students report to the class on how they arranged their collection and why. Foster discussion about the various strategies. Explain that there is no right way. Archivists arrange collections in many different ways depending on what the documents are about and how they might be used in the future.

6. Ask students if they think someone could find things easily in their collection. Do you think an index or table of contents for the collection would help people find things? Since you can only put the items in order one way at a time archivists use something like a table of contents called a "finding aid" to help people do research with primary sources. Computers have also made it easier to find things when collections are available on computer. Most primary source collections are only on paper, but some have been computerized.

In the next few lessons we will be working with archival collections on the computer.

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Assessment

Lesson 3	Students can be assessed based upon their completion of the Appraisal Worksheet, their collaborative efforts, and their ability to justify appraisal decisions.
Lesson 4	Students can be assessed based upon their identification of meaningful document attributes and logical organization of their collections.