Implementation of appraisal regulations including the selection of sample archives. A case study on the Swedish country district police

Abstract

Appraisal has often been combined with some form of sampling. The purpose of this study was to shed light on the implementation and consequences of the method of selecting sample archives: while records from a few agencies of a certain type are almost totally preserved, in other archives all or nearly all records are discarded. A case study was carried out on an appraisal decision, including the selection of sample archives, issued in 1969 by the Swedish National Archives. The decision concerned the country district police force (1918–1964), and was to be implemented by the autonomous regional archives. The study first explored proposals and opinions preceding the decision. The next step was a quantitative examination of the country police archives, followed by a discussion of how the implementation of the decision affected research potentials. The results revealed that the regional archives followed the rules only to a certain extent and with large variations. As a consequence, the amount of preserved records is much larger than the decision-makers intended. Organizational inertia, and concepts related to this, may partly explain these divergences.