Digitization in public administration : A study of appraisal when scanning archives

When digitizing the public sector there is a risk that public administrations lose control of what is preserved in their archives. The main issue raised in this thesis concerns the valuation of information, also called appraisal, that is required before and during scanning of archival material. The focus is on reviewing and analyzing how the appraisal process may be affected by the fact that external companies perform the scanning work when digitizing archives. Also, the background as to why public administrations choose external providers of scanning is examined. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with four archivists and one project leader from five different public administrations and transcripts from the interviews formed the data of analysis.The analysis was based on Terry Cook's theory macroappraisal and Lennart Lundquist's theory of public ethos. The theories were applied to the empirical material. The study showed that external companies did not have to evaluate information in the way that is usually discussed under the concept of appraisal. The reason for this is that the public administrations themselves have prepared the material to be digitized. The study has also showed that almost all interviewees describe how the lack of equipment and skills regarding the actual scanning has contributed to the choice of providers. Three out of five interviewees also state that they lacked the time and/or staff to do the scanning themselves. Only one of the interviewees said that the choice of provider was made on the basis that the cheapest option was chosen. The conclusion that could be drawn is that the public administrations already have identified the risk of losing control of what is preserved in their archives when using external companies for scanning. A question one might ask instead is whether the prudence that the public administrations show is justified? This is a two years master’s thesis in Archival Science