The Appraisal of Scientific Documentation/Information as a Methodological Operation: Application Criteria and Parameters

Abstract

Evaluation in the context of information services has been carried out essentially in three distinct areas: the evaluation of services, the evaluation of information retrieval and the evaluation (appraisal) of information flow. This last aspect, especially applied to archives, aims to decide the destination of information after a few years of current use, seeking to make eliminations that considerably free up the information storage space. In this paper, evaluation is approached not as a practical or merely technical procedure, but as a methodological operation applicable to information in any production and use context, within the framework of information science, an area in which we integrate archivistics as an applied discipline. Appraisal does not, therefore, have an end in itself, disconnected from a broader method that associates the comprehensive or scientific aspect with the applicational or technical one, as it is appropriate in an applied social science such as Information Science. Starting from the appraisal model, developed at the University of Porto, Portugal, criteria and parameters are set out to, in an objective way, moving towards practical application, taking into account the life cycle of information, the renewal and obsolescence of knowledge and the importance of memory for the long-term preservation.