Towards Program Evaluation in Archives

A review of the archival literature, including records and information management, indicates that archivists’ have shown over the last two decades an interest in program evaluation. The sparceness of the literature on the subject suggests a gap in an articulate body of knowledge, based on solid theoretical and methodological foundations, for evaluation of archival programs and activities. However, if they have not particularly investigated the subject from a theoretical perspective, archivists have developed in their different organizations and working environment practical knowledge of and experience with program evaluation. In large corporations as well as in public bureaucracies, they have been part of or subjected to specific or generic program evaluation initiatives conducted by internal and external evaluators. But archivists might need now to go some steps further and to look from a critical perspective at what is needed in order to get full benefit from program evaluation.