The first IV in PIM study of 344 retained items in a large collection of Job documents, is complete and it produced some unexpected results. It established that IV characteristics were only applicable to 71 of the items, and analysis of the reasons for retaining the other items produced a set of Draft PIM Retention Criteria (Draft PIMRC) that was rather different to that which had been anticipated. Here they are:

1. Digitisation to be performed later
2. Items to be put to work in their original form
3. Items for which only the originals confirm their validity
4. Trophy items to be collected and enjoyed in the future.
5. Large documents which have particular qualities of impact and integrity.
6. Small publications of around A4 size or less with fixed spine bindings and/or special papers
7. Publications which mention friends, colleagues or the owner
8. Items published by an organisation or programme that the owner works/worked for
9. Items that the owner has written, produced, assembled or made a significant contribution to
10. Physical features which make it difficult to digitise the item and/or to reconstruct it from the digital copy
11. Items illustrating a physical form due to a development in technology
12. Age that provides a quality of uniqueness
13. Copying explicitly prevented by copyright
14. Aesthetic or artistic quality
15. For use in exhibits
16. Item relating to the legality of an institution
17. Executive Policy document

The detailed results are included in IV in PIM, 26Jan2014 – v0.4. I’ll now get started on the second study which will use the Draft PIMRC to assist in making retain/destroy decisions for 4 boxes of Job documents that have yet to be digitised. I anticipate that the results from that work will probably be available in a couple of months.