8.0 SYNTHESIS AND COMMENTARY AREA

DEFINITION:	This category provides an evaluation of the life, significance, roles, activities, and contributions of the described person as determined by the entity responsible for the description.
DISCUSSION:	Entities maintaining biographical information often record evaluative and interpretive information that describes how the individual related to areas that the entity has collecting or other interests in and how the person functioned within his or her environment. While descriptive information recorded in other areas might provide much of this type of interpretive knowledge for those particular areas, this category provides an opportunity to record a summary statement that provides this evaluation for the person as a whole.
>>Purpose:	Archival repositories and related institutions are often one of the few entities with an ongoing interest in the documentation of a particular individual and with access to a wide range of primary and secondary sources about his or her history. As such, it is in a good position to provide a historical perspective on the life and activities of the person. This is especially true for those individuals that have not been or are unlikely to be the subject of in-depth scholarly research. This synthesis of information, gathered from a variety of sources and perspectives and recorded in a commentary, may highlight trends and issues that cut across chronological periods or specific areas of personal activity, as segregated in this descriptive structure. It also serves as a record of the entity's own perspective on the significance and role of the person, especially as that perspective provides a framework for how the entity dealt with the person's records.
>>Nature:	As an evaluative piece of information, this category is more subject to dispute than many other categories in the biographical description. Varying interpretations will often lead to commentaries that conflict in significant ways. It is essential that this category include attribution information that identifies the source of the commentary.
SOURCES:	Information in this category will generally be developed by the entity responsible for the biographical description through background research while preparing to survey, appraise, or process papers of the person, or from reference experience in support of research into the person's life and activities.
USES:	By documenting the entity's own perceptions of the significance and role of the described individual, the information in this category can serve to illuminate why the entity treated the papers of the person as it did or why it gave this person the particular emphasis that it did in its various programs. This category can also serve as a preliminary framework within which a researcher can begin to understand the individual and within which he or she can relate individual pieces of descriptive information.
ACCESS:	Most of the information in this category would probably be recorded in unstructured text and one would not need to retrieve it directly through structured access points or free text searching. Because of its subjective nature, however, the nature of the information in this category and its attribution must be apparent whenever it is displayed.
TERMINOLOGY:
EXAMPLES:
INTERCHANGE:	Attribution must be continually associated with this information whenever it is exchanged.
RELATIONSHIPS:	Where the circumstances of a particular event, activity, or status are recorded with regard to other categories of biographical information, they will often present the same concerns about attribution and interpretation that this category does.
PRACTICE:
ISSUES:	This category must be carefully constructed as a synthesis and commentary and not merely as a summary statement of facts recorded in other areas of the biographical description. The purpose of this category must be carefully explained to archival repositories and is likely to raise questions about the propriety of the archivist or the repository engaging in this type of interpretive activity in the context of biographical description. It must be pointed out that it already happens and is an essential part of the repository's priority setting and allocation of effort, and feeds directly into appraisal decisions. As such, it needs to be recorded and labeled explicitly as the repository's rationale for its actions.

ISSUES: