n. (also exhibit value)the importance and significance of the visual and aural aspects of a record and the significance of the situations of its creation that make it useful to present in a public displayBrichford 1975, 380Archivists would not regard replacing pulled material with a transfer sheet as an optional practice. The presentation on graphic archives should include a statement on their special exhibit value and the problems involved in making reference prints available to users.Brichford 1977, 8Manuscript copies and galleys of published works should be kept only if they show significant change or if they have exhibit or commercial value.Hubener 1988, 49The intrinsic factors that make the volumes worth preserving in their original format are the artistic use of the skin, gold tooling, and marbled-pattern paper; evidence of technological development; age; and exhibit value.Hedstrom et al. 2006, 162–163Factors such as age, evidential value, aesthetic value, scarcity, associational value, market value, and exhibition value help archivists, librarians, and curators decide when to preserve materials in their original form rather than, or in addition to, reformatting them.Patrick-Burns 2015, 57Best practice for preservationists has already identified certain qualities that merit preservation of the original: age, evidential value, aesthetic value, scarcity, associational value, market value, and exhibition value.
Notes
Exhibition value is one of the values related to the intrinsic value of a record. The existence of two forms of this term (one with “exhibition” and one with “exhibit”) derives from the fact that North American speakers of English rarely make a distinction between the two nouns anymore. Although this value refers to a record’s potential usefulness as a single exhibit within a larger exhibition, people are more apt to say they saw that record in an exhibit rather than at an exhibition.
