n.the process of determining the fair market value or auction value of a body of archival materialWalden 1980, 101Stretching the Dollar: Monetary Appraisal of Manuscripts [title].Shelstad 2003, 34As for the two donors indicating they will donate more materials in exchange for a monetary evaluation of the items, you need to tell them that the “SAA Code of Ethics” says that it is unethical for an archivist to give monetary appraisal of material headed for his or her own collection.Cook 2006, 121While there are many monetary appraisal precedents available for more traditional archival media, that is not the case for records from large database systems. This note, then, suggests some of the factors that evaluators have developed for this purpose based on several completed monetary evaluations of donor databases.SAA 2013aArchivists cannot give tax advice nor are they permitted to appraise the monetary value of a collection that is under consideration for donation to their repository. The archivist may be able to provide you with a list of local manuscript appraisers who can (for a fee) make monetary appraisals.Skeem 2018, 3The tax benefits offered by a potential donation also came to light with the late twentieth century donor. This presented new problems for archivists such as having to ensure they did not become involved in the monetary appraisal of the materials, as that is unethical and illegal. Yet this places the burden and expense of obtaining the appraisal squarely upon the donor, which may dissuade the donor from executing the gift. Also, if a collection has a high monetary value, such as a collection of autographs, it usually has a lower research value, while collections with high research value do not usually appraise for a high monetary value.Rogers and Sassur 2020, 114The purpose of this article is to review and update our community’s understanding of the monetary appraisal process in order to answer the crucial question, Does monetary appraisal, as it is currently practised in this country, serve the archival community’s interests?NAAB 2022, 5Digital archival materials present a number of challenges for the monetary appraisal process that are distinct from the challenges posed by the appraisal of analog materials. These include the scale of collections, duplication of content, the need for and difficulty of item-level analysis, questions around tangibility, how to evaluate quality or renderability, as well as the general absence of a digital collectibles or auction market.SAA 2022aArchival appraisal of historic material is different than monetary appraisal of historic material, but the two are often confused. Archivists define “appraisal” as determining the enduring value of material within a combination of historical, legal, political, and other types of usefulness to people, whereas in the commercial setting, “appraisal” means assigning a fair market value or auction value to material.
