Introduction

If you are going to acquire, lend or borrow, insure, deaccession or receive items on temporary deposit, you will certainly need to know the monetary value of the objects. This need not affect or interfere with the object's intrinsic worth or its importance to your collection. There is no right or wrong answer about whether to value or not to value but you should be clear about why a monetary value is necessary and when a value should be sought.

Decisions on when and why to value should come from the top and not be made under pressure when an object is going on loan and requires an immediate value for insurance. Under such circumstances, there is probably no time to do the research and the estimate may be a hurried guess. If there is a valuation policy, it should state that sufficient time must be given for the necessary research and consideration to allow an estimate to be produced and justified. Notes on research and comparisons with similar items should be retained and kept on file for the next time.

As in all areas of due diligence, staff should not be left alone to make decisions, particularly if they feel unqualified or under pressure. There should be an organisational policy on valuation with guidance provided, so that a procedure is followed. This does not have to be onerous or lengthy. It could simply be a page of guidelines and resources on the internal website.

Valuation policy

Few publicly held collections have a written valuation policy. It is more common in large organisations that may be responsible for a number of different properties (see the National Trust example, p. 7) or those with departments that are geographically at some distance. Larger organisations are likely to have experienced staff who have built up knowledge of the collections and keep abreast of current values. In most cases, the decision is taken by one or two experts with perhaps a second opinion from another staff member if there is a particularly difficult situation. In many organisations, for example the National Library of Scotland (see p. 102), acquisition decisions are a shared endeavour within the department and values are discussed collectively.