I value, you value, we value… but what’s the value? Value assessment as a tool to manage sound and image collections

Today‚ audiovisual collections account for a large portion of the world’s memory. They are part of museums, serve as research documents for various types of scientific institution, register history and provide us with a tangible witness of our most precious memories. Even though sound and image collections are generally accepted as being part of our cultural heritage, determining how to open such collections to a large audience is far from simple. Although value and signi cance assessments are increasingly used as collection management tools, they are labour intensive and organizationally demanding activities for collection managers and institutions. Nevertheless such assessments are vital to ensure proper collection management today and in the future. Likewise they provide us with an excellent tool in communicating about audiovisual collections, prioritizing in case of digitization and rendering their management comprehensible. This paper outlines a three-step methodology designed to facilitate assessing value in audiovisual collections.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18146/soima2015.2.09

This article is part of the book ‘SOIMA: Unlocking Sound and Image Heritage