Records are stored information created or received by an organization that has value and requires retention for a specific period of time. They have administrative, fiscal, legal, and historical value. Archives are facilities that preserve records of continuing or historical value. Records have primary values relating to their original purpose and secondary values as research materials. Primary values include administrative, fiscal, legal, and historical, while secondary values are evidential, informational, and intrinsic. Intrinsic value refers to records that must be preserved in their original form due to qualities like physical characteristics, age, or association with important people or events. The archivist determines which records have intrinsic value.

1. The Value of Records and
Archives
Gizelle DR. Dela Cruz, RL., LPT.
Master of Library and Information Science

2. What is Records?
Stored information made or received by an
organization that is evidence of its operations
and has value requiring its retention for a
specific period of time.

3. The Value of Records
Administrative Value
Fiscal Value
Legal Value
Historical Value

4. Fiscal Value
 Records used to document operating funds and other
financial processes.
Administrative Value
 Records that help employees perform office operations.
Legal Value
 Records that provide evidence of business transactions.
Historical Value
 Records that document the organization’s operations and
major shifts of direction over the years.

5. What is Archives?
Facilities where records of an organization are
preserved because of their continuing or
historical value.

6. The Archival Values
PRIMARY VALUES
 Administrative
 Fiscal
 Legal
 Historical
SECONDARY VALUES
 Evidential
 Informational
 Intrinsic

7. Primary Values
 Relate to purpose(s) for which records were created
 The assumption is that records are needed by records creators
for a period of time, after which they are no longer needed by
the records creators.

8. Secondary Values
 Information contained in records which is of interest not only
to creator but also to researchers from a variety of fields of
knowledge
 Information is often gathered originally for a purpose quite
different from users to which the researcher will put the
records.

9. Evidential Values
 Value of those records which are necessary to provide an
authentic and adequate evidence of an organization's actions,
functioning, policies, and/or structure. Evidential value relates
to the document's creation and not necessarily to its content
or informational about the activities, functions, and origins of
its creator.

10. Informational Values
 That (unlike evidential value) is derived from the content
information a document or record contains on people, places,
subjects, etc.

11. Intrinsic Value
 is the archival term that is applied to permanently valuable
records that have qualities and characteristics that make the
records in their original physical form the only archivally
acceptable form for preservation. Although all records in their
original physical form have qualities and characteristics that
would not be preserved in copies, records with intrinsic value
have them to such a significant degree that the originals must
be saved.
 The qualities or characteristics that determine intrinsic value may be
physical or intellectual; that is, they may relate to the physical base
of the record and the means by which information is recorded on it
or they may relate to the information contained in the record.
Records with intrinsic value may be retained for either their
evidential or informational value.

12.  The archivist is responsible for determining which records
have intrinsic value. Ordinarily this determination is made at
the series level. As in all other archival appraisal activities,
context is the key to making these determinations and context
is normally best preserved by considering the entire series.
The archivist, however, also may determine that certain
individual record items within a series have intrinsic value,
especially those items to be retained because of special
physical characteristics.

13. Qualities and Characteristics of Records
with Intrinsic Value
1. Physical form that may be the subject for study if the records provide
meaningful documentation or significant examples of the form
2. Aesthetic or artistic quality
3. Unique or curious physical features
4. Age that provides a quality of uniqueness
5. Value for use in exhibits

14. 6. Questionable authenticity, date, author, or other characteristic that
is significant and ascertainable by physical examination
7. General and substantial public interest because of direct
association with famous or historically significant people, places,
things, issues, or events
8. Significance as documentation of the establishment or continuing
legal basis of an agency or institution
9. Significance as documentation of the formulation of policy at the
highest executive levels when the policy has significance and broad
effect throughout or beyond the agency or institution

15. “Sometimes, you won’t ever
know the true value of
something until it becomes a
memory”.

16. Thank you
and
God Bless !