Secondary value (archive)

In the archival context, the secondary value (also secondary purpose) denotes the value of a document that it realizes when it is used as a source of information for a purpose other than its creation. The secondary value is an essential criterion when deciding whether a document is worth archiving in the context of the archival evaluation . The opposite is the primary value, which measures the value of a document in the context of its creation purpose. In principle, almost every document has a primary value, because without this it would not have been created in the first place. However, a secondary value only arises for some of the documents. Example: Invoices held for the purchase of pencils have a primary value in public administration, e.g. B. for reasons of legal certainty; a secondary value cannot be derived from this, because it is at least unlikely that the purchase of pencils by public administrations will become a research-relevant topic in the future.

literature

• Theodore R. Schellenberg : The evaluation of modern administrative documents . Marburg 1990
• Angelika Menne-Haritz : Key terms in archive terminology . 2nd, revised edition, Archivschule Marburg 1999 (p. 83, p. 90)

Web links

• Evelyn Kroker u. a. (Ed.): Manual for economic archives. Theory and practice. Oldenbourg-Verlag, Munich 1998 Google Books