Salvage Priorities Questionnaire
In establishing priorities, consider these questions:
1. What is the monetary and intrinsic value of the collection as a whole or of individual items?
2. How fragile is the material? (Is it brittle? Does it consist of unbound issues of serials?)
3. How vulnerable is the material to damage from a disaster? (Is it located under pipes or near water fountains?)
4. Is the material replaceable? Can most of the items be replaced in the same format or a different one? What are the economics of replacing items? Which materials can be replaced more economically than they can be salvaged? What is the estimated average replacement cost of a monograph? What are the costs (direct and hidden) of deaccessioning materials? What materials can be discarded rather than salvaged? What are the legal requirements, if any, for retaining documents and material?
5. Why is preserving this material critical? (What is its importance to collections or to institutional programs?)
6. Besides the collections, what other items are valuable for operations? (The catalog, shelflist, terminals, other data?)