Arrangement is the order of the materials in a collection. Sometimes, the arrangement of the collection is an exact representation of how the creator kept it. Other times, an archivist or intermediary put materials into a different arrangement. Usually, records are arranged as a hybrid of what worked for the creator and what the archivist anticipated would make sense to users.
The finding aids in this site tend to describe collections of materials.
Our collections are usually organized by the person who created the materials, not by subject, time, or place.
The repository is the unit at Princeton that is responsible for taking care of and providing access to a set of records.
The term “genre” just describes a type of record. Videotapes, correspondence, diaries, and films are examples of record genres.
In this context, appraisal refers to the decisions that archivists and librarians make about which parts of a collection have research value and which do not. We try to document these decisions so that researchers understand how collections came to us, what may have been removed, and how we made the determinations that we did.
We cannot answer questions about the monetary value of our (or others’) collections. If you are looking for this kind of help, a web search will return lists of professional appraisers.
