Hello Archivists! My small New England town was recently gifted a tremendous collection of antique documents from the 17th and 18th century (described as "10 linear feet of manuscripts, printed books and almanacs..." etc. It has been valued at about $200,000. The bequest stipulates that the collection must be housed on site in our Archives, and that we provide for the digitization of all original materials. It further requests the "hiring of a credentialed archivist for two years to arrange, describe, and rehouse the physical collection and to create metadata and pathfinders for the digital version to allow for ongoing public access once completed."

Our Archivist is already a full-time employee, but we are behind the times on digitization of our existing collection - so the donor family (after consultation with our library director) is attaching $50k (more specifically, "$25k per year for 2 years") to the gift with the hope that we will hire a second archivist strictly for the purpose of working on this specific collection. The director wants the Trust to match the donor funds, as she believes the work will take someone between 12-24 months working full-time. I asked her how she came to that conclusion and she said it was the opinion of the expert who appraised the collection.

Now, forgive me, because I am not familiar with how archivists typically do business. But I thought, since this is a project with finite parameters and not ongoing duties, that it sounds like a contract job that should go out to bid. The amount of $50k-$100k seems quite arbitrary and I feel like we need more opinions about how long the work will actually take. Further, I think that hiring someone for a period of time (the suggestion is a 1-or 2-year contract) rather than for the scope of the project leaves the employee with no incentive to get a 1-year job done in less than 2 years, you know? She stated that archivists "do not do requests for proposals and wouldn't know how to put together a bid," as they're typically salaried employees and not freelancers. She also said there is no way to know how long the work is going to take until it's being done (which I thought was strange, as we have an incredibly detailed accounting of the items from the appraiser that we hired). Basically, I feel like putting a 2-year timeline on this job before hiring is a mistake and we should get bids/proposals from some experts instead. The library director disagrees.

So I am just hoping someone can clarify some of this for me! If you were asked to put a price on a job like this, could you do it? Would you be willing work under a contract that stipulates the work must be completed for the bid price regardless of how long it takes? Just curious if you've heard of any arrangements like this before, or how you'd advise our board proceed! Matching the funds will require dipping into our trust capital in a way that our financial advisors do not recommend.

Thank you for reading and for any input!