Turning your library into an insurance schedule: what you own, what it is worth, and the paper behind both. For the Dealer plan.
What It Is
An insurer settling a claim establishes three things: that you owned the copy, that it had the value you claim, and that it was in the condition you describe. Shelvd already records all three. A report puts them in one document, adds the totals, and says in plain words where the values come from.
You choose what goes in, on which basis the values are stated, and how much detail each copy gets. You get a PDF and a spreadsheet with the same lines and the same total.
Basis of Value
The first thing an insurer reads is not your total. It is the words above it.
- Market value. What the copy would fetch: the hammer price, the price a buyer pays a willing seller.
- Replacement value. What it would cost to buy a comparable copy from a dealer, which is higher, because search, margin and retail are part of it. Shelvd adds the percentage you name and prints that percentage in the declaration.
- Agreed value. The figure you and the insurer have settled on, which is the usual arrangement for unique and irreplaceable copies.
Whichever you pick appears on the title page and in the declaration. A report that does not name its basis is not usable.
What Goes In Each Entry
Identification (author, title, place, publisher, year, edition), the physical description (format, binding, pagination, illustrations), the condition with its notes, the provenance in short, where the copy is kept, up to three photographs, the value with its source and date, and the documents that prove it.
The value is the one Shelvd itself calls current: the top entry in the valuation history. That is why the total in a report equals the total on your statistics page. When that value is a purchase price, the declaration says so, because a price paid in 2009 is not a market valuation of today.
Before You Issue It
Check the selection first. Shelvd counts what is thin: copies without a value, values older than three years, copies without a photograph, copies without a document proving them. None of that appears in the report. It is for you, and the time to act on it is now rather than after the water has come in.
A Report Does Not Change
Once issued, a report keeps its own copy of every line. Rename a book tomorrow, sell it next year, delete it: the report still says what it said on the day you issued it, and that is exactly why it counts as evidence. Issue a new one each year and you have a series that shows a collection growing, which is the story an underwriter wants.
The Spreadsheet
Insurers as often want a table as a document. The spreadsheet carries one row per copy, with catalogue number, author, title, year, edition, condition, value, currency, source, date and the number of supporting documents, plus the same total. It pastes straight into their system.
What Stays Out
Internal notes, your margins, and anything you marked private. Reports are private files: only you can open them, they have no public address, and support cannot read them while helping you.