This panel seeks to answer the deceptively simple question of the cost of digitization. When digitization projects vary by collection type, quality, and format, as well as project scope, institutional capacity, workflows, and long-term goals, it is not always clear how to estimate the cost of a specific project. How can you tell if you are spending too much on digitization? Should you consider strategies to reduce costs or increase efficiency? How do different approaches affect quality and sustainability?
This session brings together three speakers who work directly with these issues. Joyce Chapman will discuss her work on the Digital Library Federation (DLF)’s cost assessment working group, which is developing the Digitization Cost Calculator (beta), a planning tool that provides time and costs estimates for digitization projects. They also drafted best practices and guidelines for the collection of time data for various digitization processes. Jen Palmentiero will explore how collaborations can reduce digitization costs for smaller organizations. For the last 12 years, SENYLRC has supported its members' digitization efforts through their Hudson River Valley Heritage (HRVH) service. Jen will illustrate the wide range of local costs by highlighting a few members' projects and will share information on the costs shared by SENYLRC. Sandra McIntyre will discuss the work of MWDL’s Digital Services Pricing Task Force, which conducted an environmental scan of prices offered by a number of vendors and DPLA Service Hubs and instituted a process for establishing common charges across the digitization centers maintained at MWDL partner institutions. The resulting Digital Services Price List provides predictability for costs for basic digitization, hosting, and metadata services offered to libraries, museums, and archives in the MWDL network.
This session is organized by Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives, a program of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).
