Budgeting for a Digitisation Project

Last updated: 27 January 2009
Published in: Managing a project | Digitising analogue media
Tags: analogue collections | business & community engagement | digital collections | digitisation | funding

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Summary

It is not possible to provide detailed information on budgeting for a digitisation project; these costs will depend on the nature, condition and amount of analogue materials to be digitised and the extent and accuracy of existing metadata. However, some general advice which assigns comparative values to different activities within a project may help when planning a digitisation project.

Staff costs and overheads

An initial decision for any digitisation is: to digitise in-house or to outsource? While outsourcing may seem an expensive option, especially if the cost is given per unit to be digitised, a quote will typically include all overheads and consumables such as energy costs, transport and insurance, telephone services, studio rental, media and of course, labour.

The largest expense for any digitisation project intending to carry out work in-house will be staff costs and related overheads. Actual digitisation equipment cost is likely to be considerably smaller. For the duration of a digitisation project, time most certainly is money. Efficient, streamlined and well-documented procedures can save staff time and therefore expense. Procedures can be developed and even timed during the pre-project phase and a valid estimation of cost per item can be made. Pre-project pilot studies that generate unexpected results allow the scope of the proposed project to be adjusted accordingly.
While digitisation and cataloguing staff may feel confident with day-to-day activities, outside consultation may be desirable for during difficult periods. Experts might be drafted in to assist with specific technical or metadata issues.

Acquiring intellectual property rights and/or payments made to publishers along with licence purchases can considerably increase costs, if archival materials have not been pre-cleared for digitisation.

If biding for external funding, your institution’s existing resources which help to bring down project overheads (for instance working space, staff time, in-house IT or legal support) may count as ‘contribution in-kind’, but check the funders’ application criteria to confirm this.

Equipment costs

Equipment costs vary greatly depending upon the nature of the material to be digitised but some below is a list of general pints to bear in mind:

• Equipment costs depend very much on the required quality of the final digital output. Kit should be purchased in line with standards spelled out within project specifications.
• Service contracts should ensure that faulty equipment is replaced immediately without question to avoid workflow problems.
• Workflow and productivity may increase the more you invest in your digitisation equipment. A large project, for example, will often find that a bigger investment in digitisation infrastructure will make more economic sense in the long run. However equipment can be so advanced that it actually slows down work.
• Obsolete but reliable equipment is likely to prove extremely expensive and should certainly be accompanied by a guarantee or service contract.
• Avoid unproved technologies, as bugs may not have been ironed out and for time-limited projects avoid unnecessary updating in mid-project as vital functionality may be lost.
• Equipment rental gives you access to the most up to date equipment without the initial outlay and someone else is responsible for regular servicing and maintenance. Some rental companies will offer ‘try before you buy’ which allows you to offset the rental costs against the purchase price of equipment.
• Remember staff time is likely to be the greatest single cost so equipment should be replicated wherever possible, to avoid technical faults slowing progress.

Digital preservation and storage

Ongoing delivery and preservation costs are not generally included within digitisation budgets but a preservation policy showing institution financial commitment to sustain the digital resource, once created may be a condition of funding.

Digital preservation costs are remarkable difficult to estimate and are potentially for perpetuity. These costs must also be balanced against potential income generated by the resource. Several recent projects have attempted to describe and quantify the costs of long-term digital preservation. The CEDARS (Curl Exemplars in Digital Archives) has produced a number of papers and tools. The paper Cost Elements of Digital Preservation produced in association with CAMiLEON (for Creative Archiving at Michigan and Leeds) acts as a wonderful overview of the value and benefits of funded digital preservation. The CEDARS project report points out that little is know about the cost of preserving even traditional collections and so it is not a surprise that so little is know about digital ones.

There is a growing acknowledgment though that hard disk storage is becoming increasingly affordable for even modest projects or departments. Hard drive is rapidly replacing data tape formats such as Linear Tape Open (LTO). This strategy allows future error-checking to be at least in part automated, another cost saving measure.

Conclusion

There is a temptation to put off digitisation projects until the prefect media, workflow or piece of equipment is introduced. This will of course, never happen. The best time to digitise a collection of vulnerable analogue materials is as soon as the project becomes financially viable. Once tied into institutional aims and objectives, digitisation should be viewed as an opportunity rather than a drain on resources.
Many public and private funds are available to digitisation programmes, see Potential Sources of Funding for Digitisation Projects for details of some of these. JISC Digital Media can assist in funding bids by working together with applicants on technical aspect of a bid.

Last updated: 27 January 2009
Published in: Managing a project | Digitising analogue media
Tags: analogue collections | business & community engagement | digital collections | digitisation | funding

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