What Does It Really Cost to Digitise an Archive?

This week is International Open Access Week and our friends at the Charles Sturt University Regional Archives have jumped onboard for a guest post!

Not long after the Charles Sturt University Regional Archives began planning its relocation about 10 years ago, a senior university executive toured the collection. Now, we hold approximately five kilometres of records of varying shapes, sizes and formats. Within minutes, he asked, “How much would it cost to digitise it all?”

The short answer to such a question is always, “Oh, many millions of dollars!” The extended answer is that for much of our collection, legislation requires us to keep the original physical record in perpetuity even after it has been digitised. If we digitised the entire collection, we would end up paying to create a second copy, not to replace the first.

The exchange is a useful reminder that the assumption “everything can and should be digitised” runs deep. It is also a good way into this year’s International Open Access Week theme, “The Cost of Knowledge”.

Read more over at the Archives Blog