This section looks at some of the factors that contribute towards the cost of preserving, storing and providing access to items in an archive.

It is important to take a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) approach where all cost aspects are considered (at least to start with, some aspects might be discarded later if inappropriate or negligible).

The ‘total cost of ownership’ includes: production costs of initially digitising content in an archive; operational costs of maintaining, supporting and managing the archive; and unavailability costs such as lost business or the need for additional support should the content or services of an archive become unavailable for some reason.

When calculating costs, there are generally two approaches:

• Predict the cost. This is done by: defining the preservation processes in detail for a particular archive based on content, carriers and condition; costing each step of the process using estimates or quotes; and aggregating the individual costs to create an estimated total cost.
• Measure cost through pilot studies. A representative sample of archive content is selected and then a small-scale preservation project is executed using this sample. External service providers or existing infrastructure is typically used to minimise large capital investment. The benefit of the pilot study approach is that it will typically better reflect the true state of items in the archive and the realities of running a preservation project in practice.

For further details on the approach to assessing costs a close read of the report is recommended. This is a complex area, and any simplification beyond that made in the report would really not do this area justice.