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Scott,

I agree with Kirsta, but in addition to technical staff you will absolutely need someone who can develop and oversee policies associated with the IR, and work with the communities who will be contributing contents. IRs are a service, not a website or CMS (although the technology obviously underlies services). Our IR went nowhere for a long time until we created/hacked a position to be the non-technical manager.

Mark

----- Original Message -----
> Hi Scott,
> 
> No numbers here, but I recommend budgeting for either a) ongoing
> programmer involvement (staff), or b) support costs with an
> appropriate company for the platform you choose. Minimizing the
> amount
> of unique code a programmer has to write can also go a distance to
> reducing ongoing costs.
> 
> Source: In my work as manager of the Islandora project, I've come
> across some institutions facing challenges for interoperability,
> migration, and updating because the system has been customized by one
> programmer, long since departed (not that this is the model you are
> proposing, but perhaps the horror-story extreme) :P Obviously I am
> biased toward open-source, but I think you need a team that is
> involved in the community surrounding the software to reap the
> greatest benefits, and ongoing programmer support...
> 
> On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 10:04 AM, scott bacon
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > It may be a fool's errand to ask how much it would cost to
> > implement an
> > open source institutional repository, but here goes!
> >
> >
> > Let's first focus on open source and say that there won't be vendor
> > costs
> > for ingesting or downloading materials, that we already have our
> > own
> > purchased servers dedicated to the IR, our own digitization program
> > (scanners and staff), and that we have already tallied cloud-based
> > storage
> > and preservation costs.
> >
> >
> > I have heard that the costs of implementing an open source IR can
> > be as
> > cheap as how much employee time is dedicated to the project. So you
> > have a
> > programmer spend a year or so on implementation and hire a
> > librarian to
> > manage it after that, let's say. Beyond that, are there any
> > hard-and-fast
> > costs associated with getting an IR up and running?
> >
> >
> > I have also read somewhere that it costs just as much to implement
> > an open
> > source IR as it does a proprietary one, but we'd certainly like to
> > reap the
> > benefits of having ultimate control over our own system if at all
> > possible.
> >
> >
> > By the way, if it helps, my institution is classified *Master's S*,
> > with an
> > undergraduate enrollment of just under 10,000.
> >
> >
> > Numbers will vary wildly of course, but if anyone could give an
> > idea of the
> > cost of any component of a project like this, open source or
> > proprietary,
> > it would be most helpful.
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Scott Bacon
> 
> 
> 
> --
> ================================
> Kirsta Stapelfeldt, MA, MLIS
> Islandora Project/Repository Manager
> Robertson Library
> University of Prince Edward Island
> 
> [log in to unmask]
> Skype Name: Kirsta.Stapelfeldt
> 902.620.5096
>