Rich,

NARA recently released some pricing guidelines at https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/policy/frmc.

The use case is for mass conversion of paper in a records management context, so they seem a bit low to me. I've seen 32 cents per page (QC included) for maybe higher quality archival collections scanning, which might be a bit high.

As others have said the AV piece is harder to generalize. We recently had ~500 cassettes containing spoken word converted at about $20 each.


John P. Rees
Archivist and Digital Resources Manager
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
301-827-4510



-----Original Message-----
From: Rich Kulawiec <[log in to unmask]> 
Sent: Monday, August 5, 2019 9:10 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Request for assistance: costs of (outsourced) bulk digitization

I'm trying to put together a cost estimate for vendor digitization of a large number of (a) paper documents of varying sizes (b) photos - color and b/w (c) videos - on VHS, Beta, etc. (d) films - mostly 8mm (e) audio recordings - cassettes and reel-to-reel.

I've gotten far enough along to realize that consumer prices for small quantities probably aren't a good metric, and that there will be a sharp difference between "routine" scanning of materials that are well-preserved and "remedial" scanning of materials that will require special attention.
But I'm struggling to find pricing for large quantities, e.g., 20,000 pages of printed newsletters or 5,000 photos or 300 cassettes.  I'm hoping that others who've traveled this road recently can provide some guidance on what vendors are likely to charge.

Thanks,
Rich