COI adds a data point to ROI, or Return on Investment, and helps articulate what stands to be lost or gained in terms of finances, access, and intellect based on different scenarios related to digitization, physical storage, digital storage, and media longevity. 

This tool is not an argument to digitize everything, but rather to help caretakers make informed decisions that promote and enable progress towards taking action. With the window closing on our opportunity to preserve the audiovisual record we can't do everything, but we can do something. COI is a means to quantify what that something can be.