Hi
Thanks to those who responded to my enquiry about fees for digitisation of archival items. Here is a summary of what I found out, based the responses and what other services say on their websites.
One service said they do not usually charge as they feel they benefit from having more digital material to make available online – they only charge when digitisation is outsourced (for large numbers or oversized items), in which case they charge the costs plus £5.
Some services charge an hourly rate; most charge by number of images.
Some services make a distinction between high and low resolution images – in this case I found fees for high res images ranging from £14.40 to £30 per image.
For low res images (and sometimes for high res), services often charge more for the first image and then a lower fee. Examples are:
• £25 set up + £1 per image
• £2.50 per image; £1 per image if 10+ images
• £8.40 first image, then £1.20 per image
• £5.00 first image, then £1.50 per image
• £12 for 1-5 images, then £1.50 per image
• £13 first image, then £0.50 per image
• £3.00 per image up to 10, then £1.80 per image
• £15 first image, then £2 per image
I did some calculations and found that using the above examples, the fee for just one image varies from £2.50 to £26; for 10 images from £10 to £35 (with most somewhere around £20); and for 100 images from £62.50 to £213 (with most between £100 and £150).
Some services don’t distinguish between high res and low res, and/or don’t reduce the fee after the first image – e.g. charging £10 or £15 per image for all images. One service offers up to 5 images for free, then charges £10 per image, while another charges only £0.85 per image for items smaller than A3.
I hope others find this helpful.
Best wishes,
Nathanael Hodge
Archivist
Mills Archive
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