Email archivesScanning fees (University Archives)
Announcement of new Archives policy on scanning fees
28 June 2005
In the past several years the IU Archives, like archives all around the country, have been inundated with requests to scan photos and other documents. These requests have come from all types of users, including IU administrators and staff working on projects, students preparing papers, and researchers from outside IU researching the history of the university or its faculty. By far, the most frequently requested scans are for photos. Whereas in the past, users were requesting photographic prints, digital images are now the reference copy of choice, and this trend will only grow.
Over the past couple years, the Archives staff has discussed the costs of providing scanned images to users and has considered charging for this service. We investigated whether other CIC archives were charging for scans, and found that the majority of archives did charge a fee. However, at each point in the past we decided to continue not assessing a scanning fee and to revisit the topic again if the volume of scans increased. In fact the volume continued to increase at an alarming rate, and we decided we needed to explore at least a partial cost recovery price structure.
We began our investigation of pricing by reviewing how much other CIC archives were charging per scan. We found the prices ranged from a low of $5 to a high of $15 per scan. We then considered who would be charged, and if we should employ a sliding scale of charges. Our goal was to keep the price structure simple and yet also reflect our service commitments to our various types of users. After much discussion, we agreed on the price structure outline below. These charges have been reviewed and approved by the IU Library Administration.
For organizations and individuals who have no association with
1 - 10 scans per request: $5.00 per scan
11 or more scans per request: $4.00 per scan
Documents that have already been scanned – No Charge
For IU offices and departments and for IU administrators, staff, faculty, students and alumni
1 – 10 scans per project: No Charge
11 – 49 scans per project: $3.00 per scan
50 or more scans per project: Negotiated
Documents that have already been scanned – No Charge
Our goals or rationale in recommending this fee structure include:
1) We wanted to charge a rate that was on the lower end of the pricing scale established by other CIC institutions.
2) We sought a price schedule that charged non-IU users at a higher rate than our IU customers. This decision reflects an ongoing service commitment to our primary users, the IU community.
3) We wanted to charge a rate that reflected the labor costs of producing an image; so if a document that was requested had already been scanned and only had to be retrieved from our repository, users would not be charged at all for this image.
4) Finally, we felt that charges for higher volume scanning projects should not be tied to a fixed price structure; rather the costs should be flexible and should reflect and accommodate the amount of funding devoted to the project.
We regret we have to assess a fee for scanning services. However, be assured we will do all in our power to keep the costs at a minimum.
Philip Bantin
University Archivist
