The CCEx uses cookies to keep your session alive and personalised to your log-in.

By continuing to use the CCEx without changing your browser settings, we assume you are happy with this. Find out more by reading our Privacy Policy.

I understand

Curation Costs Exchange

Understanding and comparing digital curation costs to support smarter investments

  1. Understand your costs
  2. Summary of Cost Models
  3. CDL-TCP

Total Cost of Preservation (CDL-TCP)


Creator and Funding
The model was (and is being) developed by the California Digital Library (CDL), UC Curation Center (UC3) under a Creative Commons Attribution - Sharealike 3.0 license.
Status
The latest version of the TCP pricing model tool and whitepaper is rev 2.1 from 2013.
Purpose
Modelling the full economic costs of preservation the “total cost of preservation” (TCP) over time in order to sustain long‐term preservation efforts—effective and affordable curation management. UC3 itself needs a TCP model in order to move many of its core service offerings to a cost recovery operational basis.
Information assets
Any kind of digital asset—the model uses a generic; abstract level.
Activities
Ingest, Data Management, Archival Storage, Preservation Planning, Access, Administration, Management.
Resources
Total cost: in the tool total cost is refined into subsidiary costs such as capital cost, labour cost, operational cost, one-time, term or annual costs (called scope), fixed cost or marginal cost (proportional cost). Term costs are annualized over their lifespan and adjusted for inflation.
Time
Present, future—10 year scope.
Variables
More than 100. For example for “Migration” there are unit costs for: refreshment, replication, repackaging, transformation. For “Staff” there are 12 kinds of roles with salaries, FTE day rates.
Type of tool
Analysis tool implemented as a MS Excel spreadsheet.
Availability of tool
The tool is available for download.

Further reading