Economic issues pose a significant challenge for long-term preservation of digital materials. Considering the looming danger and, in fact, prevalent occurrence of losing valuable documents, this issue has to be tackled urgently. Due to the long-term character of any such project, it is integral that a basic budget is granted for many years in advance, such that fluctuations in income do not result in parts of the collections being abandoned.
There remain many uncertainties for adequately calculating costs. This is due to the fact, that technology will be applied, with which virtually no experience exists. The absence of actual models and concrete figures makes it impossible to calculate the cost of real activities in production environments [Ken01a]. Even worse than the lack of readily available products and services to support preservation, partly research has not come far enough to roughly predict the probable requirements.
For each of the outlined tasks to build an archive designed to endure over the long term basic requirements can be pointed out, depending on the strategy applied to tackle the challenges. At the first stage, any more sophisticated selection and organisation of the data requires heavy input of personnel.
For the acquisition of the documents an appropriate software environment has to be installed. No matter whether a rather passive or an active method is applied, the system must meet current demands, yet, be flexible for extension in the future. For the actual retrieval of the digital documents fees could be charged depending on the source. Even if only open-access material is involved, costs arise. In this case, expenses incurred can be put down to the channel for transferring the data.
Storage facilities will cover a big portion of the overall costs. At the same time it is a difficult task to predict the actual costs of an archival repository accounting for failure detection, upgrades, and other operational measures to ensure its reliability [CGM01b]. The dilemma between a capacious, quick, robust, and at the same time low priced system has already been pinpointed in Section 2.3. Additionally, any solution has to be flexible and prepared for upgrade, as any hardware environment is prone to become obsolete while the archive is still in place.
Particularly difficult to predict appear costs for long-term preservation, yet, they are considered to be significant. For any strategy it can be stated, that costs saved at the stage of ingest of data, and the management and preservation of the collection items will augment expenses associated with regaining access to the documents, making up for mistakes and carelessness.
Technology preservation has to expect steadily rising costs as time passes, in fact, it is doubtable whether obsolete computer systems can actually be maintained over the long run. Continual expenses can be anticipated for the approach of Conversion, since regular cycles will have to be performed converting all documents to new formats. With the size of the repository costs will rise as well. Emulation shifts the costs to the point, at which the data is entered into the archive and an encapsulation together with the metadata has to be compiled, and to the provision of access, when an emulator has to be provided and the original environment of the document has to be recreated.
Lastly, costs for providing access demand a policy. A conceivable method is to allow usage of the repository on site only. Alternatively, the archive could offer the possibility to access the collection items remote via the Internet. Having determined an appropriate method and provided a solid structural framework of the repository, costs can be calculated quite accurately based on existing experience with these services in other areas of information and communication technology.
The equipment for the ingest of the material, for the maintenance of the collections, and for providing access will be the focus of budget planning. However, other structural prerequisites have to be considered, also. For instance, costs for the physical location of the archive have to be taken into account. And, of course, staff is required for all operations.
Naturally, costs cover only one aspect of the economics. Yet, at this stage revenue cannot be calculated accurately either. Naturally, income is very dependant on how the services offered by the archive will be utilised, which can hardly be predicted for such a long time in advance.
However, there are basic models for charging the utilisation of general digital libraries, which could be adopted. Those include monthly subscription fees, per-minute or per-byte payments. Also, advertising could be implemented [Les97]. If only scholars are allowed access in the course of specific projects, the prize could be adapted to the size of the very project. Other, specialised services could also be charged. Yet, which of those models or combination of models is feasible, or whether a new payment system has to be developed, will have to be investigated as the services are actually utilised. The actual demand will determine the model and balance the prize.
For an archive, the scope of which is somehow delimited, e.g., being part of a company or that is built to preserve specific music recordings, planning can be based on several fixed references. Designed for a clearly defined purpose, its use can be roughly predicted. Also, routines in place for ensuring long-term preservations will face completely new demands rather rarely. For instance, it can be expected that the musical archive of a radio broadcasting station does not extend its scope to incorporate video formats also.
A national archive has a very comprehensive scope and is laid out for many generations to come. To plan that far in the future is extremely difficult, if not impossible, especially in these fast moving times. Exacerbating this is the impossibility to anticipate, whether a national archive, which is planned to be operating for hundreds of years adapting to ever new requirements, will enter operations having the status of routine work at any time. Yet, it should be in the interest of any nation to retain its cultural heritage. Therefore, a solid subsidy is aspired from governmental bodies perhaps as a fixed component of the funding granted to the national deposit institution.