Evaluation of Costs at Virginia Tech

 

Libraries usually have some of the infrastructure already in place to handle ETDs, especially if they are already providing access to electronic journals or digital images. However, many administrators like to have data about costs associated with an initial budget, and for this reason the following costs for personnel, hardware, and software were established by Virginia Tech’s Digital Library and Archives. Keep in mind that existing personnel and hardware can be commandeered for the ETD prototype and that frequently software is available on the Internet as shareware. This is how the Virginia Tech initiative began in 1995 and continued into the first year of required ETDs, 1997.

 

[taken from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/data/setup.html]

 

These estimates assume that the university/library would adapt existing programs, scripts, Web pages, software, etc. that were developed by Virginia Tech’s Digital Library and Archives (http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses). No additional equipment, software, or staff was necessary for the VT library to begin or to maintain the ETD system and services for the first few years of its initiative. The VT library, however, was not initially responsible for any aspect of training (not the Web site and not the face-to-face instruction), so these costs are not included.

 

$24,000          STAFF

$36,000          EQUIPMENT

$15,000          SOFTWARE

$65,000          Total

 

The estimated costs below show that for about $65,000 a library could replicate the Digital Library and Archives’ ETD initiative if it adapts what VT has already developed for the NDLTD.

 

 

1. Programmer: .25 FTE at $6000-$6,600/yr

$26,602/annual; $12.79/hr

 

    2.   Student assistant: .25 FTE at $2900.00-$4500.00/yr

•  knowledge of PDF and html desirable; train to use ftp and telnet

•  desirable: programming experience

• salary depending on skill level, at VT would be $6.00 - $10.00/hr.

 

 

     3.   Faculty liaison: .25 FTE @ $50,000 = $12,500

 

 

1. server: $11,000

 

Virginia Tech did not purchase equipment for its ETD initiative; instead the library incorporated this additional responsibility into the original server, a NeXt3.3 running HP. In September 1997 VT purchased a Sun Netra:

 

2. RAID disk space: $5,000

 

3. tape drive for back-ups : $3500

 

4. 9 Gb disk drives : $250

    Each ETD requires an average of 2.5Mb

 

5. CD-ROM recorder : $1000

 

6. 2 workstations : $5,000

 

 

            7. SOFTWARE--SERVING ETDS: $250-$15,000:

 

$3000            Netscape Commerce Server (comes at no charge with server)

$10,000          OpenText LiveLink search engine

VT used freeWAIS for first three years of its ETD initiative.

$1700/yr         OpenText 1998 subscription fee for Customer Assistance Program

forward compatible versions of software, monthly product and corp. info updates, access to Product Specialists for technical assistance.

$40 x 2 Adobe Acrobat

$50 x 2 Microsoft Office: including word processor

$150 x 2          Adobe Photoshop

 

 

At VT the computer laboratory called the New Media Center has staff, software, and equipment that helped students with every stage of ETD preparation and submission. Without such a facility, the costs are:

 

1. STUDENT SUPPORT: EQUIPMENT

$1000  CD-ROM recorder

$5000  scanner

$3000  2 printers: LaserJet and Color Printer

$500    digital camera

$1200  VCR, DVD

$600    drawing tablet

 

2. STUDENT SUPPORT: SOFTWARE

$40 x 2 Acrobat

$50 x 2 Word Processor

$150 x 2 Photoshop

 

3. STUDENT SUPPORT: STAFF

• Training and assistance for equipment and software

• Maintenance of training materials, web pages, instructions, and handouts

 

Cataloging Costs

These may not change from the costs of cataloging traditional theses and dissertations. One advantage is that for the same costs, more information can easily be added to the bibliographic record because of the copy-and-paste features of word processors. For example, include the abstract in online catalog records for ETDs and index this MARC field to enhance findings through keyword searching. Another advantage of ETDs is that there are no longer the fees associated with binding, security stripping, labeling, shelving ($.10/vol. estimated), circulating ($.07/vol. estimated), etc. The Virginia Tech Library saved about 66% of the processing costs because of the greatly reduced handling of ETDs; costs dropped from $12 per TD to $3.20 per ETD.

 

Evaluation of the HR needed for the ETD Program at Humboldt-University

 

The estimates are for approx. 15 doctoral dissertations per month written in WinWord, with a usual amount for graphics, tables, literature and nearly no multimedia. These estimations are for rendering XML ETD.

 

Duty	Personal Estimates
Accepting Format Control of Word Applying Digital Signatures Courses for authors one day per month WebPages Production of Information material	1 Computing Center staff + 1 student worker with 20 hrs/week
Conversion to SGML/XML	All in all 1 person
Producing Printing Copies from the PDFs delivered by the students (German law says there have to be 4 high quality paper copies for archiving)	Library staff (20% of time)
Metadata	1 librarian (20% of time)
Management	Approx. 20% of a management person in the library

 

Evaluation of the HR needed for the ETD Program at Lyon 2

 

The estimates are for approximately 130 theses a year for rendering XML ETD. One full time person is needed for the deposit (verification, edition and printing), conversion, and metadata production. A student is necessary on some particular periods (just before the dead-line for academic job appliance).

The training takes one week a year. The management, communication, development of web pages and pedagogical tools can be estimated as .5 FTE of a professional.

 

Evaluation of the HR needed for the ETD Program at Université de Montréal

 

The estimates are for approx. 350 doctoral theses per year written in WinWord, with a usual amount for graphics, tables, literature and nearly no multimedia. These estimations are for rendering XML ETD with HTML version for distribution on the Web.

 

Duty	Personal Estimates
Accepting Format control of Word and LaTeX files Workshop for students WebPages Conversion to SGML/XML	1 FTE technician staff
Development and administration of the system Resolving problems of conversion Conception of training tools for workshop	1 FTE professional
Metadata (MARC and Dublin Core)	0.25 FTE library technician
Management	0.25 FTE of a manager