Costs of curating are difficult to identify.  But I've been asked how much
does it cost to care for a collection in our Special Collections....or the
maps...etc.    The answer is to:  add all the fixed costs (staff salaries,
fringe benefits, etc. plus other costs attributed to the department (i.e.
postage, telephone, supplies, etc.)....  In our case, as part of a Library,
it is impossible to determine costs like power, telephone, etc. since these
are lumped together.  It probably could be determined (i.e. cost of the
library for electricity for one year divided by the square footage to get
annual electric cost per square foot multiplied by the square footage occupied
by the department)....       So you take all the costs you wish to assess
and then divide them by either number of objects being curated or by the
collections.
 
For example, I estimate that our fixed costs in this department are on an
annual basis around $60,000; this covers a collection of 800,000 items so
annual curation could be 7.5 cents per item;  there are approximately 2,000
maps at this point (not counting the uncataloged hoard) so maps would be
$150 per year..... or maps are one of the 800 collections so $75 per
collection.   Ironically when collections are broken down to this figure
level, they seem so miniscule.....so when someone says "why don't you get rid
of all these old xxxxx"....I can point out, they only cost us $75 per year
to maintain.....   And these figures would drop since the numbers of collection
s and items grow much faster than salaries and staff.
 
Dean DeBolt, University of West Florida