Fees
As a nonprofit endeavor, Shared Shelf seeks to generate sufficient revenue to cover the ongoing operational cost of hosting institutional content and sustaining the maintenance and development of the Shared Shelf infrastructure.
The Shared Shelf fee structure combines two annual fees: an Institutional Classification Base Fee and a Service Fee based on the number of digital assets* stored in the system. The fee structure aims to be fair to subscribing campuses by scaling fees to both campus size and utilization of the system.
Shared Shelf is intended to serve as a richly functional repository for the use and management of images. It will provide a cataloging platform; tools for contributing to and using a controlled vocabulary warehouse; the ability to seamlessly host high-quality images derived from your master copy; and functionality for exporting these derivative images and data records for use in the ARTstor Digital Library web environment, other websites, or local programs. Over the next three years, we will work together with the community to determine whether expanding Shared Shelf to serve as a preservation repository for master image files would be desirable. During that time, we will also be exploring the extent to which it would be desirable to expand the service to video and audio files.
Fee structure overview
- Institutional Classification Base Fee: An annual fee that scales based on the classification of institution (consistent with the ARTstor Digital Library classification for an institution).
- Service Fees: Annual asset-based fees that scale based on volume of content stored within Shared Shelf. The asset-based service fee is a proxy for the combined services, tools, and storage provided by Shared Shelf. It does not strictly represent storage costs. The first 5,000 images that an institution manages will not accrue asset-based service fees. This will allow institutions to begin to build collections on the basis of the annual fee alone. Thereafter, the annual asset-based service fees will be calculated by averaging the monthly total assets stored within Shared Shelf. The cost per asset decreases the more an institution stores, eventually reaching a maximum (see chart) when service fees will no longer be levied.
- Migration Fees: Fees for migrating legacy content into Shared Shelf will be determined on a case-by-case basis depending upon the complexity of the data, and will be calculated on a purely cost-recovery basis.
- Consortia Fees: Institutions participating in established, formal consortia who only seek to access other consortial members' image collections through Shared Shelf (and not to upload more than 500 assets of their own institutional or faculty collections) are able to access those consortial collections via Shared Shelf by paying a Passive Access Fee. The Passive Access Fee is calculated at 25% of the Institutional Classification Base Fee, with no asset fee. Should a consortial member qualifying for the Passive Access Fee upload more than 500 institutional or faculty images, that institution would be required to pay the full Institutional Classification Base Fee going forward, plus any associated asset fees.
- Museum Fees: Subscription pricing for museums and other institutions is under development.
Institutional Classification Base Fees
| Institutional Classification | Annual Fee |
|---|---|
| Very Large I | $13,000 |
| Very Large II | $11,750 |
| Large | $10,500 |
| Medium | $8,750 |
| Small | $6,750 |
| Very Small | $4,750 |
| Community College | $2,500 |
| Independent Art School | $2,750 |
Service Fees
| Number of Assets* | Service Fees Per Asset* |
|---|---|
| 5,000 | $0.00 |
| 5,001 – 50,000 | $0.23 |
| 50,001 – 200,000 | $0.21 |
| 200,001 – 260,000 | $0.18 |
* An asset is defined as a source image file (e.g., TIFF, JPG, GIF, PNG, etc.) with one or more corresponding data records.
Maximum Annual Fees
The purpose of asset-based service fees is to recoup storage, related infrastructure, and staff costs to sustain the Shared Shelf platform. However, if allowed to continually accrue, the service fees would begin to over-recover cost. As a non-profit initiative, this is not the goal of Shared Shelf. Thus, annual fees will be capped at a maximum level that is scaled based on classification of institution. The maximum annual fees include the base fee plus asset-based service fees, and once reached, asset-based service fees will no longer accrue. Institutions would only be required to pay their maximum annual fee regardless of the number of images stored in the system.*
| Institutional Classification | Maximum Annual Fee | Storage allotment at the maximum* |
|---|---|---|
| Very Large I | $52,000 | 5.72 Terabytes |
| Very Large II | $47,000 | 5.17 Terabytes |
| Large | $42,000 | 4.62 Terabytes |
| Medium | $35,000 | 3.85 Terabytes |
| Small | $27,000 | 2.97 Terabytes |
| Very Small | $19,000 | 2.09 Terabytes |
| Community College | $19,000 | 2.09 Terabytes |
| Independent Art School | $11,000 | 1.21 Terabytes |
* Pass through storage fees charged at cost (which is currently $1.75 per GB and will decrease annually) will apply once storage allotment is exceeded.
