Your Personal Archivist .ca
"Helping you preserve the story of your life"
"Helping you preserve the story of your life"
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Personal Archivist: Services Provided and Costs
The basic charge for our personal archiving services is $24/hour. Therefore the total cost of a personal archiving project will depend on how long it takes to do the various things required to create an archive. To give an idea of what that comes out to in final costs, here is the approximate time required for the most common tasks:1) Initial consultation, evaluation, recommendations - no charge
2) Digital imaging + dating/captioning:
- Photography equipment and items setup: 30 min
- Imaging (items/hour):
- Prints, good condition, well organized: 200 - 300 / hour
- Prints, varying condition, disorganized: 100 - 150 / hour
- Documents, good condition, organized: 100 - 150 / hour
- Documents, varying condition, disorganized: 30 - 60 / hour
- Memorabilia, single angle, not complicated: 30 - 60 / hour
- Memorabilia, multiple angles, complicated: 10 - 30 / hour
- Identification, ascertaining dates, classifying
- Setup time for viewing, recording: 30 min
- If the client can do most of identifying and dating without assistance, the cost will be minimal
- If the client needs some assistance it will naturally take some time
- If identifying and dating require a lot of research the time will add up
- Captioning/notes/stories
- Similar to identification and dating (above)
- Transcribing recordings to create searchable text captions/notes/etc.
- Depending on clarity of voice recordings: 30 - 60 captions and notes / hour
(ie. if clear narration allows speech software to be used for most work) - If a lot of manual transcription is required this could be time consuming
- Depending on clarity of voice recordings: 30 - 60 captions and notes / hour
3) Organizing the Information
- Renaming images/classifying/organizing: 30 min - 1 hour
- Create online storage: 30 min
- Edit/retouch images: depends on quality of images, amount of retouching requested
- Upload all images: 30 min
(this is the time to initiate uploading and check/test the final result; the actual uploading could take a long time but it can run automatically)
4) Reconstructing a More Complete History
For some, simply having photos, documents and images of significant artifacts safely preserved and easy to access will be sufficient. Others may want to go further by recreating the timeline of their own lives or their family history to provide a more interesting narrative, and to put all the images in their proper context. This is actually the most interesting aspect of personal archiving, and we are eager to help with this. The scope of this kind of project can range from simply creating a chronology (aided by the information obtained from the photos and documents), to recording (and transribing) memorable stories, to a full-blown biography (which might be better left to a skilled writer and biographer - assisted by the archives). Of course it's difficult to estimate how time consuming such a project might be, but at least here is an outline of the steps involved:- Create a timeline of your life and/or your family history
- Associate images with dates in timeline
- Record longer stories associated with images and memorabilia
- If desired, tie all of this together by creating a video biography and/or a printed version of this history
5) Computer Tutoring
- The basics on how to use computers, tablets, and/or smartphones: 30 min - 2 hours
- How to browse and share archives: 1 hour
- How to use social networking sites: 1 hour
- How to use blogging sites: 1 hour
- Instructions for uploading to the cloud, creating and editing websites (using the tools available to make this easy), and other technical coaching: 1 - 4 hours
Bottom line estimate: services + basic tutorials
Here is a very rough guide to the total cost of a few typical personal archiving projects:- Only archive photos and documents, assuming approx. 1000 documents: about 8 hours => $200
- Date, caption, timelines (for 500 documents): 20 hours => $500
- Create video biography (per 10 minutes of length): 8 hours => $200