Anon University is a hypothetical university representing a conglomeration of organizations with holdings of legacy physical audiovisual media. It exempli es a universal conundrum that poses a serious threat to the future value derived from content stored on physical audiovisual legacy media. This paper proposes a new model and application for quantifying the nancial and intellectual implications of decisions regarding digitization of physical audiovisual media holdings. Cost of inaction (COI) calculates the return on savings of previous investment in collections while recognizing that the window of possible return is limited because audiovisual media degrade or become obsolete. While the subject of this example is a university, the issue is not speci c to academic institutions. It manifests in organizations of all types and sizes, including government institutions, corporations, non-pro ts, museums, media companies and more. Some of the arguments and positioning may di er based on organization size and type, but the core concepts and calculations are the same.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18146/soima2015.2.06
This article is part of the book ‘SOIMA: Unlocking Sound and Image Heritage‘