Scanning and Storage Costs Comparison Chart

¹ Shredding services for boxes on campus include approximately $50-$75 in fixed fees in addition to per box pricing.

² Bankers Boxes are standard size 10” x 12” x 15”

³ Disposal at UIUC is free besides the cost of transport with the use of Facilities and Services at UIUC. 

   Disposal at UIC and UIS is not available from Facilities and Services. UIC and UIS offices have local contracts for shredding services with costs that may vary.

⁴ Archival Transfer may have slight costs involved with using hourly support to create a file level inventory and a moving crew to transport the boxes.

This chart is a comparison of prices for scanning, off campus storage, and either disposal or transfer to archives.  If scanning is not standard practice in your office, there are additional costs associated with scanning large volumes of documents, including disposal of the paper after scanning.  Even when hiring Extra Help to do the scanning it can be quite expensive (costs quoted assume $15 an hour and scanning rate of average speed with no checks for accuracy or legibility as well as automated naming conventions).  Using a professional service is more expensive but comes with the security of having a quality check on accuracy of scanned items.  Off campus storage may be a better option for items that need to be retained for more than a year and will not need frequent access.  It would take storing a box in off campus storage for more than a century to be as expensive as scanning that same box by using Extra Help.  The most cost-effective solution for your records is disposing of them and transferring appropriate items to university archives when they have reached retention.