The economics of a cooperative EAD project

Retrospective conversion is a costly endeavor, especially when the quality of description utilized during the mark‐up process is insufficient according to data content standards. When retrospective conversion is implemented in a cooperative project, the problems are compounded. Administrators and encoders alike are forced to reckon with legacy data formats and descriptive styles that do not match those utilized in their own archival practices. Often, more time and financial expenditures must be placed on administrative duties in order to deal with the lack of standardization. Efforts to mitigate the high cost of cooperative projects are discussed.