Visitors pay to visit a museum, school programs cost the participants monies,
photo users get charged, so it always has puzzled me why librarians and
archivists, and in fact anyone who answers research questions feels awkward in
asking for a fee for those services. In fact, researchers get more and better
service that do routine visitors! Simply put, museums spend considerable
resources in making their collections available to researchers. Unless there
are dedicated monies to support this effort, why should researchers get better
treatment than anyone else? In fact many researchers use their results in
various profit making enterprises, and museums should charge fair market
value.... no photo give aways for example, ....Bettman Archive certainly does
not.
 
Setting a rate: The National Maritime Museum at Greenwich has a policy that
says that if the question can be answered in 15 minutes, from reading the
question, to the letter done, do it free, any thing else costs money. How
much? How much does it cost to provide the service? It is not hard to figure
out: what is the hourly including fringes of the person answering the
question? What is the operating budget of the library less personnel, to get a
overhead number. For a researcher who visits the library, how much staff time
does providing service take?  My basic feeling is that something like $25 per
hour would not be out of line. As a membership push, perhaps a museum could
give members a certain number of hours free. Perhaps one might work out some
arrangement for visiting graduate students as well. Many private universities
now charge a non-staff/student fee for access. As the late Mr. Heinlein said,
and I think it goes back in the mists of economic time: TANSTAAFL.
Ben Fuller
seabag enterprises
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