Hi, I'm glad to see some discussion about photo use fees, and at least one example of actual numbers. I can add a little more information: we do waive use fees for museums. We'll probably waive use fees for scholarly publications, although my committee is still debating it - dissemination of information v. a commercial product someone's making money on. (I know, how much money do scholarly books really bring in?) Many use fee schedules I've seen have separate rates for profit and non-profit requests. And I've seen schedules for commercial use that are itemized according to use and quantity - $X if used on postcards, $Y if used on T-shirts, etc. We also create copy negatives (customer pays, we keep) and are scanning our collection. My feeling is that it's not a huge hassle to fill these requests, if they know what they want. If you request "photos of Greek Revival houses built in a certain year", you need to do the research yourself (archives are open 4 days a week, $5 fee for non-museum members) or we charge a $15/hour fee to do it. Museums are tempted to charge discouraging or punitive fees because A) we're overworked and B) we've all met the researcher who treats us like dirt and wants everything yesterday for free. But we do need to charge use fees because photos are a commodity like everything else. If you're decorating a restaurant (anyone else get those requests), printing a shirt, or making a coffeetable book, you're already shelling out a lot of money and photo use fees should be budgeted in. And we do need to look for revenue sources - if we can't keep the doors open, we can't preserve the photographs. So the question remains, how much is too much? John Marks Geneva Historical Society ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).