Hi, We're a small historical society - budget under $500,000/yr, 6 FT staff - with an archives and reading room. Access to the reading room stacks is free, access to archive files (brought out by archivist) is $5 for non-residents, $3 for city residents, and free for society members and students of any age. For research requests by e-mail/phone/ mail, we charge $15 an hour and report all our findings including negative ones (we checked the following resources and found nothing). We charge 25 cents a page for photocopies, $5 for computer scans of photographs (printed on good inkjet photo paper), and a $25 use fee per image. The use fee is regardless of use - many places charge more for use in a television show, less for postcards, etc. We do waive the fee for scholarly articles and publications. We have a separate income line item in our budget for Archives - the research, copy, and use fees go into it - last fiscal year we "made a profit" - brought in more than we spent on archival supplies. We're constantly improving our storage and spend a lot on archival folders, paper, photo and ephemera sleeves, boxes, etc. - so offsetting that expense with our fees is a big deal for us. I encourage you to establish reasonable fees. Few people balk at our fees, and we always explain the money goes directly to preserving the collection. We have no significant costs in processing the fees - money goes in an envelope, our bookkeeper counts it and enters the amount under Archive Income. Free publicity from appearing in publications only generates more researchers, more work, more impact on the materials, without the money to buy supplies. John Marks Curator Geneva (NY) 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).