At least part of what we all do is what I call "civic
fetishism"--whatever else we may think we are doing, we are helping
our particular culture to commodify the Past, the Beautiful, etc.
When other, money-making means of commodification (e.g., the media)
have sufficiently permeated the culture that it no longer has to pay
for this service, it's not too surprising that the pay of
cultural-perpetuation professionals falls through the floor, or may
be dispensed with altogether. They never really wanted to pay for
our critical talents in the first place, and the full-blown,
perpetual-motion commodification machine dispenses with those
inconveniences.

Pat Galloway
MS Dept. of Archives and History