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

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