----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Why can't you base your fees on costs plus a reasonable profit instead of
willy nilly doubling just to raise money for unrelated purposes?  Want to
pay 64-cents to mail a letter tomorrow, just because the Germans, French and
English do it?  That's the parallel.
 
With a price spiral like that, fairly soon we'll have the dollar buying
about what an Italian lira gets now.
 
LNadybal
Washington DC
 
At 03:43 PM 27/11/1996 EST, you wrote:
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>
>Dear Maps-l,
>   MAP Library staff at the UO Library have asked the Administration to
>raise the research fees from $25.00 per hour to $50.00 per hour for in-state
>requests and from $50.00 to $75.00 for out of state requests.  These fees
>are charged almost exculsively to environmental consultants searching for
>aerial photography.  Our AUL has asked me to find out what other libraries
>charge in order to justify our increases.  The largest private research firm
>servicing environmental consultant's needs for aerial photography, charges
>$49.00 for each search and $95.00 for prints of aerial photography
>(quantity or whether laser or photographic prints is unknown).  I have
>passed this information along to her, but she wants some figures from
>other academic libraries.
>
>   Here at the University of Oregon, we charge $25.00 per hour for our
>staff research time.  Our aerial photography collection is closed.  Upon
>receiving a request for photography, we identify and retrieve photography,
>most often, call the consulant back with the results of our search, mask
>off the site on each photogrph for laser copy enlargements, send off and
>receive back the photographs from the copy center, provide documentation
>for each photo, wrap up and send off to the consultant a packet of laser
>copies of the site in question.  This takes about an hour of staff time,
>thus, the cost comes to $25.00 per site/$50.00 per site for out of state
>requests.
>
>   We would be interested in hearing from other libraries who charge
>research fees to off-campus users.  Please respond to the list.  Has
>anyone else had problems convincing Library Administration to charge fees
>in the first place?  I think this is a real "blind-spot" for ULs and
>AULs, especially at public colleges and universities.
>
>Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to provide.
>
>Peter Stark
>
>