Thank you everyone who responded to my message last
month. My conclusions are hardly representative as the
sample was small - 14 responses, mostly from local
authority archives - but hopefully they will be
interesting.

The average price for an A4 photocopy of original
material (mostly undertaken by archive staff) was more
or less 25p, and indeed most of the responses
indicated a charge of 20p or 25p. Two repositories
charged 10p, and two 45p.

Prices for A3 were slightly higher, with an average of
almost 40p. One charge of 10p was offset by one of
75p, but most were in the range 30p to 50p.

Orders by post were usually charged at the normal
rates but with various handling charges (ranging from
£1.50 to £4.50) or minimum orders (usually £1 or £2),
or more specialised conditions such as an initial cost
of £4 per sheet with subsequent sheets charged at the
usual rate.

Charges for microfilm printouts were more varied, from
10p to 80p per sheet, working out at an average of
45p. Those repositories which charged extra for
print-outs operated by staff generally charged about
twice as much.

Three repositories stated that they were physically
housed in libraries or together with local studies
departments. All offered self-service photocopiers for
books, charged at the lower library rates. One
specialist repository charged higher rates for
photocopying of archival material than books, but most
repositories undertook all copying themselves and did
not state a distinction between books and archives.

There were some responses which detailed other copying
charges for scanning, own photocopying, downloading
from the internet, etc, but these were isolated
messages which it was impossible to generalise on.

On the original question of "social inclusion", only
one (university) repository had sliding scales for
different categories of reader - basically, university
members and students were charged less than other
readers, and in addition students were not charged
VAT.

Thank you all again,

Kathryn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kathryn Summerwill
Archivist
Derbyshire Record Office

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