With the Oregon economy in its current state of crisis with budgets for essential services being cut to the bone, what would genealogists do if the Oregon State Archives closed due to lack of funding? The availability of these priceless records is a gift! If you hire a researcher to do long distance digging, you can expect to pay an hourly rate plus all costs -- travel, parking, copying, postage -- often with a minimum number of hours paid in advance. Genealogy is not an inexpensive undertaking ... apparently, everyone is so used to getting so much from Oregon for so little, that the increase in rates has taken the community by surprise. I'm sorry, when we have the highest unemployment rate in the nation, when our education and social service budgets are being cut to the bone, when our law enforcement agencies face personnel cuts, I can't find much sympathy for complainers about "unfair" research charges -- By the way -- there is are a great many other factors than the cost of postage, paper and ink when determining what to charge for research and the results of that research. Think about it ... how much do you pay for a cup of coffee at your local coffee shop (no not Starbucks)! -- 1.00 per cup, 1.50 per cup? If that coffee shop charged you what the beverage actually costs, you would pay less than a nickel a cup! What drives up the price? Well, the rent, the utilities, the wages, the insurance, the breakage, the losses, the water, the china, the ... you get the idea! Same holds true for the Archives ... they have rent, insurance, utilities, equipment acquisition and maintenance, salaries, etc. Of course, you could go through the Office of Vital Records to get your birth and death certificates ... everyone pays the same amount ... $15.00 each for those certificates from that office. Even with the new rates, the Archives is still a bargain! <<<<<<<<<<<<<<original message>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > No joke - just what on earth make's mailing a piece of paper out of the > > > state that much more expensive. The Post Office still only charges 34 > > cents. And the cost of copy paper is lest than a penny. Ink cartriges > last > > thousands of copies and are only about 40 bucks each. Boy I need a job > at > > this Oregon office. Labor for supplying out of state copies is a real > good > > deal, if you are a crook. You can rip them "out of stater's" off and > they > > are too far away to do anything about it. Hummmmmmmmm. >