Dear Robert, so this is yet different again ;-). The discussion in the list was about a Familienschein, i.e. a document issued by a Civil Registry Office - which has no connection to anything you get from Staatsarchiv, so this shouldn't be confused. As this might be of general interest to others as well, I hope you don't mind that I cc'ed the list. Most Staatsarchivs have fees like "sfr 25 per half hour", always "rounding up", i.e. starting anything, even if it takes only 5 minutes, will always result in these sfr 25 as a minimum fee :-((. I'm not sure about taxis in the US - but when you get into a Swiss taxi, there will be a starting fee of several sfr - before you have actually moved a single inch. This is pretty much the same. Now for just a single photocopy of a quickly located page, some people working at a Staatsarchiv will tend to say "don't bother all the administration", and just send the photocopy ;-). But this is entirely up to the individual person (likely with some rules being issued by the head of the archive), and there are two methods to find out - either just ask for information and find out (like you did - running the risk of being costly), or enquire about fees first. Conclusion : 1) Whenever you ask for information, you are on the safe side when enquiring about possible fees first ! I would recommend to describe exactly what you want, when you enquire about the fee : in some cases you'll just get the info you wanted, free of charge, in others you'll be told how much to expect. 2) Whatever you can do yourself (e.g. copy from a microfilm, if the record in question has been filmed by LDS) you should do yourself - for two reasons : in many cases it will be cheaper - and it will free staff at Staatsarchiv to provide service where you cannot do it yourself, e.g. when a given source has not been filmed by LDS. Good luck with your further research - Wolf ---------------------- Wolf W. Seelentag, PhD, e-mail : wolf@swissmail.com Reherstr. 19, CH - 9016 St. Gallen, Switzerland Tel (home) : +41-71-2885121 Fax : +49-89-2443-91987 Tel (work) : +41-71-4942233 > ---------- > Von: Robert Rothenbuhler[SMTP:piepint@nbtx.com] > Gesendet: Donnerstag, 27. Januar 2000 20:49 > An: Seelentag Wolfhart Dr. KSSG_RO > Betreff: Re: [SWITZ] Familenschein fees (was: Some Advice Please) > > Hi Wolf, > > All I received from the Staatsarchiv is a xerox > copy of a page from a parish book. It was not > certified or registered. There was no stamp on > it as being certified. I provided them all the > infor they needed to go directly to the film. No > research was required on their part. The > copy I received was in old german script which > I translated myself. If I knew it was going to cost > me 25 Schweizer Franken, I would have paid > $4.00 and ordered the film from my local LDS > site and made a copy for 10cents, myself. > > robert > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Seelentag Wolfhart Dr. KSSG_RO <wolf.seelentag@kssg.ch> > To: <SWITZERLAND-L@rootsweb.com> > Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2000 12:39 PM > Subject: [SWITZ] Familenschein fees (was: Some Advice Please) > > > Dear Swiss Rooters, > > > > after the fairly recent discussion about the cumbersome procedure to get > any > > data from Swiss Civil Registry Offices, we now have a discussion about > their > > fees. I'm not going to repeat any of the earlier issues - if you are new > to > > the list, please, search for "ordinance" in "2000" in the list archive : > > http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl > > (note : you have to search for "Switzerland-L" as our list in a first > step > !!) > > > > Let's now turn to the fees : as with the procedure, I'm not going to > defend > > them - just trying to explain ;-) !! >