I guess I should have added the following information to that last article: "I believe the most immediate, substantial contribution of this collaboration will be the addition of local history materials," said Allen County Public Library's Genealogy Center Manager, Curt Witcher. The collaborative project will digitally scan thousands of historic city directories, as well as city and county histories from North America. The ACPL and the Family History Library have the largest collections of city and county histories from North America. "I believe the strength of our two well known, well used, and well loved institutions working together is a terrific benefit to the genealogical community," added Witcher. Once digitized, the collections will have "every word" search capability, which allows users to search by name, location, date, or other field across the collection. The search results are then linked to high quality digital images of the original publication. Digitization efforts have begun. New additions will be noted and hyperlinked in the Family History Library Catalog at FamilySearch.org as they are digitized. The collection can be accessed currently at www.familyhistoryarchive.byu.edu. FamilySearch is providing the computers, scanners, and camera operators required to complete the project. ----- Original Message ----- From: Donna To: wiwalwor@rootsweb.com ; WIROCK-L@rootsweb.com ; wigreen@rootsweb.com Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 3:27 PM Subject: [WIWALWOR] NARA Record Request Fees Go Up Oct. 1 We've known it was coming since the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) proposed last February to raise its reproduction fees for records you order. The good news is, it could've been worse. Effective Oct. 1, NARA will charge $75 for a Civil War pension file of up to 100 pages, plus $.65 per additional page (for longer files, staff will contact the requestor with a price quote before filling the order). NARA will charge $50 for pre-Civil War pension files regardless of page count, and $.75 per page to copy other records. While still a steep increase from the current $37 for a Civil War pension file, these fees are less than the $125 and $60 NARA originally proposed for Civil War and pre-Civil War pensions, respectively. (Still, save some cash by sending your request before October. The July 2007 Family Tree Magazine has instructions for ordering Civil War pensions.) In the Aug. 17 Federal Register, national archivist Allen Weinstein attributes the change to public comment-inspired alterations in formulas for calculating document reproduction costs. Though its average pension file order was for 106 pages, 65 percent of orders were for files less than 100 pages. NARA received 1,281 comments during the 60-day comment period. About half the commenters identified themselves as genealogists. Looks like some comments hit a nerve by saying NARA's proposal exaggerated actual copying costs. Weinstein wrote, "We firmly reject allegations that the fees are being raised capriciously for the purpose of supplementing funding for the agency or reducing the number of reproduction orders received." He added it's not practical to compare NARA's photocopying costs with those of other entities because of archival document considerations including file retrieval and replacement, paper fragility, separating papers from fasteners, placing non-standard-size documents on copiers' glass platens and ensuring image legibility. Weinstein said NARA lacks funding for digitizing all the Civil War pension files. The agency considers them prime candidates for a digitization partnership, but "there is no near-term alternative to the current process for fulfilling fixed-fee order requests for reproductions of Civil War pension files." ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to WIWALWOR-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message