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Re: Thanks for the advice on "Too Many Copies"



Sorry for chiming in a bit late, but am I  the only one who is thought that
much of the advice was not great?
The general tone, with a few exceptions, especially from colleagues at
government archives,  was that  researchers were unreasonable in making
large photocopy requests,

I can see legitimate reasons to limit photocopying:
--intellectual property limitations  (but how much value does an Archives
really get by monopolizing its holdings?)
--the staff is unable to handle the request, and it is not possible to hire
more staff for the purpose  (for university archives, are there really no
work study students or part-timers to do copying?  or what about, under some
conditions, letting patrons copy for themselves?)
--preservation problems with the material being copied.
-- privacy or access restrictions on individual or corporate records (though
this is more of an access than photocopy problem).

However, the tone in the postings seemed to be, "Thank G-d we have a good
reason not to fulfill this difficult and time-consuming request. "    Our
response should rather be, it is unfortunate that we don't have the
resources to fulfill your request, and then to try and find a way of doing
so.  The suggestion  of microfilming heavily used collections with a view
towards easier use without damage to the originals was an excellent one.  If
a collection is used heavily enough, and access is not restricted, it would
also seem to be a good candidate for digitization so that it could be made
available over the web. There seems to be an attitude among archivists that,
for the most part, only those who are able to spend large amounts of time at
our repositories  are really legitimate researchers.  Everyone else is not
serious and less worthy of our help.

An excellent article on this theme, from the perspective of public
libraries, was published in American Libraries in October 1999:   "Customer
service and the 'rule of 1965'", by  Karen Hyman and Molly R Pederson.   The
Rule of 1965 dictates:

 Anything the library did prior to 1965 is basic; everything else is
 extra. Any new service must be offered begrudgingly-- for decades.
 Patrons must jump through hoops to get it.

Of course archives must protect records from abuse, and ensure their
availability and integrity for the future.  However, archives also exist to
be used.  Rather than worrying that researchers are abusing our resources by
publicizing them, shouldn't we be thankful that they are being used at all?
The use of archives is threatened in an age when many researchers  think
that everything worth reading is available on their desktops over the Web.
If we want our resources to be used in the future as they deserve to be, we
will have to meet our patrons more than half way. Although this will
ultimately mean making our holdings available in some form over the
Internet, more generous and liberal photocopying policies are a good place
to begin.

Alan S. Divack
Archivist, The Ford Foundation
320 East 43rd St.
New York, NY 10017
phone: (212) 573-4851
fax:      (212) 351-3681
a.divack@fordfound.org



-----Original Message-----
From: Beth Kilmarx [mailto:bkilmarx@BINGHAMTON.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 10:00 AM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Thanks for the advice on "Too Many Copies"


Hi All,

Thanks for the many responses I got on my question of  "How many
photocopies is too many."  Everyone gave me great advice on the topic,
and it looks like we will be saying nyet to the request.  Thanks, again,
Beth

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