[Bell Historians] woburn 1/4's

[Richard Smith]

Mike Fradd wrote:

> I tried to get info about a local bell from Whitechapel 
> who made it, they said they would charge £35 an hour plus 
> VAT minimum charge 2 hours and no guarantee of anything 
> being found,

That doesn't sound unreasonable to me.  I spent my lunch 
break in the Cambridgeshire Archives today and asked them 
how much they charge.  They told me they had a sliding 
scale, starting at £20 for half an hour, reducing to £50 for 
two hours.  The National Archives, according to their 
website, charge £20 for every fifteen minutes.

You might question whether Whitechapel's two hour minimum 
rate is reasonable, but it's entirely possible that even a 
trivial search of their records could take that long if the 
records are not well indexed or are inconveniently located, 
and once time spent in correspondence and reproducing 
records is included.  Plus, of course, Whitechapel's core 
business is not historical research and they will be pricing 
such research at a price so that it doesn't adversely affect 
their core business.

Of course it would be wonderful if they did it for free, but 
we have no right to expect that, and we should be grateful 
they allow access to their records at all.  If you're hoping 
that they might start allowing more ready access to the 
archives, I'm certain bitching about it on a public mailing 
list will do nothing to further that goal.

RAS

------------------------------------

Yahoo Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bellhistorians/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bellhistorians/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    bellhistorians-digest at yahoogroups.com 
    bellhistorians-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    bellhistorians-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo Groups is subject to:
    http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/