OVERVIEW: Fees have long been used by repositories and museums to sustain their program(s), recoup costs, and discourage outsize requests. Federal, State, and Local Government archives are envisioning and enacting policy changes with the goal of providing broad access to their informational resources and dismantling fee structures partially responsible for institutionalized inequities. This session will present a case study from the Oregon State Archives, which has implemented significant reductions and eliminations of fees. The right to public records, government accountability, and economic inequality were considered.
The management team at the Oregon State Archives conducted over two years of research coupled with extensive legal advice to create a vastly improved Records Use Fee Schedule. If this sounds like something you’d like to do at your institution, let us save you some hours by sharing our story. Our goal is to help archivists think critically about fees by using our institution as a case study, examining issues considered during our decision processes and discussing the policies that ultimately were/were not implemented. Central to the panel will be the idea that removing fees is a step towards increasing access and making archival holdings a true commons. We hope attendees will leave the panel empowered to act as advocates for removing barriers to access at their own institutions. It is the hope of this panel that this session will facilitate dialogue and provoke thoughtful consideration of the obstacle that archival fees create in our attempts to provide access to all.
GARA CERTIFICATE CORE COMPETENCY AREAS: "Records and Information Management Basics" OR "Advocacy and Outreach"
TARGET AUDIENCE: State/Tribal
FOCUS AREAS: Local, Archives
PRESENTERS: Stephanie Clark, Oregon State Archivist, Director, Oregon State Archives | Mary McRobinson, Reference and Publications Unit Manager, Oregon State Archives