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Re: How Many Photocopies is too Many?



On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Jackson, Bill wrote:

> I have found that it is not unreasonable to have a written statement among
> your reference and access policies to the effect of "The Archives reserves
> the right to refuse photocopying requests deemed to be exhaustive of time
> and/or staff resources."

We, too, have a similar provision.  We do not have the staff nor the
facilities to fulfill huge photocopying orders.  In our case, a copy
order amounting to 3,000 pages would be rejected.  But there's also
the "cumulative order" scenario -- a patron requests 200 copies, then
200 more a few days later, and so on.  The patron insists that since
these are all separate orders (with a separate order form for each),
we should regard them as such.  Not knowing what the final total is
going to amount to, we have gotten sucked into doing larger orders
that we would have rejected had we known the full extent in the
beginning.  Then it becomes a matter of drawing a line somewhere and
saying, "enough is enough."

> I know it sounds overly subjective, but I have not yet heard anyone take
> issue with it.

It *is* subjective, and we *have* heard complaints, but it's simply a
matter of fairness to all researchers.  If we were to accept a 1,000+
page copy order, many other researchers and their requests would go
unattended, depriving them of service while we cater to one
individual.

Some institutions (those that are allowed to set their own prices) set
their per page cost intentionally high to try and discourage large
orders.  We had a case a few years ago where a researcher working on a
project for the U.S. Air Force was requesting everything in sight.
He wasn't paying the bill himself, so it didn't matter to him whether
we charged 25 cents per page or $25 per page.  His bill grew so large,
however, that his supervisor finally cut him off.  When he could no
longer order photocopies, he stopped his research altogether.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

James Stimpert                       E-mail:    James.Stimpert@jhu.edu
Archives (Arts and Sciences)
MSE Library
Johns Hopkins University             Voice:     (410) 516-8323
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD  21218                 Fax:       (410) 516-7202

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