While most of our study participants consider a collection incomplete without its associated documentation, a few respondents noted that they had not considered the associated documentation when they determined their fee structure. As with the artifact collections, the documentation is assessed in a variety of ways across the country. Different units of assessment are used, although the cubic foot and linear inch are the most common units. No fees are assessed for records, photos, maps, etc, or small project reports and catalogs in addition to those assessed for the collection of objects. The same fee structure charged for units of objects is applied to additional units of documentation.
Documentation is charged differently than objects.
Some documentation, such as oversized maps or photography, is assessed an additional fee over that of all other documentation. This report provides some preliminary results of our study on the significant range and variation of fees applied to the curation of archeological collections across the United States. A much more extensive discussion and presentation of the information received from approximately 80 respondents will be prepared in the near future. If you would like to provide comments on this report or contribute new data, please contact Terry Childs .