Raising Money Raises Questions (2010)

Although archives have frequently been associated with treasure troves or viewed as stores of cultural gems, those responsible for maintaining know that their operation and care can cost as much as a king's ransom. Funding archival work has perennially been a difficult issue to address. Recessions exacerbate financial problems, and, as current economic downturn has shown, bring budgetary concerns to forefront. During tough times archives and other cultural institutions have turned to their own collections, deaccessioning and selling valuable items to cover operating costs; such moves, however, often raise public ire and generate negative publicity for institution. Some archives have chosen instead to follow in footsteps of museums and raise funds by mining their holdings for materials that they can license, particularly those dealing in forms of media based on repackaging of existing content (Loe, 2004, p. 58). Although not as controversial as deaccessioning, archives must still contend with a multitude of legal and ethical issues when using items in their collections to generate revenue.Charging Fees or Generating RevenueAs with other predominantly cultural institutions like libraries and museums, archives have traditionally been viewed as nonprofit organizations intended to serve greater good of society and scholarship. Their willingness to share information they hold supported an intellectual barter system in which scholars could use archival materials in their works in return for acknowledging source and depositing a copy of final product. Permissions fees were usually charged only when materials were used in commercial or profit-seeking ventures. Changes in program funding, however, made it necessary for institutions to develop other ways of supporting their normal activities (Browar, Henderson, North, & Wenger, 2002, pp. 124-25). The introduction of fees for services like copying served a double purpose, helping both to recoup cost of such activities and to moderate requests that could be potentially damaging to materials (Blais, 1995, p. 50). Advances in digital media also spurred archives to think of their holdings as potential sources of revenue. Through Corbis Corporation, Bill Gates illustrates how profitable fine art and archival images could be when they digitized and actively marketed (Butler, 1998, p. 65); greater numbers of requests on part of documentary filmmakers and others drawing upon past for their creative works demonstrated that the growing global demand for media content has also increased perceived value of iconic cultural assets like those lining many institutions' shelves (Ivey, 2008, p. 33). Realizing potential of their holdings as well as possibility that commercial companies could exploit their materials if they do not, many archives have decided to implement their own generation programs.Some distinction must be made, however, between types of fees archives generally charge. Gabrielle Blais notes that Canadian National Archives follows government in distinguishing between charging user fees tailored toward the recovery of a fair share of cost of providing goods and services from those who receive a direct benefit from them and implementing new activities which could be undertaken ... with intention of generating revenue and that are not undertaken strictly because of their archival nature (Blais, 1995, p. 50). Simon Fowler elaborates on latter in his essay on funding projects in British record offices:Income generation by archives might be defined as those activities organized by archival staff with aim of raising for benefit of record office.... What unites these ventures is that they more efficiently exploit resources present already, such as staff knowledge or records themselves. Revenue raising activities increasingly provide services which might not exist otherwise (Fowler, 1993, p. …