It goes without saying that looking after heritage material costs money. It costs money to physically house and store the documents and artifacts. It costs money to store them in temperature controlled rooms. It costs money for staff to catagloue their holdings, and retrieve and copy them when requested. So I have no problem with the National Archives of Australia having a price rise.
Here’s what they were …
And here’s what they are now …
As you can see the National Archives of Australia have introduced some pretty hefty price increases, and a petition against these increases has been created by Monique Ryan, and will be delivered to Ms Joanne Ryan MP, and David Fricker, Director-General of the National Archives of Australia.
Unless the cost to get copies of are reduced to a more reasonable cost (ie $30), there will be a significant decrease in applications for copies of files and this will then flow on that less records will be made available as there will be less funds for the digitisation of the collection currently being held by the NAA.
Ultimately if the NAA gets less orders, they get less funds, which means less money to digitise more records. So we all lose out.
If you’d like to read more about it and sign the petition, head on over to www.change.org.
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