ARHIVSKI VJESNIK 42. (ZAGREB, 1999.)

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P. Cadell, Financing of archives, Arh. vjesn., god. 42 (1999), str. 93-102 ves. While we generally do not charge for simple access (though a reader's card has to be bought at a modest charge in both France and Portugal for example) there is a clear acceptance that where an additional service has been provided - photocopying or microfilming are the most obvious - or where access is required for business, as opposed to cultural purposes, then it is perfectly reasonable to expect members of the public to meet the cost of the service they receive. All archives whose accounts I have seen have a finance line for revenue. Generally this is a comparatively small percentage of the net running costs of the service - 1.5% in South Africa, 2.5% in Australia, 2.75% in Sweden. In the UK, however, the percentage is higher - 8.5% at the Public Record Office in London, and 19.5% at the National Archives of Scotland. Our figure is inflated artificially by the fact that we hold the uncomputerised part of our national Land Register, and therefore have a disproportionately large business in photocopying for lawyers, planners and others who need the information it contains. I need hardly say perhaps that in common with the PRO we are obliged to surrender all this income to central government. The extent to which this happens in other countries is not apparent from their accounts, but it has been a source of frustration to me ever since I became head of our national archives (now nearly 9 years ago) that I cannot apply to a particular service the money that it raises. For example we publish books and leaflets, as do all archives, but we cannot apply the revenue from the sale of them to the publishing of further books. The principle that all income generated by a government agency should go formally to the state before being granted back to the agency according to its needs is many ways a laudable one, but its application in detail can frequently lead to what I would describe as inefficiency. Income generation is a matter to which we shall all have to give a great deal of attention in the future. Quite apart from the traditional photocopying and microfilming, there is the question, in all its ramifications, of charging for access and for copies obtained through electronically networked catalogues and indexes; there is the question of charging for research services which go beyond simply indicating what an archive service holds (a proportion of the revenue that comes to the Public Record Office derives from this source); and there is the question of the exact financial conditions on which private records are held in a national archive service. Having pointed out at some length all the ways in which funding for archive services varies from one country to another, can I now look at where there are similarities? It would be useful if we could say simply that every country should put a certain sum per head of population towards the cost of an archive service, or even that every national archive service should aim to raise a standard percentage of its revenue, but this is impossible because of all the variety in traditions and in ways of doing things that I have already outlined. 98