Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War

NARA Announces Increased Fees for Reproduction of Pension and Service Records

The National Archives and Records Administration has made the announcement on their final decision on reproduction fee increases, effective 1 October 2007 . The following changes are of immediate interest to OCWGJ readers:

- Complete pension file, up to 100 pages: $75 (currently $37). Pages in excess of 100 can be ordered at $0.65 per page.

- Basic pension documents: $25 (currently $14.75).

- Military service records: $25 (currently $17).

The complete statement is available in the Federal Register, Friday, August 17, 2007 , Vol. 72, No. 159, Rules and Regulations, pp. 46145-46148, or at this link: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20071800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2007/pdf/E7-16233.pdf

Here are some of the key facts cited by NARA as justification for the increases:

- current fees are based on a 1999 cost study, and there have been no fee increases since 2000.

- in FY 2006, costs for fixed-fee copy services were more than double the revenue received for them.

- in FY 2006, NARA completed 7700 orders for full Civil War pension files.

- in FY 2006, NARA completed 2677 orders for the basic pension documents packets.

- when it established the current $37 fixed-fee for full pension files, NARA estimated the average page count to be 40-50 pages. NARA 's statement indicates that it significantly under-estimated the number of pages, and states that the average full file is now 106 pages. They set the 100-page limit on the basis that it will accommodate more than 65% of the requests. It is believed that NARA responded to the input, including ours, that the proposed $125 fee, regardless of size, was unreasonable.

There were apparently many comments, including ours, about the potential digitization of these files to preserve them, and NARA ’s response is very disappointing. “ NARA does not have funding for full-scale digitization of the many thousands of Civil War pension files. NARA has been exploring digitization partnerships over the past few years and considers the Civil War pension files prime candidates for digitization under a partnership. Nevertheless, the scope of such a project and the need to ensure appropriate archival handling of the fragile records during digitization means that there is no near-term alternative to the current process for fulfilling fixed-fee order requests for reproductions of Civil War pension files.”

Perhaps the hint of future partnerships, such as are being announced frequently in recent months, is intended as good news. However, having watched some of these documents literally fall apart as they come out of their folder, regardless of how carefully they are handled, we should be worried that they may not last long enough to be scanned.