Thanks, everyone, for your responses to my query regarding charges for obituary requests. 10 libraries do not charge for answering obit requests. One library does the work for free but accepts a donation for the work. We charge $1.00 per obit, by the way. Here are nine various responses about charging. In Hastings, the work is done for us by Genealogy Club volunteers. When our staff member mails the material or emails it, we send a letter asking for a donation. Most people respond with $5-$25 depending on the complexity of the request. The money is accumulated in a separate line in our donations report so we know how much we received and the Genealogy Club selects improvements to our collections using those funds. This process was in place when I arrived here 7+ years ago so I do not know how complicated it was to get it started but it continues to work well. Here in Marshall we offer obituary look-up services for free. If it is an extensive research question, we might mention that donations are appreciated. At Dickinson we charge $5 for every 15 minutes of research with a $5 minimum charge. Photocopies/printouts and postage are additional: http://dcl-lib.flolinemedia.net/refsearch This only applies for requests by those outside the library. We do not charge for assisting patrons in our facility regardless of whether they are a card holder. :) Our library charges $10 an hour if a staff has to do the search and the patron must mail us the check plus return postage to send them what we find. We usually don't charge, per se, but suggest "a small donation" to the library, particularly if there is a long list. Our official policy says free for the first hour, then a certain amount (I forget how much - ten or eleven dollars, I think, per hour) after. We do not have the staff to perform obituary searches, nor do we have much of an obituary file to work from. Therefore our general response is that we do not provide this service. If it is a reasonable request with plenty of detail where it is simply a matter of locating the appropriate microfiche roll or newspaper binder, then I will try to perform the search. I don't charge a fee for this if the information can be sent electronically (scan to email). If they stipulate they want prints and mailing, it would cost $.15 per page plus postage. If someone is just casting a wide net as part of a genealogy search and expecting us to do the heavy lifting (for example, do you have any information about John Smith who lived around the St. Louis area in the late 1800's and may have died in Gratiot County, no known middle name, no birth date, and just a rough guess of the year in which they died?), I direct them to contact the Clarke Historical Library or the Gratiot County Historical and Genealogical Society since they both provide genealogy queries and have established fees for the services. We charge only for printing. If the obit may be scanned and attached to an email, there is no charge. We answer all reference questions as time and staff allow. we charge $1 per week of searching, plus 25 cents per copy from microfilm, plus postage. We send a bill with the copies. Researchers must know the date of death. If they don't and we have the microfilm for the appropriate death records, we charge $1 for that search. Otherwise, they may be able to call the courthouse to get the date of death over the phone. Currently we are asking for a donation. A $10 donation pretty much covers lots of non-donation requests. It's such fun knowing all of you are out there ready with answers to everything. Cathy Cathy Sullivan Seblonka Collection Development/Reference Librarian Peter White Public Library 217 N. Front St. Marquette, MI 49855 906-226-4312 cathys@pwpl.info