Greetings,
Barbara Jones on the Talley list sent the following to me. It is important
for all of us, so I am posting it to the email lists for which I am the
administrator. Regardless, this will affect most of us in some capacity.
You may wish to take some time to voice your opinion, if not save your
pennies!
Thanks Barb!
Take care,
Emily
You may have heard about the increase in cost for research documents but I
thought I'd send this anyway.
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A researcher friend sent this to me and requested it be forwarded to others,
so please read and respond if you are interested. This will eventually
affect all researchers. From what I have learned, we will be getting the
complete files, regardless of how many pages the files have in them.
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The NARA proposal to revamp the system and fees for providing copies of
Military Service Records, Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Files, and
Pension Application Files has been published in the 25 April 2000 issue of
the Federal Register. Public comment is invited and should be directed to:
NARA Regulation Comment Desk
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, MD 20740-6001
Fax: 301 713-7270
The comment period closes on 26 June 2000. NARA prefers that you use either
the postal address or fax number to submit our comments rather than e-mail.
A complete copy of the Federal Register notice is available from the NARA
Web site at
http://www.nara.gov/nara/fees-pro.html. The proposed
Reproduction Fee Schedule covers a number of items, but the Military
Service Records, and the Pension and Bounty-Land Warrants are of the
greatest concern to genealogists. NARA proposes three major changes:
1. The NATF Form 80 would be discontinued, to be replaced by two new forms:
NATF Form 85 to request both Bounty-Land Warrant application files and
Pension files (more than 75 years old), and
NATF From 86 to request Military Service Records (more than 75 years old).
2. For all three types of files, NARA would no longer send a selection of
pages, but would send the complete file. This would eliminate the two-step
process currently used and should be beneficial to most genealogists.
3. The fees for all three types of files would be raised. For Military
Service Records the new fee would be $17.00, regardless of the number of
pages included in the file. For Bounty-land Warrants the fee would be
$17.25, again without regard to the number of pages. For Pension Files the
fee would be $40.00, regardless of the number of pages. Finally, the
proposal would go into effect on September 1, 2000, if approved.
Many genealogists may consider the proposed fees to be excessive. NARA
specifically invites comment on the proposed fee schedule. The FGS/NGS
Records Preservation and Access Committee urges everyone who wants to
comment to carefully read the full proposal before submitting comments. The
proposed fees are intended to cover the actual cost of locating, copying
and mailing the records, plus 10% as authorized by law, and are based on
the average size of the files. NARA states that the average for Military
Service Records and Bounty-land Applications is somewhere under 20 pages,
while the average for full Pension Files is 105 pages.
The FGS/NGS Records Preservation and Access Committee will be looking at
the NARA proposal carefully, and will submit comments as appropriate.
Individuals who would like to provide input to the Committee's evaluation
are welcome to do so but are also encouraged to comment direct to NARA at
the address given above. Comments for Committee consideration should be
e-mailed to fgs-access(a)fgs.org, or mailed to Federation of Genealogical
Societies, Attention: RPAC, PO Box 200940, Austin, TX 78720-0940. In order
for the Records Preservation and Access Committee to adequately evaluate
such input it must be received by May 26, 2000. The deadline for comment to
NARA, however, is still June 26, 2000.
Posting of this message to other mail lists is encouraged. A copy of this
message will also be available on the Records Preservation and> > >Access
page of the FGS Web site
http://www.fgs.org/fgs-recordsnews.htm and on the
NGS Web site
http://www.ngsgenealogy.org
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