The terms and conditions on the order form say, “The quoted prices are for records that are housed at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington D.C. In rare cases, your records may be stored somewhere else (e.g., the NARA facility in St. Louis, MO), In that case, we may still be able to retrieve them but there may be an additional charge. If so, we will quote the new price and seek your approval before proceeding.”
While we regret when we have to add this additional charge, there are several reasons that it is necessary:
- since files in St. Louis are typically for soldiers or their widows who lived into the 1920s and beyond, the average file size is typically double what we find at NARA in D.C.
- the files in St. Louis also use a tedious binding system that adds substantially to the time that it takes to scan a file.
- the paper-handling protocols in St. Louis are much more strict than in D.C. So, for instance, each time we encounter a paperclip, we have to take the file to a staff member to remove it. (You read that right!)
The bottom line is that it takes much more time to scan a file in St. Louis than it would for the same file in D.C.
Rest assured that, even with this additional charge, our prices are much lower than other digitizing services (or NARA themselves) who charge by the page.
Thank you for understanding.
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