Andrew Gray wrote:
A specific example: In the UK, the various county record offices have a large number of deposits - papers that are held, catalogued, curated and made available by them, but with the ownership kept private, and handled as a long-term indefinite loan, anything from photograph archives to manorial tax records. Every now and again, someone withdraws one of these to sell it - you can get a goodish amount from an American university, usually - and they're faced with the dilemma of letting it go or trying to match the price offered.
By squeezing the pips you can usually get enough together to keep it. Unfortunately, the first problem is that other depositors then say "Cor, they got two million for that stuff? I'm taking mine to the States too!", cue exodus of everything else - and potential depositors start asking tricky questions like "Why should I leave this stuff with you when I could just sell it to someone outright?"
I don't think we want to get into bidding wars for this kind of material, and I don't think it will be necessary. The LDS Church has certainly be effective in microfilming large amounts of local records for genealogical purposes. My feeling is that many of these archives are overwhelmed by the huge quantities involved, and can have major headaches simply storing it all. Many have difficulties doing even a rough index of what they have. They would probably welcome the help if they are confident that the archive will be kept safe and if restrictive covenants connected with some items are respected.
Ec