Hi all, I'm currently livid about what IWM charges. No, NOT their regular license fees. Have you seen how many photos have been digitized but the images are lower resolution and may be somewhat askew? Well don't worry, the IWM can scan that for you at high resolution. For only £50!!!! When I had photos digitized by Libraries and Archives Canada, which was done by an outside commercial firm, they charged me half as much AND IN CANADIAN DOLLARS. And... how much time would it have taken for them to just scan the images at high resolution in the first place? Here endeth the rant.
I noted the two I bought as this: Digitisation fee: £30 For an A3 digital file: £20 VAT @ 20% (not charged on overseas orders): £10 Total: £60 per image.
I "like" your post CF (and Chris C's too) by way of the fact that you've provided the information, but I absolutely do not like the cost that both you and Chris C have incurred. Bleedin' scandalous. Kind regards, always, Jim.
Do they then upload a higher res copy to the online collection and if someone else wants the same photo later do they deduct the £30 'first time' charge?
That is the theory, but only one of the prints I paid for have appeared online after two and a half years (roughly), and the one that has appeared is at a very good but not as good resolution as my large digital file.
Not photos, but for photocopies of a 63 page booklet in 2017 the IWM charged me £0.40 per page for black and white photocopies, plus a handling charge of £2.50 (total £27.70 inc VAT). They sent the copies of the booklet in pdf form.
The smaller ones might be the contact(?) prints out of the catalogues. Anyway, make the most of it as I'm sure they'll be putting up the prices soon to cover the losses from people not buying them because they're too expensive. It's only logical.
I'm so glad that I bought copies of all the BEF motorcycle images back when prices were reasonable. Not cheap, but not impossible for the size and quality involved.
I can remember having a conversation a few years ago with the man who ran one of the local pubs. He had put the price of a pint up by quite a large amount because, as he said, "We are not getting the customers through the door the way we used to and we have got to cover our costs". I suggested that perhaps if he was to lower the price he might get more people in. He said that he couldn't do that because the brewery set the minimum price that he could sell their beer. To cut a long story short, less people came, he went bust and it was over 18 months before someone else was brave enough to take the pub on again, The new people lasted just over a year until the pandemic killed their business, The brewers have now sold the pub.
Hmm... I don't want to get you started but now that I think about it, I wonder what the existing coverage of digitization is across the timespan of the war. Is the end of the war neglected? The photo I was considering is from the timeframe of your book, albeit it's 43 Div infantry and Archers before an attack on Cloppenburg. I'm still actually thinking about it because you can see some details not apparent in other photographs...
Do they give refunds if they "inadvertently" sell a picture as one thing and it turns out through painstaking, frustrating research to be something else? ;-) One of those reasons to want to see more detail is surely just to verify something, or for example to help to figure out where a picture might have been taken and who, for example some of the individuals in it might have been... On the other hand, however one can see familiar IWM pictures reproduced constantly, and discussed in very considerable depth to the exclusion of much else and to the extent that they almost get to be "expected" to appear... i.e. 24th Lancers "being at St.Leger" on a certain date etc... Nr. Bayeux or Tilly Sur Seulles - could anyone help further identify where these Sherman tanks are? It's interesting - especially since in my own experience I've seen lots of pictures emerge that people have in their own or their family's collections, that show really interesting and fascinating things so it's not merely an IWM monopoly - that has to be used, and "must haves" - it's perhaps though a "stamp" that one expects to see reproduced on several pages in a ww2 book - and they do get a lot of attention that other pictures that can appear from other sources seem not to receive.
