Fee for External Users....

[Rodham E. Tulloss]

During a visit to BPI last fall, I had the pleasure to meet a German
mycologist whose institution had exactly the two-tiered system that
Bob Fogel mentioned.  They had the discretion over whether there would
be a charge or not for a given request.  Industry paid big bucks
(essentially buying the "expertise" embedded in an annotated collection...
there's another reason to keep those annotations flowing in!) and scholars
did not.

I specifically said "scholars" and not "other scientific institutions" because
I don't want those of us who are extra-institutional AND not in industry
(although we are probably a very small group) to be left out of the
equation.  If the trend to reduce taxonomists were to continue as it has,
[finish that sentence in the usual way] for better (sometimes) and for