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Subject: [ASGS] Good News!
Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2001 06:35:31 -0700

If you have visited the Family History Library in SLC, you will be very
happy to see the following (from Eastman's Newsletter):
- Cash Cards at the Family History Library
*********************
I have visited the Family History Library in Salt Lake City
several times. On my first visit I learned to bring rolls of coins
with me to feed the microfilm reader/printers. Sometimes the rolls
of coins were as heavy as the laptop computer I carried! Now the
cashboxes of the microfilm readers are going away, being replaced
by cash cards. Yes, the Family History Library no longer nickel
and dimes its patrons.

The new system allows patrons to make a one-time purchase of a
copy card for sixty cents from a card vending machine. The card
vending machine does not accept anything less than one dollar, so
the card costs sixty cents and initially has forty cents credit on
it. As you insert the cash card into the microfilm and microfiche
printers, the charges are deducted from the available credit. You
can later insert the card into the same vending machine whenever
you want to add additional value, up to a maximum value of $50.

The big reason for the change is that the old cashboxes accepted
only nickels and dimes, so prices could be increased only in
increments of five cents. Now, the library can increase prices in
one-cent increments to better reflect their actual costs. The
library believes that the actual cost to them to provide the
reader-printer copying service is 23 cents per copy, so that is
what they are now charging on the machines that have been
retrofitted.

The card readers are also being installed on the book photocopy
machines. For now, the price will remain 5 cents per photocopy for
any size of paper. For the book photocopiers, patrons have the
option of still using coins and paper money. However, no change
will be returned. If a patron puts in a quarter but makes only 4
copies, the remaining 5 cents is lost.

In a somewhat related topic, the Family History Library now has
one color photocopier available, plus there is another at the
Joseph Smith Building. The cost of a color reproduction is one
dollar per copy for any size of paper. There's no word on any plan
to install cash card readers on these color copiers. Even so,
installation of cash card readers on the high-usage machines
heralds some welcome relief for patrons who would gladly pay a few
cents more per page to be rid of those hefty coin rolls.


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