This is a tough one to answer—always challenging for me, too. I pay experience researchers $40/hour for research only. If someone is the principal investigator, directing research, writing, publishing, I would charge $75/hour, comparable to what professional historians, architects, planners would get. Hope this helps!
Judy

On Nov 11, 2016, at 10:39 AM, J. Davies <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I was wondering if any of you could provide some guidance on the following.  

I'm a local history librarian at a public library and I am exploring applying for a modest local grant to fund the development of an audio tour of my community in upstate NY. The research, writing, and recording of this audio tour would be accomplished by me on my own free time outside of work.

I spoke with the corporation that offers this grant and they are interested in my proposal. They said in order to receive funding for this (i.e., the research, writing and recording of the content) I'll have to include a figure of what is a "reasonable" hourly rate for someone performing this type of research. I was wondering if any of you knew of a resource I could cite to justify my asking for X amount of money per hour to perform this type of work? 

While I am a librarian who is familiar with the history of my community and the appropriate published materials to reference to perform this research confidently, I am not an experienced historian. While I have a master's in information science, I do not have a degree in history.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions for research rate justification.