Bringing Party Favors to Hell

My department would like to purchase a couple of digital cameras with desk-top tripods which our grad students could then reserve and take on research trips to libraries and archives, but we really have no idea what we should be looking for. Can any of you recommend a camera that you think would be good for taking photos of manuscript pages and other documents -- perhaps in the $400 range?

ETA: They will be photographing documents-- doing research for their PhD theses. It's much cheaper and easier than having them copied.