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Records/Archives in the News Part 07 01/23/00
Records/Archives in the News r000117a
There are 2 stories in this posting
The Chronicle (Willimantic, CT) 1/17/00
FOI: Windham schools complied with requests
Los Angeles Times 1/17/00
In Kansas, the salt of the earth safeguards buried treasures
________________________________________________________________
The Chronicle (Willimantic, CT) 1/17/00
FOI: Windham schools complied with requests
by Gail Ellen Daly
<snip>
WINDHAM ? The Freedom of Information Commission has ruled that the Windham
school system complied with all requests from a local citizen for records,
curriculum, documents and test scores.
However, in dismissing the complaints by Windham Center resident Marvin
Edelman, the commission noted that one item was not discussed with Edelman
until June 14 ? more than a month after the initial April 27 request ? which
violated the FOI provision to inspect records promptly.
Despite the time lapse, the commission did not order any penalty in its Dec.
8 final decision.
Edelman, who has been critical in the past of the school district?s bilingual
education program, has requested numerous documents from the administration.
His April 27 letter asked for units of study and instruction in the middle
school and high school.
Although he received the records, Edelman was not satisfied, the complaint
stated, ?as it did not conform to his definition of what constitutes a unit
of study.?
The commission found that although the information he received did not
conform to his definition, the district responded, and no additional records
exist.
?He got all the information he wanted,? said board of education Chairman
Lynne Weeks, ?but not in the format he wanted ? that?s the sticking point.?
She said that the district will not change its format for one person. Weeks
also said that some of Edelman?s requests took a long time to put together.
<snip>
<snip>
According to the commission?s findings, the district contacted Edelman on May
28, and on June 11 the administration provided Edelman with records ?to the
extent that records exist.?
?Mr. Edelman has met with every member of the administration,? Weeks said
this morning. ?All the time spent on gathering documentation and attending
meetings takes time away from the kids.?
She said that every citizen has a right to request documentation, and this is
Edelman?s right, ?but it is costing the school district an enormous amount of
money in attorney fees.?
<snip>
________________________________________________________________
Los Angeles Times 1/17/00
In Kansas, the salt of the earth safeguards buried treasures
by Stephanie Simon
<snip>
HUTCHINSON, Kan.?Calling this contraption an elevator is being charitable.
It?s a cramped cage, really, with a flapping plywood back, and it?s suspended
by what looks like a massive upside-down coat hanger. It?s filthy. And it?s
way beyond dark: It?s black inside, completely black, as it descends for a
full anxious minute?lurching and rumbling down, down, down until it creaks to
a bumpy stop.
It?s not very welcoming, that?s for sure.
And that?s exactly the point.
For the only place this elevator goes is a high-security cavern?an unusual
warehouse crammed full of treasures about 650 feet beneath the Kansas
prairie.
Here in a salt mine, a local firm, Underground Vaults & Storage, has built
quite a business keeping important stuff safe. Tornadoes can?t touch its
vault burrowed the equivalent of 60 stories underground. Floods cannot
permeate the thick shelf of salt that doubles as the warehouse ceiling. There
are no seismic faults nearby that anyone knows of.
Plus, the mine naturally retains a year-round temperature and humidity
considered nearly ideal for preserving paper and film.
So it is that secret government documents, hospital X-rays and generations of
records from insurance providers, banks and international corporations all
end up here, under a heartland wheat field.
So it is too that the original prints and discarded outtakes of Hollywood
history?from Charlie Chaplin to ?Gone With the Wind? to ?Star Wars? and
beyond?have landed in a town where the skyline consists of a peeling grain
elevator.
And so it is that these salt deposits, formed 230 million years ago, now are
being wired for the 21st century. High-speed data cables have been tugged
through this prehistoric salt lick so that executives worldwide can tap into
the CD-ROMs and floppy disks they stash here. Once the technology upgrade is
complete, warehouse employees should be able to scan corporate records onto
underground computers and zap them over the Internet in seconds, giving a
Swiss bank or an oil rig off China instant access to data tucked in a Kansas
cavern.
The original documents, meanwhile, will remain buried here, salted away in
what Lee Spence, president of Underground Vaults, calls ?one of the safest
places in the world.?
That it may be. Yet such a boast raises the question: Do firms these days
really need top security for their records?
Now that most data can be stored, duplicated and transported on computer
disk, ?a lot of companies just put several copies of disks in different
locations,? relying on redundancy to safeguard their records, said Scott
BeVier, vice president of BMS Catastrophe Inc., which helps firms recover
data wiped out by disasters.
Even so, every computer disk is usually accompanied by a paper printout, as
electronic data can become scrambled or fade over time. People even tend to
print out their e-mail so they?ll have something tangible to file. And when
it comes to storing these hard copies?or, for that matter, original computer
disks??the first thing firms want would obviously be security,? said Patti
Fitzgerald of Disaster Recovery Journal, a St. Louis-based trade magazine.
<snip>
<snip>
So underground vaults retain a certain allure.
To be sure, they?re not immune to disaster: A few years back, a fire broke
out in a Kansas City cave used to store?along with documents?cooking oil and
kegs of beer. There wasn?t enough oxygen to feed an all-out blaze, but the
embers smoldered on and on, out of reach of firefighters. Eventually,
warehouse managers had to seal the cave for good, leaving most of the papers
inside to burn.
Such horror stories, however, are rare, and underground storage continues to
be popular, with warehouses opening in railroad tunnels, surplus military
bunkers, even old missile silos. One top-secret government vault in a
Pennsylvania limestone mine boasts armed guards and a 10-ton iron gate.
The Hutchinson salt mine, although not as well armored, has its own unique
draw: It?s farther underground than any other warehouse, and there?s only one
way in.
Most subterranean storage, including the Pennsylvania mine, can be reached
via horizontal shafts wide enough to drive a trailer truck through. In
Hutchinson, there?s only a skinny vertical shaft?and there?s only one way to
descend it. You step into the elevator, squash close to your companions and
try to keep your balance through the long shimmy down, swallowing hard to pop
your ears and blinking now and then against the grit of falling salt
crystals.
?Until you?re going down that shaft, bumping against the walls, you can?t
really understand? just how isolated the vault is, said David Grant, director
of library services for 20th Century Fox, which stores its film and TV
archives in the mine. ?You?d have to be a pretty good burglar to find what
you wanted to steal and get it out of there.?
<snip>
<snip>
It?s clean and well-lighted, stocked with vending machines and a microwave.
The whitewashed ceiling is 11 feet high, so there?s no need to stoop, except
at the entrance?deliberately left low, Spence said, ?to keep the effect that
you?re still underground.? Winter or summer, it?s always a comfy 68 degrees,
with a humidity of 45%.
There are quirks, of course: Employees move about the vast storage bays (each
the size of a football field) on bikes, electric scooters or golf carts.
There are no windows. The walls taste of salt. So does your skin after a long
day underground being dusted by drifting crystals.
Worst of all, the elevator returns ?topside? only a few times a day, so
employees can?t dash out to run an errand or swing by a kid?s softball game.
Even doctor appointments must be carefully timed.
<snip>
<snip>
On one shelf, you might find original negatives of ?The Simpsons.? On
another, prints of ?MASH??every single episode. Elvis films. ?Casablanca.? In
this box, appropriately enough: ?Journey to the Center of the Earth.?
?All here, in Hutchinson, Kansas,? marveled records clerk Chris Hall.
Studios ship archives here not only for security but also because the mine?s
climate can preserve color film for hundreds of years. (The ideal environment
would be a bit colder, so some studios store their most precious prints in
air-conditioned warehouses above ground.) Along with film history, the
hollowed-out mine holds an eclectic assortment of personal treasures,
including coin collections, rare Bibles, wedding dresses, a sinister-looking
antique doctor?s table and a historic McDonald?s sign that was once a Kansas
landmark. Anything that can fit on the elevator (or be chopped up and
reassembled below) can be stored here for an annual fee of $1.80 per cubic
foot of space.
Founded during the Cuban missile crisis?and promoted as a natural fallout
shelter for documents?the salt mine warehouse has grown steadily over the
last four decades. Underground Vaults, which also operates a limestone
storage cave in Kansas City, boasts 1,700 customers from around the world,
with gross sales reaching $8 million a year.
There?s plenty of room to expand too: The warehouse takes up just 26 of 800
available acres. And miners continue to extract 1,000 tons of salt a day for
use in livestock feed, road de-icers and tanneries.
So there?s ample space beneath the Kansas plains to keep stashing valuables
and safeguarding secrets. Including a few that Spence would just as soon keep
buried forever.
?I know my name is [filed] down here somewhere,? he explained with a grin.
?We store records of speeding tickets.?
<snip>
PETER A. KURILECZ CRM, CA
PAKURILECZ@AOL.COM
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