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Re: Building design and planning - advice needed




Thomas Berry wrote:

> To those who have dealt with building committees and other aspects of
> planning a new archival building.  I've run into a couple of problems
> concerning design snd furnishing of a new building for our collections, and
> need your advice on the matter.
> One committee member is quite eager to see us install shelving above the
> file cabinets that will be used to store a good portion of our collections.
> He wants to mount it to the walls or hang it from the cieling, and he wants
> to do this in order to not waste the space above the cabinets. The room will
> have a nine or ten foot cieling, which means that only one shelf could
> realistically be installed. I've tried without success to dissuade him,
> telling him it will be more trouble than it's worth (cost, weight of boxes,
> problems of removal and reshelving, etc.). I know I can get somewhere with
> him, as I was able to talk him out of the painted wooden cabinets he
> originally had in mind, but this one has me stumped. Has anhyone else out
> there encountered this kind of thinking, and if so, what happened? Was the
> shelving installed? If so, how is it working? If not, why? (I do understand
> that file cabinets are not the best way to file records in the first place,
> but I've been unable to break through a solid wall of "We've always done it
> this way, so we always will" thrown up by everyone on the committee.)
>
> Many thanks for all advice and suggestions.

Tom,

1) Get an engineering opinion based on your area's seismic considerations.  You
may have to run bracing all the way to floor to support shelving above.  That
might wipe out, or make difficult, file cabinets beneath.
2) The guy has a real issue.  Why not get an equipment vendor in to propose some
solutions?  Maybe you could go to open shelving filing (which is much more
efficient in terms of space and costs less than cabinets) with boxes above.
3) Getting to shelving above cabinets will be tricky and require some sort of
attached ladder system (I would think) because of how far cabinets stick out
from the wall.  Just some thoughts of my own, Dick King
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