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Disaster planning - offsite storage



To the List:

We are raising funds for construction of a new building for our collections.
In the meantime, everything is stored in a house and a metal building, which
of course offer little or no protection against fire or against tornados and
other severe weather. The most valuable records are in the house, which at
least has a relatively stable climate. The metal building has no climate
controls at all.

We are about to receive a couple of new collections of significant size and
value, and there is insufficient room in the house for them. I'm not about
to subject them to the extreme conditions of the metal building, and
anything in the house that could be moved to the metal building will suffer
in there.

I've presented the idea to our managing director of storing some of our
records off-site until the new building is ready, which will hopefully
happen by the end of next year. My thinking was to store our most valuable
and irreplaceable records offsite so that if disaster strikes they will be
safe. Some of these collections see relatively frequent use.

He, however, is an eternal optimist, and chooses to believe that nothing
will ever happen here. He also considers ease of access to our collections
to be the paramount concern. With that mindset, he's open to offsite storage
only for our least used collections, regardless of their value or
irreplacability(?), only for the sake of opening space in the house for what
is likely to be used more and - in all likelihood - be more valuable and
irreplacable.

That doesn't settle well with me, especially since his optimism about the
safety of our museum's exhibits was damaged by vandals last fall. Can anyone
out there offer suggestions for how to change his mind?

Best wishes,

Thomas Berry, Archivist
Historical Construction Equipment Association
16623 Liberty Hi Road
Bowling Green, Ohio 43402
419-352-5616
tberry@wcnet.org

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