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Re: linear feet...it's all relative



I agree with the comfort of knowing that if you go past the 500s, the
box labeled P0605 is going to be somewhere right past that--and
indeed my shelves are done that way; my photo curator insists and
I'm not going to argue with her!--but I spent my first archival decade
shifting back and forth, forth and back, until my very hand seemed
to take on the shape of a Holinger box.  So finally, when I had the
chance, I shifted over to a location chart system.  Every shelf has a
number and every box a place on that shelf.  All that planning for
how much specific space you might need for a specific collection
was usually wasted.  Jane Doe, whom you thought would take a
whole section of shelves, ended up getting tossed by the family,
while the family of Joe Blow--whom you thought had sunk into a
richly deserved obscurity--suddenly found 40 boxes of grandpapa's
papers.

Free yourself from the bondage of sequential shelving systems!
Boldy go...  (It is Friday after all, and a busy week it's been).

Roy "Storm of the Century indeed!  Out in the wild west we don't
even shift into four wheel drive for anything less than a foot of snow"
Webb.





Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu

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