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Re: Microfilm and Mr. Baker on Slate



Heather
Thanks for the link to the Slate article. What I find interesting is Baker's writing about the Duke University book warehouse. Baker writes;
 
"It cost $7.5 million to build, and it will hold about 2.5 million books. In other words, it cost them three dollars a book to build the building, and the overhead will run below 20 cents per year per book. Compare that to the cost of digital scanning or microfilming, which costs in the area of $100 a book, plus $1 a year to store the roll of "master" microfilm in a vault ... Duke's warehouse is not the way to store all books--because they store them in arbitrary order on 30-foot-high shelves you reach on a cherry picker. But even storing books in the traditional way, in call-number order, on 15-foot-high shelves, would cost only about $6 a book--say, to be safe, $10 a book. "
 
I wonder where he arrived at an overhead cost of $500,000 per year (.20 cents x 2.5 MM books). Secondly the cost of microfilm storage is a bit misleading. What he forgets to write is that the master microfilm is stored in a temperature and humidity controlled fire resistive vault at a per roll cost of .08 cents per month ($1 per year). Third I have no idea how he arrives at a cost of $100 per book for scanning or microfilming since that cost can vary greatly based on several factors such as preparation, quality control and testing, indexing etc unless he believes that is an average cost. His knowledge of warehouse practices is pretty slim. The great majority of record storage facility use highrise shelving (why more stored on a given piece of real estate) and random slotting. The warehouse is not designed for casual browsers, it is probably designed for items infrequently requested by researchers similar to the storage of inactive records.
 
"There is no harm in examining our practices and theories based on Baker's complaints"
Archivists and records managers and librarians should be constantly examining and reviewing what they are doing. But one should take Bakers' complaints with a grain of salt. For more insight in to Baker see the following article (it was a part of a RAIN posting)  .
http://www.portlandphoenix.com/archive/features/00/11/10/PAPER.html

Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA
Manager, Records Management Group
Woodside Summit Group Inc
Midlothian, Virginia
Office: 804-744-1247 x23
Fax: 804-744-4947
mailto:peter.kurilecz@woodsidesummitgroup.com