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) .
Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA |