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Re: ARMA & environmental recommendations for paper



In a message dated 11/8/01 1:29:06 PM Eastern Standard Time, SMorris@DM-ART.ORG writes:


I just had a rather disturbing meeting with a representative of Iron
Mountain, the self-proclaimed "leader in records and information management"
about storing some of our archival records offsite with them.  When I asked
what their environmental storage conditions were, the representative said
that they had both air conditioned and non-air conditioned spaces available
for storage.


When selecting an offsite storage vendor for either archival or inactive records storage be sure to visit the facility where your records will be stored. Be advised that space with strict environmental controls will be at a higher cost. Be sure to ask about their fire suppression systems and not just those for the vault area. Do they have in-rack fire sprinklers or are the sprinklers located up on the ceiling? Does the facility have firewalls in place or is it one big open facility?

>>"Oh, heat doesn't really have any effect on paper."  When I argued with her about this, she said that she was a member of ARMA and that other reputable records managers affiliated with ARMA had told her this about heat and its effects on paper.<<

I have been in the industry for close to 20 years. and heat does have an effect upon paper. But as Patrick Cunningham stated in an earlier response heat does not have much bearing on records that are not of an archival value ie retained for less than 20 years. But heat does have a deleterious effect upon paper.

I would recommend that the best way to select an offsite vendor for your archival materials would be to issue a RFP. The RFP would insure that you are comparing apples to apples when reviewing the vendor responses.

Finally I suspect that the sales representative is just that a sales representative and probably has no actual records management experience or training. If you would really like to find out how much the representative knows ask them about NFPA-232 and whether or not their facilities are in compliance with it.



Peter Kurilecz
Richmond, Va
pakurilecz@aol.com