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Re: Off-site storage - NE Ohio



Well, I've been busy too, so you ain't the only one.

Offsite storage?  Nope Nope Nope.  I am not a big fan, at least for
archives.  The cost of storing materials can be competitive, but the cost of
retrieving materials will probably offset any savings you get.  Every place
is different, of course, but since Iron Mountain became the Storage Company
that Ate Every Other Storage Company, people around here have been stuck
with them.  They really sock it to you with the retrieval costs, especially
if you want things back quickly.

I remember at my last job they were using some company owned storage, which
was running them about 93 cents/foot to store annually, and I believe they
hired Pearce-Leahy at around 18 cents/foot.  What I can't remember is if the
latter figure was monthly or annually.  At any rate, they had a truck that
went from the company's NJ storage to the NY office regularly to drop off &
pick up, at whatever normal cost that required.  Pearce, on the other hand,
wanted something between 10-20 dollars per box to bring things back & forth.
If you call up a few dozen boxes at a time, as a buddy of mine did
regularly, that adds up real fast.

For archives materials, I think it becomes prohibitive if you really want to
maintain your materials.  Climate controlled storage at Iron Mountain was
running (at the time) $1 per cubic foot (again, annual?  monthly?  who
remembers); bearing in mind that the average record carton is actually 1.2
cubic feet, and if your materials take up any amount of space at all, the
bills start to pile up.

Your best bet is to get to more number crunching.  Get someone capable of
measuring the costs, include retrieval costs, maybe factor in lost time
waiting for the delivery (assuming they will be different for outside
vendors vs. internal storage) and compare.  You should see pretty quickly
which is the economical approach.  Then decide if the need to clear space is
more important than the need to save money, decide if you are willing to be
separated from your records, and then make the call.

DS

PS I wrote this before seeing Dean's comments, so I think he got things I
missed.
______________________________________
Daniel Sokolow, Archives Coordinator
David Taylor Archives
North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System
155 Community Drive
Great Neck, NY 11021
mailto:dsokolow@nshs.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Bridgette Kelly [mailto:kellyb@UCC.ORG]
Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 10:54 AM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Off-site storage - NE Ohio


Hi again! Seems as if I'm just full of questions lately. :)

The flood-gates have opened (thankfully only figurtively) and now the new
archivist is getting flooded with requests/ideas/proposals. :) One that is
being pushed is moving our archival and records center materials to an
off-site storage facility. Just wanted to gather some wisdom from fellow
listers while I'm checking options. I checked the listserv archives and
didn't come up with what I was looking for.

Are there any of you fellow Northeastern Ohioans who use Andrews for
off-site storage? If so, what do you store there, records awaiting disposal
or archival materials? What do you think of the service/quality/etc.?

Has anyone compared/contrasted the cost difference between an instituion
renting/purchasing warehouse space to store materials vs. renting space
from an off-site storage facility? (cost - price, man-power, equipment,
etc.)

Thanks for all the help! :)
Bridgette

--------------------
Bridgette A. Kelly, Archivist
United Church of Christ
700 Prospect St.
Cleveland, OH  44115
216-736-2106      kellyb@ucc.org

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