Archives Move may Slow Down Production but will Ultimately Protect Film Treasures

TO: Researchers and Clients of Archival Film Services, Colorlab

FR: Russ Suniewick, President, Colorlab

RE: Recent Move to Boyers, Pennsylvania, of the Black and White Preservation Copies, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration at Archives II

A truck approaches the cold storage facility at National Underground Storage in Boyers, Pennsylvania. This will be the new home for the National Archives' preservation copies of its black and white film collection.

The National Archives has been moving the preservation copies of its black and white film collection from 65 degrees (F). storage in the National Archives at College Park to a 35 degrees (F). cold storage facility at the National Underground Storage (NUS) in Boyers, PA. They've taken this step to better preserve these important and unique films and to bring their storage environment into line with the latest and best thinking of the film preservation community.

Since August, 2000, the Special Media Archives Services Division of NARA has moved about 13,200 cubic feet of film from "Archives II" in College Park, Maryland, to NUS. That amounts to about 79,200 cans containing an estimated 59,400,000 feet of black and white motion picture film.

During the move, each can has been bar-coded and entered into the database. This step of the move was completed October 24 and now the NARA staff will begin checking each of the 79,200 entries for accuracy so that no reels are lost in the system because of misidentification.

We believe it is worth going over the reasons for the move and the expected functioning of the site.

First, we would like to commend the Archives for establishing the site in Boyers, Pennsylvania. By this move, the Archives has assured the integrity of the black and white collection for many, many years, thereby continuing to achieve its primary, statutory goal of preserving its film collection and then making it available in as timely a manner as possible for research and reuse. Indeed, the Archives has been so successful in making its collections available that some may have come to think of it as a stock footage library. Rather, it is a repository and study center that makes its resources available to the public.

The Archives is also to be commended for undertaking this move while keeping the collection open. Other institutions would have closed it down for many months until everything was moved, checked, and ready for access. I'm sure we all appreciate that the Archives chose to work in the best interests of its many users and keep the doors open during the move.

The Boyers site is located about 70 miles north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a decommissioned limestone mine. It is about a five- to six-hour truck ride from the Washington area, almost all of it on interstate highway. The natural temperature in the mine is about 55 degrees (F). and additional refrigeration equipment reduces the temperature in the NARA vault to 35 degrees (F). Research by film industry specialists has shown that traditional safety film-cellulose acetate film-will survive in usable condition many tens of decades longer if stored at such severely reduced temperature. These films will now be stored at the more optimum temperature of 35 degrees (F). for their survival. (NARA's color film, a smaller collection at present, is already stored at 25 degrees (F). in the NARA College Park facility. This reduces color fading to a minimum.)

Because of budget limitations and NARA's needs to upgrade its historic 1930s National Archives Building on the National Mall in Washington, DC, funds were not available to retrofit the existing National Archives at College Park building for 35 degrees F. storage or to expand the building and its existing refrigeration plant. Consequently, a decision was made to go off-site for cold storage. As noted above, a contract was awarded to National Underground Storage, which has since become a part of the Iron Mountain group of records storage companies.

A condition of the contract between NARA and National Underground Storage is that it will provide delivery by the close of business the next day at Archives II. In practice, however, this has worked out to be overnight delivery if the order is in the hands of the NUS personnel by 3:30 PM. If that deadline is met, the film will be on a truck by dinnertime and at Archives II by the following morning.

The steps of the ordering process are as follows. The NARA Item Approval Form must--

1. Be sent by fax or mail, or delivered in person in the Research Room to a Motion Picture Reference Team ("MPRT") staff member.

2. Pass through the NARA approval and ordering process.

3. Be transmitted by NARA's MPRT ordering staff to NUS by phone, fax or e-mail by 3:30PM.

4. Upon arrival at Archives II the next morning, it must be unpacked, inventoried, and then re-shipped to Colorlab. (This reshipping is important for NARA's chain-of-custody control.)

The only significant limit on the process may crop up in the winter, when poor road conditions (because of snow and ice) might delay the truck from Boyers to College Park. We advise that people wishing to order from the black and white collection of preservation originals add a full 10 working days to their schedules (on average) to the usual time-frame of 5 to 10 working days from the date that the order arrives at Colorlab.

Of course, thousands of the black and white films in this collection are already available at College Park in the form of intermediates already made from the preservation originals. So many of you may find that what you need from the collection is already in Maryland.

I hope that this information on the Boyers, PA, facility has been informative. Please feel free to contact either Kathy Burdette or Dan Houstman should you have any further questions.

++Russ Suniewick