I saw this article last week and was so flabbergasted that I set it
aside until I cooled down.

I just wandered around the NPSA's website
(http://www.npsa-us.org/index.php). It's pretty lean, although they
seem to do a pretty good job inventing new uses for trailers and
containers (including "affordable housing" and "classrooms"). They have
been pushing the records storage angle for a while.

My opinion is that you see an industry (and this is very definitely a
trade association) faced with a glut of containers (my understanding is
that it is cheaper for Asian companies to continually build new
containers, ship them here with product, then leave them here, rather
than shipping them back empty) that needs to invent new uses for the
containers.

Frankly, I can't imagine anyone in our business that would think that
parking a container out in the parking lot is a good idea for records
storage. Nevermind the security issue. Nevermind the climate control
issue. Nevermind the issue that some one will have to go into a dark
trailer to try and find something that has been piled up inside. And
you can't exactly have one of these up on wheels and install shelving
in the left half of the trailer -- the thing will roll over. It's a
false economy and the possibility that someone could roll up and
literally drive away with your records is an incredibly scary thought.

So let's recap... this association wants people to rent a trailer or
container and store records in that space. These things can leak. The
walls can be cut with any sort of metal-cutting saw. You'll likely have
to padlock the thing -- and most padlocks can be cut. There will be no
climate control, so not only will the records suffer, but anyone who
has to go in there will suffer as well. There are no lights, so whoever
goes in there will need to bring their own. You can't efficiently store
boxes in there (the center of gravity could roll the trailer), so they
likely get piled up to the roof -- making for crushed boxes and hugely
inefficient retrieval. Oh, and someone could drive up and take the
whole thing right off of your property.

You're dealing with a space that is roughly 9 feet wide and up to 53
feet long -- about 475 square feet. When I have packed trailers full of
records boxes on pallets, the trailer held just over 1000 boxes. Even
if you managed to really pack the thing full, you're talking about a
smidge more than 2000 boxes -- and that means the boxes will be piled
10 high. And the smaller ones are less efficient.

Somehow, having several dozen of those really small containers around
(you know, the ones people use when they are remodeling their kitchen)
seems like a terrible waste of space and hugely inefficient. And if you
have them hauled to the moving and storage company, a retrieval means
getting several containers back and rummaging around in them. False
economy, if you ask me.

I'm not exactly a cheerleader for commercial records centers, but the
folks at PRISM ought to be all over this one.



Patrick Cunningham, CRM
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"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

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