> And it raised the question of how in the digital age — and in the
> prohibitive Midtown Manhattan real estate market — can some of the
> company’s most precious physical assets and intellectual property be safely
> and reasonably stored?

If the Times did what many of the people who commented on the event recommended, in a few years we would have another article talking about how the devices were not migrated, the technology and software became obsolete and so on.

The value of the archive is to have it near by for reporters and researchers to have access.  There is something wonderful about these old microfilm and fiche collections.  They are always accessible as the technology is simple.  Stored in the right environment ( temperature and humidity) with the proper sensors for certain degradation issues, the archive can be kept forever.  Nothing digital can ever promise that.  (Even something like Rosetta Stone requires the vendor stay in business forever.  And no one can guarantee that.  For example, several Cloud vendors have failed and huge issues develop there.) 

I built a vault in a large city and its microfilm library was huge. I was visiting a new site with four large FIRELOCK vaults in a different city and I came across that same collection of microfilm.  The Owner simply moved it from one vault to another.  Then they moved the vault too.  

They chose to move the collection not to an offsite storage vendor but to an imaging company that can retrieve faster than the clients own methodology, electronically transmit the microfilm image to them when needed. The best part was the Owner had in its contract, that the archive belonged to the Owner, that no hostage fee could ever be added to the fees and the contracted storage there was dependent on the performance of the vendor, not the size of the hostage fee.

Turns out the records management consultant was one of our pros and all of the knowledge of information governance was shared with this client.  Impressive.

Through the years, I have run across situations where my clients have all their records management issues all laid out perfectly; and when you dig deeper, it will be one of our iconic records managers or one of the records management consultants that made the ideal records management program exist. Typically, it will be a proprietary solution where the Owner controls all the issues. Even if it is a microfilm reader and a storage cabinet full of hundreds of spare bulbs. 

Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
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(610)  756-4440    Fax (610)  756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM


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