On Aug 18, 2012, at 12:00 AM, RECMGMT-L automatic digest system wrote:

> 
> From: "Chesley, Rikki" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: August 17, 2012 9:46:05 AM EDT
> Subject: Re: Building the Grateful Dead Archive Online and such....
> 
> 
> Seriously, I am never going to name-drop Dr. So and So again. . .
> 
> Pearl Jam and The Grateful Dead . . . Huge has the best job EVER!

Wait, that is Hugh! Not Huge! Although when I do projects in Taiwan and China they always call me Huge.

It's funny but these entertainment clients typically are happy I have no real interest in the collections.  They always fear that the vault guy will be some fanatic that might take too much of an interest in the collection. Pearl Jam's manager offered me tickets to their concert over in the East Coast and I said that I wasn't really into that music. I was more interested in people's fascination with the Band than the music style.  When my nephew found out I turned down the tickets he was mad for a few weeks.

My favorite vaults are the Town Hall Vaults and early American history collections. I vaulted the little book that deeded all the Cape Cod and Islands to the Pilgrims.  Imagine one piece of paper that documents the real estate title of land worth billions and billions of dollars. Records of people's indentured servitude being cleared to document they are a free man.  When you think that most of the early settlers came over indentured for 7 to 15 years. Plus when you trace people back far enough, we all started as blue collar (deer skin?) laborers.

It is funny that most of the great stuff that survives is because of the records manager or archivist gene that seems to be embedded in our souls.  In more ways than one; as many of my vaults are built for early American Churches, that were the first repository of letters. Even before Town Halls.  Some of the documents they refer to as the birth certificate of the Constitution exist in these churches (their elders were members of the committee that wrote the Declaration, Bill of Rights and Constitution) and they have proved  to be great records managers.

In Westford, I was allowed to climb to the top of a very high bell tower and see a view from a viewpoint few in history have ever seen. Plus the bell was cast about the same time as the Liberty Bell. But the best thing is their records go back to 1725 or so.  These churches document the link between religious freedom and the development of our country. We all drive by our Town Halls but few take the time to walk in and ask to see the earliest records.  You are missing a divine experience.  Plus the Town Clerk will be an absolute kindred spirit.

Fred, would the oldest records for the City of New York exist in the City Hall? The Dutch influence should be there right?  I know you see the windmills and the early landowners out on Long Island have the Dutch surnames. But where are New York's oldest records?

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