Setting up an in-house Archive
Records Preservation
Telephone adverstising poster. Image courtesy of BT Heritage.
Archives are irreplaceable and can be damaged by exposure to light, fluctuating temperature and humidity, bad storage and packaging and excessive handling. To keep your archives safe and in the best condition possible follow some basic rules on handling. For more information see The National Archives on-line advice at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives/environmental_managment.htm
For more detailed technical advice on book and document preservation visit the website of the British Librarys National Preservation Office at: http://www.bl.uk/npo/services.html
Business continuity / disaster planning
Once your archive is set up, the archive manager should make a risk assessment regarding the archive collection and have a disaster plan in place for emergency implementation. The disaster plan should be fully compatible or integrated with any business continuity planning undertaken by the company.
For more information on disaster planning including companies that provide specialist support in recovering and repairing records that are damaged by fire or flood see links below:
Harwell Drying & Restoration Services at http://www.hdrs.co.uk/ and http://www.hdrs.co.uk/disasterplanning.html
Document SOS at http://www.document-sos.co.uk/
Salvage at a Glance at http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/waac/wn/wn19/wn19-2/wn19-207.html
CoOL (Conservation On-line) at http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/
M25 Consortium of Academic Libraries at http://www.m25lib.ac.uk/m25dcp/
International Records Management Trust resources at http://www.irmt.org
The Archives and Records Associations directory of suppliers at http://www.archives.org.uk/publications/arcdirectoryofsuppliers2010.html