Archives are proud repositories of historic documents. Yet they can be saddled with storage solutions that are old too. Moving to mobile storage helped a large history center in the Midwest gain.
To get to the archives in Kingsport, Tennessee, you had to ride an elevator that creaked like it had a grudge. Then you’d set into a windowless basement so dim and dusty the staff had nicknamed it.
In the age of cloud storage and instant data access, it's easy to forget just how much history still lives in physical form. For many organizations, the past is more than something to simply.
Picture this: stacks of boxes, bulky filing cabinets, and shelves filled to the brim with irregularly shaped items. It's a lot of weight to manage — not just for the shelves but for the floor.
Archivists are information professionals. Need to find a land grant? City record? Will? Century-old newspaper? Personal diaries of a president? Ask the archivist. Beyond providing access, archivists.
