Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 3, 1994 TAG: 9401030115
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
It is carting thousands of boxes and crates of precious historical items - from rare Civil War photographs to Watergate scandal tapes - to a $250 million research building in suburban College Park, Md.
The move beginning today will take three years, require at least 1,300 truckloads and cost $6.8 million, said Susan Cooper, spokeswoman for the National Archives and Records Administration.
Much of the 765,934 cubic feet of material will be placed in 2.3 million small, specially designed and cushioned containers so that the contents are protected from temperature fluctuations and humidity.
The items range from documents so old and fragile they can't be exposed to sunlight to the cracked windshield of the limousine President Kennedy sat in when he was assassinated.
The windshield will be wrapped in Styrofoam, put in a specially designed crate, and transported along a special route to avoid potholes. The Watergate tapes will be transported in armored cars.
Unlike many people facing a move, the National Archives didn't wait until the last minute to pack.
"We have people who have already been working on this move for five years, full time," Cooper said. "And they will continue to work on this for another three years."
The movers will transport 7 million still pictures, 11 million charts, maps and aerial photographs, 112,274 reels of motion pictures, and 200,122 sound and video recordings, according to archivists.
The still-picture collection includes photographs taken by Mathew Brady during the Civil War, work by Ansel Adams and hundreds of thousands of photographs taken during World War II.
Among the items that will be on display at the new, modern research facility will be many of President Nixon's presidential records, documents on the Kennedy assassination and audio tapes from the Supreme Court.
The building in College Park - known as Archives II - features the most advanced pollution and environmental controls and state-of-the-art preservation technology. Nine laboratories will allow archivists to use the latest document preservation and storage methods and even develop new ones, Cooper said.
Paper records will be stored on mobile shelves that can be shifted electronically at a push of a button to provide easier access. Laid end to end, the 520 miles of shelves would reach from the agency's office to Ann Arbor, Mich.
The building can hold up to 2 million cubic feet of records, enough space to accommodate the acquisition of materials into the next century, officials said.
Nevertheless, more than a quarter-million cubic feet of material and documents - including the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights - remain at the Archives' main building in downtown Washington.
The Archives since the 1960s has been leasing storage space at various locations in and near the capital. "One thing this move is going to achieve is a consolidation of all of those facilities," Cooper said, adding that the consolidation is expected to save about $5 million a year in rental costs.
by CNB