Archive Buildings and Equipment [2nd enl. rev. ed. Reprint 2015] 9783110977684, 9783598202780

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saur

INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON ARCHIVES

CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES ARCHIVES

ICA Handbooks Series Volume 6

Michel Duchein

Archive Buildings and Equipment 2nd revised and enlarged Edition

Edited by Peter Walne Translated by David Thomas

KGSaur München • New York • London • Paris 1988

CIP-Titelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek Duchein Michel: Archive buildings and equipment / Michel Duchein. Ed. by Peter Walne. Transi, by David Thomas. - 2nd rev. and enl. ed. - München ; New York ; London ; Paris ; Saur, 1988 (ICA handbooks series ; Vol. 6) Einheitssacht.: Les bâtiments et equipments d'archives ISBN 3-598-20278-4 NE: International Council on Archives: ICA handbooks series

Copyright 1988 by K.G. Saur Verlag GmbH & Co.KG, München (A member of the international Butterworths Group, London) Printed in the Federal Republic of Germany All rights reserved. No part of his publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher. Photocomposition by Fotosatz Pfeifer, Germering bei München Printed by Strauß Offsetdruck, 6945 Hirschberg 2 ISBN 3-598-20278-4

5

Table of contents List of Illustrations

11

Foreword

15

Introduction

19

Translator's Note

21

Part One Definition of an archive building. The architectural brief. Basic options. Overall plan Chapter One Basic definitions 1. Definition of an archive service 2. Definition of an archive building

25 25

Chapter Two Drawing up an architectural brief. The roles of the archivist and the architect 1. 2. 3. 4.

The architectural brief The contents of a brief The choice of the architect The roles of the archivist and the architect

27 27 28 28

Chapter Three The basic choice: a new building or the adaptation of an existing one 1. Arguments in favour of new buildings 2. Arguments in favour of old buildings Economic argument. Cultural argument 3. Making the decision. Mistakes to avoid 4. A combined solution: old and new buildings side by side

29 29 29 30 31

Chapter Four The site and layout 1. A single building or multiple buildings? 2. Historical archives and semi-current records 3. The choice of a site

32 32 33

Sites to avoid. 33 Definition of the best sites 34. Storing archives out of town? 35 The orientation of the building. 35

4. 5. 6. 7.

Underground repositories The height of buildings Provisions for the future Area of land required

36 37 37 38

6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part Two The features of a typical archive building Chapter Five The overall plan, access and parking facilities 1. Constituent parts of an archive building 2. A basic principle: isolation of the strongrooms from the rest of the building 3. Work-flow patterns and general layout

41 41 42

Inward movement of accessions and outward movement of documents for destruction (non-public areas). - Movement of the public. - Movement of documents which are being consulted. - Movement of staff. -

4. Access 5. Car parks and garages

44 44

Chapter Six Strongrooms: construction and equipment 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

General characteristics of strongrooms Location of strongrooms The structure of strongrooms and floor loading Height of floors and shelving units Floor area of strongrooms Capacity of strongrooms relative to their areas Exterior walls and windows Strongroom floors and floor coverings Protection against fire and theft; heating, air-conditioning, ventilation and lighting in strongrooms 10. Shelving

45 45 45 47 47 47 47 48 48 48

Definition, material for shelves, general characteristics and installation. 54 Shelving standards. 50 Methods of attaching the shelves. Shelving accessories. 51 Mobile or compact shelving. 51 The arrangement of documents on the shelves. 53

11. The preservation of special types of documents

54

The preservation of maps, plans, posters and other large documents. 54 Vertical storage cabinets, horizontal plan cases, storage of rolled documents. 54 The preservation of seals and sealed documents. 55 The preservation of photographs, cine-films, sound recordings and computer records (photographic images, microforms, cine-films, mechanical sound recordings, documents on magnetic mediums). 56

12. Vaults 13. Work in strongrooms

59 60

Chapter Seven Work-areas closed to the public: workshops and offices 1. General features 2. Areas for receiving and fumigating documents Reception area for transfers; the loading bay. 61 The fumigation room. 62

61 61

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3. Areas for documents which are to be destroyed

7 62

Documents to be destroyed after a fixed period. 62 Documents for immediate destruction: removing documents to be destroyed. 63 The destruction of documents. 63 4. R o o m s for appraisal and sorting 5. The photographic studio

64 65

General remarks. 65 Location and plan of the photographic studio. 65 The camera room. 66 Processing and film duplicating room. 67 Room for enlarging and printing. 67 Room for editing and checking films. 67 Storage of materials. 67 6. Areas for photocopying, duplicating and printing

68

General remarks. 68 Location. 68 Photocopying. 68 Duplicating and printing. 68 7. The bindery and conservation laboratory

69

Introduction, location. 69 The bindery - traditional hand binding; American or 'Perfect' glued bindings; binding by plastic rings; binding collections of newspapers. 69 The conservation laboratory. 71 8. Workshop for seal repair and making casts of seals 9. T h e packing room

72 73

Location of room. 73 Archive boxes. 73 Bundles in folders or wrappers. 74 Pouches, bags or envelopes for records. 75 Straps and string. 75 Labelling. 75 Stamping and numbering. 76 Making-up postal parcels. 76 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

General maintenance workshop T h e offices Stores for materials Staff rest rooms and canteens Shower rooms and toilets Technical service areas

76 76 77 77 78 78

Chapter Eight Areas open to the public 1. General features 2. Reception hall and enquiry office

79 79

Public entrance hall. 79 The enquiry office. 80 The publications sales office. 80 3. The reading areas

81

One room or several? 81 The problem of supervision. 81 Reception of readers, cloakrooms. 82 The link with the strongrooms, the distribution of documents to readers and the storage of documents which are in use. 83 Space, internal arrangement and furniture of reading rooms. 83 Finding aids and reference works. 84 Library of historical works. 85 Individual research carrels. 86 Administrative searches: the administrative documentation centre. 86 Special equipment for consulting records (microfilm readers, ultra-violet lamps). 86 4. Areas for exhibitions, cultural and educational activities

88

General features. 88 Exhibition areas. 89 Lecture rooms and film theatres. 90 Education service rooms. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

R o o m s for meetings, seminars, etc Public rest room Cafeteria Telephone booths Toilets and cloakrooms

91 91 92 92 92

8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Nine Staff accomodation 1. 2. 3. 4.

General features Location and size of staff accommodation Fittings of staff flats A n n e x e s to the flats

93 93 94 94

Chapter Ten General technical arrangements and equipment 1. 2. 3. 4.

The importance of protection and safety in archive buildings Construction: materials, structures and designs Roofs Fire protection and fire fighting

95 96 96 97

General remarks: the causes of fire in archive buildings. 97 Protection against fire: building design (fire-resistant walls and floors; fire-resistant doors; isolation of stairs and lifts; 97 isolation of ducts and shafts: smoke-vents; lightning conductors; fire escapes; special arrangements in strongrooms; arrangements in high-risk areas). 98 Fire detection: 1. automatic extinction systems (sprinklers; carbon dioxide; halons; high expansion foams); 100 2. hand-held extinguishers; 101 3. the role of the fire brigade. Safety measures. Safety regulations. 102 5. Protection against theft

103

General remarks. Technical methods of protection. 103 Security regulations. 103 6. Protection against flooding 7. Protection against humidity, dryness and climatic variations

104 104

General remarks: optimal climatic conditions (paper and parchment based records, black and white photographic materials, coloured photographic materials, records on magnetic mediums, work areas for public and staff). 105 Measurement of temperature and relative humidity. 106 Architectural measures: insulation against heat and humidity. 106 Heating. Cooling. 107 Humidification and dehumidification 108 Ventilation. 108 Air-conditioning. 109 8. Protection against atmospheric pollution

110

General remarks. 110 Measurement of pollution and acidity. The acidity of paper. 110 Filtration of exterior air. I l l 9. Protection against excessive light

Ill

General remarks. I l l Protection against sunlight in strongrooms. I l l Protection against sunlight in exhibition areas and work areas. 112 Electric lighting in strongrooms. 113 Electric lighting in work areas and areas open to the public. 113 10. Protection against insects and fungi: fumigation

114

General remarks. 114 Architectural precautions. 114 Fumigation of rooms. 115 Fumigation of documents. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Protection against rodents Protection against dust Sound insulation The electrical installation Batteries and emergency generators The water supply

116 116 117 117 118 118

TABLE OF CONTENTS

9

17. The gas supply 18. Telephones

118 119

Telephone connections to the external network 119 Internal telephones and intercom. 119

19. Handling and internal movement

119

Elevators and goods lifts. 120 Conveyors, paternosters, etc. 120 Trollies. 121 Lifting and handling gear. 122

20. 21. 22. 23.

Computers and computer terminals Facsimile transmission, remote access, etc Television aerials Securitiy, continous monitoring of equipment, automatic building management

122 122 122 123

Part Three Two special subjects Chapter E l e v e n Records centres or intermediate repositories 1. Location and overall design 2. Strongrooms, shelving 3. Working areas

127 128 128

Reception of records. 128 Appraisal and sorting. 128 Documents to be destroyed. 128 Consulting documents. 129 Workshops. 129 Offices. 129 Toilets, exits, garages, technical equipment and technical areas. 129 Staff flat. 129 Transport and communication problems. 130

Chapter Twelve Archive buildings in tropical countries 1. 2. 3. 4.

The The The The

problem problem problem problem

of of of of

humidity and fungi: protection and fumigation hurricanes solar radiation termites

131 132 132 132

Appendices Appendix 1 Summary of the main dimensional requirements and technical standards for archive buildings 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Area of land needed on which to build archive buildings Capacity of archive buildings Relationship between linear measure, weight and volume of archives Dimensions of strongrooms and of shelving Dimensions of work areas and staff flats Climatic standards Electric lighting Acidity of paper and packing materials Goods lifts

137 137 . . 137 138 138 139 139 139 140

10

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Appendix 2 Model brief for the construction of departmental archives in France 1. General remarks

141

Functions of the building. 141 Location and area of land required. 141 General plan. 142 Work-flows. 142

2. Strongrooms

143

General characteristics. 143 Structure. 143 Dimensions. 143 Windows. 144 Shelving. 144 Special strongrooms. 145 Vertical communication. 145 Protection against sunlight in the strongrooms. 145 Protection against fire and theft. 145 Climatic conditions. Protection against dryness and humidity. Heating. 146 Protection against dust. 146 Electrical installation. 146

3. Work areas not open to the public

147

Definition. 147 Room for receiving accessions. 147 Appraisal room. 147 Room for documents which are to be destroyed. 147 Fumigation room. 147 Photographic and microfilm studio. 148 Bindery. 148 Conservation laboratory. 149 Reprographics area. 149 Room for packing, carpentry, etc. 149 Offices. 150 Staff cloakrooms and washrooms. 150 Staff canteen. 150 Other technical areas. 150

4. Areas open to the public

150

Definition. 150 Entrance hall, enquiry office and exhibition area. 150 Reading rooms and catalogue rooms. 151 Area for reserved documents ('kept out' area). 151 Photocopy room. 151 Lecture theatre. 151 Exhibition area. 152 Education service room. 152 Public cloakrooms and washrooms. 152

5. Technical areas and installation

152

Electricity. 152 Water. 153 Cabling. 153 Telephone. 153 Protection against fire and fire fighting. 154 Protection against theft and vandalism. 154

6. Staff

flats

154

Select bibliography Bibliographies. The general concept of archive buildings. 155 General studies. 155 Monographs on buildings. 156 Shelving. 157 Preservation of special documents. 157 Binding and repair. 158 Microfilm. 158 Fumigation and protection against pests. 159 Climatic control in buildings. 159 Fire-protection and fire-fighting. 159 Use of old buildings for archives. 160 Archive buildings in tropical countries. 160 Journals. 160

Index

161

Illustrations

163

11

List of Illustrations

Exterior of buildings 111 1. Archives départementales du Calvados (photo: Archives du Calvados) . 163 111 2. Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime (photo: Archives de la Seine-Maritime

164

111 3. Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne (photo: Archives du Val-de-Marne)

165

1114. Public Record Office, Kew (photo: Public Record Office)

166

111 5. Archives départementales de la Haute-Vienne (photo: Thibaudin, Inventaire general, SPADEM)

167

111 6. Archives départementales de l'Hérault (photo: Archives de l'Hérault) . 167 111 7. Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (photo: Requat and Reinthaller) 111 8. Archives départementales du Val-d'Oise (photo: B. Feypell and E. Zoltowski) 111 9. Archives nationales du Québec (photo: Université Laval)

168 169 170

General plan of buildings 111 10 and 11. Diagrams showing the isolation of strongrooms from the working areas

171

111 12. Plan of the main circulation routes

173

111 13,14 and 15. Plans and sections of the Archives départementales du Val-d'Oise (drawings by B. Feypell and E. Zoltowski)

174

111 16 and 17. Plans of the Archives départementales des Alpes-Maritimes (drawings by B. Feypell and E. Zoltowski)

177

111 18. Section of the Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne (drawing by B. Feypell and E. Zoltowski)

178

111 19. Facade and section of the Archives départementales d'Ille-et-Vilaine (drawing by B. Feypell and E. Zoltowski)

179

111 20. Plans of the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (drawing by F. Requat and Reinthaller)

180

111 21 and 22. Model and plan of the Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau (model and plan: CI. Aureau)

181

111 23 and 24. Plan and section of the Archives départementales de la Somme (drawings by CI. Aureau)

183

12

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Building structures 11125. Archivio di Stato, Udine (photo: Fotoartistica Udine) 111 26. Archives départementales du Var (photo: Forges de Strasbourg)

184 . . . 185

111 27. Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône (photo: Archives des Bouches-du-Rhône)

186

111 28 A Archives départementales du Finistère (photo: E. Le Grand, Quimper)

187

111 28 B

Archivio di Stato, Ascoli Piceno (photo: Tarquini, Ascoli Piceno) . 188

111 29. Archives départementales de l'Aude (photo: Archives de l'Aude) . . . 189

Strongrooms and storage equipment 111 30. Model layout of a strongroom

190

11131. Row of shelving

190

111 32 A Fixed back-to-back shelving (photo: Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau)

191

111 32 B

Mobile shelving with sideways movement (photo: Lapouyade) . . . 191

111 33. Mobile shelving with forward movement (photo: Forges de Strasbourg)

192

111 34 and 35. Layout of fixed and mobile shelving

193

111 36. Method of arranging boxes on shelving

195

111 37. Archive boxes stored flat (photo: Hauptstaatsarchiv, Düsseldorf) . . . 196 111 38. Archive boxes stored vertically (photo: Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau) 196 111 39. Archive boxes for intermediate storage (photo: Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau)

197

111 40 and 41. Making a bundle of records (photo: Archives nationales, Paris)

198

111 42. Plan cases (photo: Archives nationales, Paris)

201

111 43. Shelving for vertical storage of large volumes (photo: Archives nationales, Paris) 111 44 A

202

Cabinet for storing microfilms (photo: Archives nationales, Paris) . 203

111 44 B Cabinet and pockets for storing documents with seals (photo: Rijksarchief, Maastricht)

204

111 45. Cabinet for the flat storage of documents with seals (photo: Rijksarchief, The Hague)

205

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

13

Transport and handling 111 46. Archives trolley (photo: Archives de l'Hérault)

206

111 47. Trolley for moving plans (photo: Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague . 207 111 48. Platform roller truck (photo: Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau)

207

111 49. Elevator platform (photo: N. Choublier, Cergy)

208

111 50. Conveyor belt (photo: Archives de la Loire-Atlantique)

208

Workshops and technical equipment 111 51. Ethylene oxide fumigation chamber (photo: Mallet)

209

111 52. Sorting bench

210

111 53. Sorting rooms (photo: Archives du Nord and Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau)

211

111 54. Paper shredder (photo: Archives du Val-de-Marne)

213

111 55 and 56. Conservation and binding workshops (photo: Archives nationales, Paris)

214

111 57 to 60. Photographic studio; photos: Archives nationales, Paris (59B and 60A), Centre des Archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau (59A, 61, 62), Archives de Loir-et-Cher (60B)

218

111 61. Studio for audiovisual recording and editing (photo: Archives du Val-de-Marne)

224

111 62. Air-conditioning plant and technical control panel (photo: Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau)

225

Areas open to the public 111 63. Entrance hall (photo: Archives des Hauts-de-Seine)

226

111 64 and 65. Reading rooms (photo: Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis and Riksarkivet, Oslo)

227

111 66 A Microfilm readers (photo: Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau)

228

111 66 B Microcomputer in the reading room (photo: Archives du Val-de-Marne)

229

111 67. Exhibition area (photo: Historisches Archiv, Cologne) 111 68. Inventories and card indexes, display case (photo: Archives du Val-de-Marne) 111 69. Lecture theatre (photo: Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis)

229 230 232

15

FOREWORD

Archive building has only recently made its appearance among the many building disciplines. For thousands of years, the archives were the room or the building in which records were stored. The records could equally well be placed elsewhere and the rooms in which they had been housed could be used for other public or private administrative activities. From the palace of Man to the palace of the Soubise, the idea was the same, a domestic building could sometimes be used to store old documents. When the growth of scholarly history in the nineteenth century led to the first public record offices, these were only the democratic age's interpretation of the medieval 'treasuries' and strongrooms where charters and manuscripts, coins and valuable plate were stored. The building which LouisPhilippe devoted to this new fonds (the ancient archives of the Parlement of Paris) was - almost down to the furnishings - in a direct line of descent from the tower of the Louvre and the monastic archives. Archive administration was still governed by the definition which Philippe le Bel gave in 1309 in letters appointing my predecessor Pierre d'fhampes: 'Let him examine, put in order and arrange in chests the letters, charters and privileges in order to keep them in the best condition possible so that they may be the most safely and the most easily usable when necessary. Let him do everything he can to keep them safely and find them quickly.' All this was expressed inside the building in terms of cupboards, presses and shelves. Archive administration was based on juxtaposition and communication on reading. Good preservation depended on the strength of materials - the parchment of charters and the wood of shelves. The inventory was only a summary or stock list arranged item by item or leaf by leaf. At the beginning of the present era, there were still archive buildings where several rooms adjoining a repository made it possible for a small staff to carry out a limited number of tasks; only the presence of some records in the repository made it a record office. In the last half century, everything has combined to cause the appearance of the record office as a form of architecture. - More numerous records which could not be controlled without appropriate equipment. - Fragile and impermanent documents which could no longer be preserved simply by being put in a safe place. - More members of the public with more varied needs. - New documents on new mediums and new methods of producing them remotely and on the spot. - New functions in cities and in the world at large. All these factors have combined to compel archivists and architects to reach a joint concept, which, when the moment comes to build, is transformed into a definite brief of such huge financial dimensions that the least mistake may spell catastrophe. Archivists have got into the habit of starting with the needs which they know and those they anticipate in order to turn them into a suitable brief.

16

FOREWORD

Later, the time comes when the brief turns into a plan. The art of defining a need is also the means of conceptualizing the development. It is not a question of applying a single solution in all cases. The author of this volume has too much practical experience to believe that the same responses can be given in circumstances which differ in the size of funding available, as well as in the balance between the different administrative, scientific and cultural needs. Even the climate and the possible dangers of attack have to be taken into account. The intention of this book is more modest, which made its conception more difficult. Instead of a model brief, it offers a framework of ideas appropriate for those who intend to build. Those and those alone will have to find a way of successfully adapting a general view to a particular problem. Archives have always been a symbol. It is in this way that, since the rise of cities, the preservation of the past in its most meaningful form has been conceived. Rome placed its archives in the Capitol, the king of France put his in the Louvre and Napoleon dreamed of a palace of archives which would have towered above the Seine. In people's eyes, the new archive buildings are the place where our civilization recognises its past in perceiving its present. These archive buildings are the material manifestation of the concept which human societies have of their collective identities. It is not surprising that many developing countries have listed the need for an archive building among their national priorities from the first days of independence. The symbol goes much further than the simple presence of the past in the living city. It is a reminder of therightof citizens to these documents, which are the muniments of all and often of each one. It affirms the right of the young and the less young to knowledge and culture. Archives are not only a responsibility, they are also a prerogative. Nobody in search of information is in any doubt when it comes to choosing between a miserable shed where nations who no longer remember lay their past to rest and these palaces of history, whose stone, concrete, steel and glass express an essential part of the dignity of man. An archive building is first and always a repository. This term has come to represent the whole building; it must be said that this has done great damage to a function which is too easily reduced by people who see it from a distance to simply gathering in and leaving to a long sleep. A repository certainly, but one where neither men nor documents are able to doze off if they are to face up to the constraints created by the mass of documentation which governs the contemporary world. The repository fails in its vocation if nowadays it is not provided with the resources to make the technology of the archivist fit" the technology of those who produce the archives. The repository should not be designed without specialised areas, without means of preservation, of processing, of restoration, of duplication, thanks to which, even 'new archival materials' can survive to become part of tomorrow's archival heritage. Microfilm is neither a luxury, nor an extra, any more than binding or repairing. Other techniques are being added or will be added to those which have been invented recently. One thing is certain, preservation does not only consist of putting a guard in front of the door. Beyond the repository, around it and thanks to it, an archive building is a

FOREWORD

17

working tool, with which a nation, a community or a society is endowed. It is the necessary foundation of all scientific work, of all political, economic or sociological analysis of the past, of all understanding of civilizations. It is also the means by which an ever increasing public of willing amateurs can successfully complete their researches. Such research is again becoming what it used to be in many countries in the last century: a leisure pursuit, which allows the use of free time for creative activity. Consequently, an archive building should have a reception service capable of accommodating this new demand and an information system capable of responding to questions from the most knowledgeable, as well as from novices. If it is intended that a new archive building should be a place of discovery and not of despair for readers, quite a range of equipment should be offered - f r o m traditional information mediums, inventories and lists in every form devised by civilization since the advent of writing: from handwritten tablets to printed books - to computerized documentation which may have a 'tree structure' or be 'interactive'. This is the price of cultural influence. It is certainly a matter of influence when archive buildings show, by their very architecture, their intention of opening to the world. From now on, archive buildings by their design and by the height of their facades will demonstrate a political will: to attract women and men, old and young, in short, all those who have rights over their common past. But to attract them is to know in advance how to respond to their demands. The provision of work rooms for the education service which are designed for the school children does not mean that there cannot also be showcases for tourists, or special access facilities for the disabled. Archives also play a role in historical education which is finding a new equilibrium in our time. The cultural influence of archives can apply a corrective touch to what our contemporaries can learn from a very varied historical literature, or what they get from the media or what survives from their early education. The archive building is the place where history makes its appearance on the horizon of mankind, which may be that of the region or of the parish. It is also the place where curiosity, that is to say intelligence, comes into contact with the raw data in documents with fruitful results. An encounter of this sort with history, which is neither ready made nor woven from certainties and obvious facts, but open to countless questions and reassessments, provides a lesson in methodology and also in ethics. Learning history from a document also provides a lesson in the exercise of critical faculties. For that reason, the archive building is fundamentally an essential factor in the training of citizens. The present gains by questioning the past and understanding it, as well as by knowing the limits of our knowledge and the fatal incompleteness of the dialogue between the past and the present. It is a virtue particular to man to be sensitive to his history and to use it to enrich his capacity for action. Michel Duchein has become known throughout the whole world as one of the greatest experts in the problems of archive buildings. Nobody would now dare to launch into the planning of such an enterprise without having pondered over the facts given in this volume, of which this is the second edition and entirely new. It would be difficult to list all the existing buildings and those in

18

FOREWORD

progress of construction which owe something to Michel Duchein and his published works. It would even be risky to try to count those who have called directly on his expertise. He has been a Unesco expert, consultant for the International Council on Archives or simply invited by a government because of his reputation and this vocation of builder has taken him both to Brasilia and to Kuala Lumpur. Two decades as head of the Technical Service of the Direction des Archives de France have allowed him to play a decisive part in the construction of several dozen of these archive buildings with which our age has, happily, covered France, just as in the period following the year 1000 A. D., it was covered, (in the words of Raoul le Glabre) with a white mantle of churches. His agreement to rewrite this volume which has so greatly contributed to his fame can only bring him new friends. As a result of his work, we are better able to undertake our responsibilities to the world. My warmest wishes go to this book and to the palaces of history which will come out of it. Jean Favier, Membre de l'Institut, Directeur général des Archives de France, Président d'honneur de la Conférence internationale de la Table ronde des Archives.

19

INTRODUCTION

The first edition of this work was published by the International Council on Archives in 1966. It was the fruit of ten years' experience as the head of the Technical Service of the Direction des Archives de France and it reflected the techniques and procedures which were in use at that time in France and several neighbouring countries. Despite its imperfections - which are undoubtedly more noticeable now than they were then - this book was quite successful internationally, if only because it was, to my knowledge, the first publication on this subject. It benefited from the spectacular growth in the construction of archive buildings which took place in the 1960s and 1970s so that the English edition of 1977, Archives Buildings and Equipment (Munich, K.G. Saur) included quite a large number of modifications and additions to the original text. As the edition of 1966 had been out of print for several years, it became necessary to produce a new one. While preparing it, I saw that a simple updating would not be sufficient, but that a complete rewrite was essential. Technology has advanced so rapidly in the past twenty years (fire-protection, air-conditioning, fumigation, photography, reprographics, automation, etc.), scientific knowledge about the preservation of documents has made so much progress, the conditions of work of archive services have changed so much (development of cultural activities, opening up towards a wide public, influx of searchers), the actual idea of archive buildings has changed so profoundly that few of the passages in the 1966 edition could have been printed just as they are. In addition, since 1966,1 have had the opportunity to undertake more than a score of consultancy missions and study tours in Europe, Africa, America and Asia, on behalf of Unesco, the International Council on Archives and various foreign governments. In the course of these, I have become acquainted with achievements in other countries and with the climatic, economic, legal and even psychological problems of constructing and equipping archive buildings outside France; this international experience has been incorporated into the text of the new edition and has led to quite a major change in approach in comparison with the 1966 edition. Consequently, this is a new work, more than a new edition, which is offered to archivists and architects who are responsible for building or equipping archive buildings. The influx into record offices of more and more documents in new forms films, sound recordings, computer records... - which have particular problems of preservation and use, raised a difficulty in planning this work. It was certainly not possible to ignore these documents, but there was no question of writing a manual on sound archives, film archives or computer archives because (apart from specialised repositories), the vast majority of documents in record offices are still traditional records on paper, even in the most technologically advanced countries. Consequently, the major part of this manual is concerned with the construction and equipment of 'classical' archive buildings, but an important part

20

INTRODUCTION

is, nevertheless, devoted to the preservation of 'new' documents. A comparison with the edition of 1966 may prove instructive in this respect. It is obvious that a work of this nature which encompasses so many different techniques could not be carried out without a great deal of assistance. I am not able to mention here all those people both from France and from overseas who have helped me to add to my knowledge on one particular point or another. I should like especially to thank those who were kind enough to advise me, sometimes in a very detailed way about their own specialised areas: Mme Marie-France Calas, conservateur en chef du département de la Phonothèque nationale et de l'Audiovisuel at the Bibliothèque nationale; MM. Bernard Feypell and Édouard Zoltowski, architectes DPLG, designers of several excellent French archive buildings; Mme Françoise Flieder, directeur de recherche at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, directeur du Centre de recherche sur la conservation des documents graphiques; Mme Martine Garrigues, conservateur chargé du Service des sceaux in the Archives nationales; M. Michel Quétin, conservateur en chef du Service photographique, du microfilm et des archives audiovisuelles in the Archives nationales. And, of course, Mme Élisabeth Houriez, conservateur en chef du Service des publications des Archives nationales, without whose competence and vigilance, this work would never have seen the light of day. Michel Duchein, Inspecteur général des Archives de France

21

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

This is a translation of the 1985 edition of Michel Duchein, Les Bâtiments d'Archives, Construction et Équipements which was published by the Archives Nationales de France. The text includes some modifications and corrections by Michel Duchein, including some new ideas which arose out of a conference of experts held in Vienna in late 1985. Annexe II of the original, which is a list of useful addresses in France has not been translated. References to official standards throughout are to the relevant French standards. The translation was the work of David Thomas, who would like to express his thanks to Peter Walne, Andrea Thomas and Eileen Josephs for their assistance.

25

CHAPTER ONE 1. Basic Definitions Before beginning a study of the construction and equipment of an archive building, it may be useful to start with some definitions; without these there is a danger of speaking in a vacuum. While the idea of archives is almost universal (in the sense in which this word denotes a collection of documents produced by an organisation, an administrative unit, a firm, an institution, even a family or person, in the course of their activities, and preserved by them for practical or reference purposes), the same cannot be said of the idea of an archive building. 1 In some countries, public archives constitute a separate and independent administrative body with their own buildings, staff and rules ; while in others, they are to a greater or lessser extent, combined or linked with libraries, museums or documentation services. Sometimes, they remain closely tied to the organisations which produced them (for example, the Foreign Ministry archives in France, or those of the Academy of Sciences in the USSR) ; in other cases, they acquire total independence when they cease to be of current use to the body which produced them. Another difference is that certain countries recognize two types of archive buildings: 'historical archives', for documents of permanent importance which are to be preserved indefinitely, and records centres or intermediate repositories (called dépôts de préarchivage or dépôts intermédiaires in France and Zwischenarchiv in Germany), where documents destined to be destroyed after shorter or longer periods are housed. This distinction does not exist everywhere; in many countries the same buildings act as both record centres and historical archives. This question is discussed further in chapter 4 (p. 32). Traditional records on paper and parchment no longer form the whole body of records in the late twentieth century. Besides bundles, boxes and volumes there are increasing numbers of rolls of microfilm, photographs, sound recordings on discs and tapes, cinefilms and magnetic tapes, which are becoming more numerous every year. Some record offices even specialize in the preservation of one or another of these new media, which pose special problems of storage, handling and use.

2. Definition of an archive building There is no definition of an archive building which is universal and applicable everywhere. There are buildings which are exclusively devoted to archives and which are specifically designed and equipped for that purpose ; on the other hand, there are buildings in which archives occupy only a part: a floor, a wing or sometimes even only one or two rooms. 1

In English, the terms archives, archives repository and archive building are synonymous. Rooms for the storage of records are called strongrooms or stacks.

26

CHAPTER ONE

Equally, a building which is only intended to house current or semi-current records will be quite differently designed and equipped from a building for historical archives where the requirements of preservation are much stricter. A building in which it is intended to store and use films, sound recordings or computer tapes will have very different technical characteristics from one in which only paper documents are preserved. Finally, local and national traditions as well as climatic conditions must be taken into account; an archives building like a library would not be constructed in the same way in Kuala-Lumpur, Paris, or Oslo. A few basic principles can be accepted as characterizing an archive building whatever its size or location. There are certain fundamental requirements which can be regarded as universal: a) the preservation of documents in complete safety, which requires sound premises, protected against fire, humidity, excessive sunlight, insects, rodents, thieves, etc.; b) the production of documents to users, which requires space for listing, packing and labelling; as well as catalogues and inventories, reading rooms, reception and public information areas; c) repair of damaged documents; d) reproduction of documents: microfilm, photocopies, etc. In addition to these basic needs there are various secondary requirements: public exhibitions of certain documents; provision of records for use in the education service of the archives; moulding and repair of seals; administrative documentation etc. In these circumstances, it would be misleading to talk about constructing and equipping an archive building without first drawing up a clear brief describing the sort of archive service for which it is intended.

27

CHAPTER TWO DRAWING UP AN ARCHITECTURAL BRIEF. THE ROLES OF THE ARCHIVIST AND THE ARCHITECT 1. The architectural brief A clear brief is essential both for a new building, or for a conversion. Only the archivist can draw this up ; he is the only one who is familiar with the requirements of his service and competent to define them. The task of the architect and the engineer is to translate this brief into building plans, but they cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions in the specification which has been given to them. This shows how carefully this vital document has to be drawn up. The role of this Manual is to help archivists in this task, but not to take their place. The head of an archive service is the only one who knows exactly what its needs are (the quantity and importance of the documents in his care, significance of future transfers, number of readers etc.). Many factors enter into the reckoning; the first of these, of course, is the budget made available to the architect to carry out the work. There would be no point in drawing up an ideal brief with all the most modern technical features, if the budget for construction is a modest one. The first requirement is to know how to produce a brief which is within the bounds of the possible.

2. The contents of a brief A satisfactory brief for the construction or adaptation of an archive building should contain: a) background to the project: current situation of the archives service, reasons for the construction or conversion, summary of administrative and budgetary decisions relating to the proposed undertaking; b) general outline of the functions of the new (or adapted) building: receipt of documents, storage, production, etc. This will vary according to the precise nature of the building appropriate to each individual case; c) work flow pattern within the building (see below, p. 42); d) description of the different parts of the building, with an indication of the space and the specific technical features which are required for each section; 2 e) Summary of total surface area; f) Technical services required for the whole building or for certain areas (electricity, heating, etc.); 3 2 3

See the second part ofthisManua/(pp. 45-94). In order to make the work of French archivists easier, the Direction des Archives de France has drawn up a model brief, which, in general, fits the requirements of the French Archives Départementales. This model brief is then adapted in each individual case with any modifications and additions which are required to meet local circumstances. The text is given below (pp. 141-154).

28

CHAPTER TWO

3. The choice of the architect Once it has been decided to construct or adapt a building for archives, an architect has to be chosen. This can be done in one of two possible ways: either by direct appointment or by organising a competition. Direct appointment of an architect has many advantages; the archivist will know right from the outset who he will have to work with and will be able to collaborate with him right from the start when the brief is drawn up. In many countries, however, administrative rules increasingly require a competition in which several architects can compete. The archivist usually sits on the competition jury, but unfortunately, this is not always the case. It is necessary to emphasize to the authorities responsible for the competition that the archivist, who is the future user of the building, should be allowed to collaborate in setting the competition rules, and, in particular, that the brief which will form the basis of the work of the competing architects, should be drawn up by or in close collaboration with him.

4. The roles of the archivist and the architect Once appointed (either directly or after a competition), the architect is solely responsible for the construction. He has responsibility for the work. It is always possible for him to suggest new solutions and to draw the archivist's attention to problems arising from his brief. The archivist, on the other hand, can suggest all the measures he thinks necessary for the efficient running of his service. Later on the architect and the archivist may come into conflict over the supervision of the work. It is essential for the archivist to follow the course of the building work closely. Minor errors and omissions can often be identified as work progresses and be easily rectified at the time; these would be beyond remedy once the job is finished. Unfortunately, the architect rarely invites the archivist to visit the site of his own accord. In most cases, the archivist must take the initiative for these visits. An archivist who has not followed the course of the work closely and in minute detail will have forfeited the right to blame the architect for any shortcomings once the job is finished. A weekly visit to the site should be part of the archivist's professional duty. 4

4

In France, archivists have to send a quarterly account of the progress of the works to the Direction des Archives.

29

CHAPTER THREE THE BASIC CHOICE: A NEW BUILDING OR THE ADAPTATION OF AN EXISTING ONE

For at least fifty years there has been a debate as to whether it is better to construct new buildings or to use existing ones to house archives.

1. Arguments in favour of new buildings A new, purpose-built structure is always more functional than one which has subsequently been adapted. All the requirements of the brief can be easily transferred on to the plans for a new building, since the architect's freedom is not restricted by any existing factors. In addition, a new building makes it possible to use all sorts of modern techniques for construction, air-conditioning equipment, etc., without having to modify earlier layouts. There is one argument which is probably decisive: it is in the best interests of archivists not to ignore current trends. In most countries, the general public and civil servants are only too ready to regard archives as a jumble of dirty, useless old papers. A new building in a modern style can help greatly to overcome such prejudices. Too great an attachment to old buildings, will create the impression that archivists are incurably sentimental about the past. The consequences of such an opinion for the future of an archive service are only too obvious.

2. Arguments in favour of old buildings Despite the obvious advantages of constructing a new building for archives, it is important not to disregard the arguments in favour of the use of old buildings. a. Economic

argument

Given that there are no structural works to be carried out, since the walls and roof already exist, the cost is sometimes lower than for a new building. However, this is not always true, because the conversion of a building to an archive repository requires major structural alterations (demolition of floors and interior walls, reinforcement of walls, alteration of windows) which often prove to be more expensive than a new building. b. Cultural

argument

In countries with an important architectural heritage (e. g. Europe, Mexico or Brazil), governments are greatly concerned to find uses for certain historical

30

CHAPTER THREE

buildings which are in danger of neglect. This is particularly true of the hundreds or even thousands of châteaux, churches, monasteries and hospitals which are found in countries such as Spain, France or Italy. Transforming them into archive repositories is an attractive proposition. In the sixteenth century, the Emperor Charles V had the castle of Simancas near Valladolid converted to house the royal archives of Castile. Nowadays, the vast majority of provincial archive repositories in Italy are housed in former convents or palaces. The national archives of Mexico were recently transferred to the former prison of Lecumberri in Mexico City, which has been transformed into one of the most beautiful archive repositories in America. In Quebec, the national archives are now housed in the former Great Seminary of the province. The ambiance of an historic building certainly suits the cultural rôle of archives and sometimes the architectural status of a building may add to the prestige of its contents. In Paris, for example, the fine architecture of the Palais Soubise and the historic treasures of the Archives Nationales which it houses, are linked together in the minds of the public. This argument about prestige only applies in the case of a fine building of historic or artistic merit. If an old factory, or disused industrial warehouse were used, there would be a risk of giving the impression that archives are a service of little importance ; one for which any sort of old building is suitable. These considerations do not apply to record centres, which, unlike record offices, are best served by basic, economical accommodation (see below, p. 127).

3. Making the decision. Mistakes to avoid Whatever the arguments in favour of one or other solution, the final decision should always be taken in the light of local conditions. For example, in a new town or one lacking architectural heritage, it is almost inevitable that the archives will be housed in a new building. In an old town where there are a lot of former churches or convents, it will often be decided to use one of these historic buildings. Certain mistakes must be avoided at all costs: a) a building which is too small to accommodate the records and the related work areas; b) a building which is in a very bad state of repair and which would require expensive reinforcement and reconstruction; c) a building whose interior structure would be incompatible with the operational requirements of a record office; d) a building which is badly situated and with difficult access; for example one in the old part of a town with narrow streets where lorries loaded with documents would find it difficult to get through. As a general rule, although individual cases may vary, the old buildings which are best suited for conversion to record offices are: 1. churches with large naves, factories, warehouses, all of which have large

THE BASIC CHOICE

2.

3. 4.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

31

spaces without walls and floors where it is easy to install shelving on a selfsupporting framework or specially built internal flooring; monasteries (provided that there are no restrictions on adapting them because they are ancient monuments). In such cases, the monks' cells can be converted into offices and work rooms and the chapel into strongrooms; prisons (if the cells can be converted into small strongrooms, as at the national archives of Mexico) ; garages (the floors must be reinforced, as the standard floor loading in garages is not normally greater than 500 kg/square metre). As a rule, the following should be avoided: barracks (usually built of poor quality materials and cluttered up with walls and internal partitions) ; schools (the same disadvantages) ; hospitals (the same disadvantages) ; medieval châteaux (thick walls, cramped rooms) ; mansions and châteaux of the classical and post-classical epoch (lots of walls and interior partitions, interior decor which has to be preserved).

4. A combined solution: old and new buildings side by side A combined solution which may often prove satisfactory is to put the work areas (offices, etc.) of a record office in an old building and to build a new repository block next to it. Alternatively, the strongrooms could be put in the nave of an old church and a new aisle added to house the work areas. There must be a sufficiently large piece of vacant land next to the old building, but this is not always the case. Harmonization of the old and new styles of architecture almost always creates difficult aesthetic problems and it is not easy to avoid criticism. This problem is well known to everyone who uses historical buildings which have been converted for administrative use. The style and practicality with which it is resolved varies from case to case.

32

CHAPTER FOUR THE SITE AND LAYOUT 1. A single building or multiple buildings? In most countries, it is usual to store all the records controlled by a single archive service in one building. This offers the obvious advantages of savings in construction, equipment, staff and time, since everything is in the same place and consequently the distances to be moved are reduced to a minimum. There are drawbacks, especially if the archives are extensive; there is a risk that the building will become very large, occupying a large area of land. There is also the danger that if a disaster occurs, all the documents will be destroyed together. For this reason archives have sometimes been split between several separate buildings. This spreads the risks in the case of a disaster, but it has other disadvantages: more staff are required to run all these separate repositories. There are complications in internal relations and an increased risk of disorder and mismanagement. It is possible to combine the advantages of both solutions by constructing several separate buildings on the same site which are linked together by walkways, as happens with hospitals with several wards. The disadvantages of this approach are that it requires a large area of land and that the cost of construction increases in proportion to the number of buildings planned. The 'hospital' solution is usually rejected for these reasons, but it may be acceptable if a large site is available where the height of buildings is restricted (Centre des archives contemporaines at Fontainebleau).

2. Historical archives and semi-current records As discussed in chapter 1 (p. 25), some countries distinguish between historical archives and administrative archives (also known as departmental or semicurrent records). Historical archives (a vague term which describes documents which are no longer needed by the current administration, but which are to be preserved permanently) are mainly used for scholarly research. They are often old, fragile documents and special precautions have to be taken to preserve them. Recent administrative archives, on the other hand, are mostly still used by the organisations which produced them. They have not yet been subject to a process of appraisal and their internal classification may change after they have been appraised. They are not generally accessible to the public. It might seem that the requirements for the construction and equipment of a repository for historical archives are quite different from those for a record centre and that it might be justifiable to regard them as two separate programmes and treat them separately (see below, chapter XI).

THE SITE A N D LAYOUT

33

Splitting a service between several buildings imposes heavy burdens on its operations. In a large record office, it is normal to try to economize on the construction and fittings of the accommodation provided for semi-current records. This approach would be ridiculous in a small record office. If the total volume of the archives and semi-current records does not exceed 15,000to 20,000 linear metres, a single building should be sufficient for them. 5 Once the figure of 25,000 to 30,000 linear metres is reached, it is almost always advisable to separate archives and semi-current records. •

3. The choice of a site The choice of site is crucial, whether it is for a new building or an old one, a single repository building, or several. Many mistakes can be corrected later, but not the choice of an unsuitable site; the whole future of an archives service can be jeopardized by such an error. Unfortunately, the 'ideal site' is quite difficult to define. Many factors have to be taken into account; some of them are contradictory. The area required, another important factor in the choice of a site, is discussed in greater detail below (p. 38).

3.1 Sites to avoid Sites to avoid are : 1. Sites with intrinsic dangers: land liable to flooding, unstable sites (e. g. hillsides where the sub-soil is clay and which are liable to land slides), excessively humid or marshy locations, land which is liable to be flooded by the sea during heavy storms, areas infested with termites, etc. 2. Sites with dangerous surroundings: ones near factories which create a great deal of air pollution, or near establishments which have a high risk of fire or explosion (gasometers, petrol tanks, explosives stores, etc.), or near installations which might become strategic targets in wartime (airfields, railway junctions, etc.). Other sites which should be avoided as far as possible, but which should not be absolutely ruled out are areas near a source of noise ( e . g . main roads, railway stations, or factories) and sites where future expansion of the building would not be possible, either because of their restricted size or because of town planning restrictions on the height of buildings. Sites where access is difficult (e.g. because of steep slopes or bad roads) should be avoided if possible, especially for record centres where lorries often bring deliveries of semi-current records. Before finally deciding on any site, trial bores should be made in order to avoid any unpleasant surprises when the excavation of the foundations begins. 5

A 'linear metre' of records (abbreviated to l.m.) is the quantity of records (bundles, boxes, volumes) which can be stored side by side on a shelf one metre in length. This is the standard unit for measuring the quantity of records.

34

CHAPTER FOUR

3.2 Definition

of the best sites

If it is intended to build a repository which is mainly for historical archives, it would be advisable to site it in the university quarter of the town, especially if it is intended to locate a library and a museum near the record office as is the practice in many countries. On the other hand, if the repository is for semi-current records, it would be better to keep them near to the administrative centre, which is usually (but not always) in the heart of a town. Such a site is essential if the archives is linked to an administrative documentation centre, which must be easily accessible to administrative officials at all times. This all seems very simple. Unfortunately, it often happens that: 1. the same building has to house both historical and semi-current records; 2. available sites in town centres are scarce, very expensive and thus unsuitable for the construction of large archive repositories; 3. university quarters are situated well away from town centres. There are two further considerations. Firstly, that students from different university departments, colleges and schools must have easy access to the record office in order to attend sessions of its educational service. Secondly, that the high level of movements of documents into and out of record centres is hardly practical in the middle of a town. The ideal solution for a small record office seems to be different from that for a large office. In the first case (repositories of between 15,000 and 20,000 linear metres), every effort should be made to find a site in or near the town centre. This should be reasonably accessible and have sufficient space to allow vans delivering records to manoeuvre without difficulty. An area of 4,000 to 5,000 square metres should usually be large enough for a building of this size and it should not be difficult to find a suitably located site of this kind. 6 However, for a larger record office, the wisest course - as was said above would be to distinguish between: 1. current or very recent administrative records which will either remain in the offices where they were produced, or very near to them; 2. semi-current records for which a record centre would be built or fitted out. This should have fumigation facilities, large areas for accessioning and appraisal, etc.. It should be located on the outskirts of town where land is inexpensive (see below, p. 127). 3. archives or 'historical archives' which should be housed in a well equipped building which acts as the headquarters of the archive service and is situated close to other cultural institutions in the town (libraries, museums, the university, etc.). If buildings to which the public have access are located away from town centres, it is extremely important that they should at least be easily accessible by public transport; this should be a prime consideration in the choice of a site.

6

See below, p. 38.

THE SITE AND LAYOUT

35

3.3 Storing archives out of town? In the opinion of many people, archives are dead things and consequently, it is often suggested that they should be stored a long way from towns, somewhere in the country where land is cheap e.g. in old châteaux, or former abbeys. People who hold this view also claim that this ensures maximum isolation for archives and that as a result, they are better protected, especially in war-time. Such an approach is wrong. It can only lead to the asphyxiation of an archive service, which would be deprived of contact with administrators, historians and the scholarly community. Except for the most important services, such as the Spanish Historical Archives (whose presence at Simancas alone justifies the existence of a hotel in this village on the plain of Old Castille), archives in general are not sufficiently attractive to get many visitors if they are situated outside towns. Consideration should be given to the idea of setting up security depots, designed to house records in war-time, in isolated areas far from centres of population. These should not be confused with permanent peacetime repositories: no one would dream of exiling the Mona Lisa to the heart of the Auvergne mountains, or the pictures in the Metropolitan Museum in New York to the Rocky Mountains, on the pretext of safety or security. Archives, like paintings, sculptures and books are part of a living culture ; their place is amongst the people who create and use them. There is obviously the possibility of leaving the 'nerve-centre' of a record office (offices, reading rooms, catalogue rooms, etc., i.e. all the public services), in a town centre and of moving the most bulky part - the strongrooms - to its outskirts. This solution is acceptable, subject to two essential conditions: 1. that quick and regular contact between the two buildings is provided by a van service; 2. that the repository block is provided with all the areas needed for its operations: areas for reception, appraisal and arrangement of records, workshops, offices etc. In particular, it should have facilities for the production of records required in the other building. This division of a service between two widely separated buildings poses difficult operational problems and requires a large number of staff.

3.4 The orientation of the building Once a site has been chosen, thought should be given to providing the best orientation for the building. Because of the dangers to documents from excessive sunlight (see below, p. I l l ) , it is better to avoid giving the repository a direct southerly aspect in the northern hemisphere, or a direct northerly aspect in the southern hemisphere. In some regions, it is more important that the strongrooms should not be exposed to humid, salty winds from the sea nor to hot, dry winds, although their damaging effects can be lessened by good insulation against heat and humidity. Reading rooms and work areas should not face due south (or due north,

36

CHAPTER FOUR

according to the hemisphere), because of the risk of their becoming overheated in summer (see p. 112). At the same time, satisfactory natural lighting should be sought.

4. Underground repositories Archive buildings need to be robust and it may be tempting to make absolutely sure of this by burying the strongrooms below the ground. This approach may have another advantage in that it is an economical use of a site, especially in a large town. Finally, the idea of underground storage is closely linked to protection against the risks of war. These different reasons explain why, over the past thirty years, several countries have either excavated new underground repositories or adapted existing ones. This approach merits close study. It is only fair to point out that despite these advantages, there are two very serious problems: 1. Underground storage sites must have permanent ventilation and dehumidification to ensure the safety of the records (see below, p. 109). Unless the ground is dry, this may be very expensive, because of the constant risk of water seeping in. An instructive example is the Centre des Archives contemporaines at Fontainebleau, which had to be built underground because of local planning regulations and where there have been serious seepages of water on several occasions. 2. The possible danger of a strike or breakdown affecting the electricity supply; this would be insignificant in a surface building, but could become very serious in an underground repository. Unless an existing tunnel is used, the cost of an underground structure, which entails an enormous amount of work on excavations, lining and earthworks, is usually much higher than for building on the surface. Any saving in the cost of land may be largely counterbalanced by this expense. If the main consideration is protection against nuclear war, simple, shallow underground installations are not sufficient; very deep tunnels are needed and this poses particularly complex problems. In practice, underground installations such as war-time shelters, disused railway tunnels and mine galleries cut into rock can be considered for use as archive stores, provided that all the necessary air-conditioning and ventilation equipment, pumps etc. have been installed and are in continuous operation. However, such underground installations are usually a long way from towns and consequently, their use as record offices will have the result of separating the records from their users; the disadvantages of this were outlined above (p. 35). With a few exceptions (e.g. the National Archives of Norway on the outskirts of Oslo), setting up record offices entirely below ground is difficult to achieve satisfactorily on both technical and financial grounds. On the other hand, it is quite common for an archive building to have two or three underground floors fitted out as strongrooms or security stacks. Almost all modern administrative buildings (banks, headquarters of large businesses, etc.), keep their archives in

THE SITE AND LAYOUT

37

their basements and this usually proves to be satisfactory. But it should be remembered that if this solution is to work properly, a suitable air-conditioning plant is essential and this is expensive.

5. The height of buildings For a long period, before the invention of electric lifts, it was traditional to build single-storey archive buildings. This is obviously the simplest solution and the one which creates the fewest building problems. However, the size to which major record offices have grown means that very large areas of land are now required. For example, a repository with 20,000 linear metres of traditional (static) shelving will have an average of 2,600 metres of aisles and gangways. Larger repositories may have 6,000-8,000 metres, or even more. In this situation, it is in the interest of the office to minimize the growth of horizontal movement and consequently of development at ground level. This fits in with a concern for economy in the use of land, which is almost always expensive in towns. For these reasons, there is a growing tendency to construct high-rise buildings. With modern architectural techniques, these no longer present any difficulties and repositories of 20,30 and even 40 storeys are perfectly feasible. 7 Here, most internal movement is vertical by way of lifts, thus eliminating the difficulties of manoeuvring trollies along interminable gangways. Very high buildings, however, require special foundations which are usually very expensive; their construction is subject to all sorts of technical constraints and strict regulations. There is no point in building 'archive towers' as a matter of course; it is a question of balancing the price of land, the importance of the records to be stored and the nature of the soil. The operation of the lifts should also be borne in mind; the situation could rapidly become catastrophic in the event of a breakdown or other problem. Outside large towns, it is not easy to have complex lifts such as those in 20 or 30 storey buildings maintained or repaired quickly.

6. Provisions for the future When planning the construction or adaptation of a building, an archivist cannot claim to have done his job properly if he fails to provide for expansion for the future. It is impossible to forecast the need for such extensions in a vacuum; it obviously depends on the rate and size of accessions. Careful statistics should be kept to determine: 1. the volume of accessions received in the ten years before the construction of the new building; 2. the volume of material refused in recent years through lack of space ; 7

The Archives Départementales at Rouen (Seine-Maritime, France), which was opened in 1966 is 83 m high and has 27 storeys. See pi. 2.

38

CHAPTER FOUR

3. the yearly rate of population growth (to some extent, this will be reflected in the quantity of files dealt with by government departments); 4. quantity of documents to be destroyed each year. As it is not possible to make provision for accessions for eternity, a new archive building should at least be able to meet the needs of the next 20 or 30 years. Consequently, sufficient shelving has to be provided for the current holdings and for the accessions expected over the following 30 years. But thirty years is a short period in the life of an archive service; it is necessary to think even further ahead. Unless the building is large enough at the outset to meet the needs of the next 50 to 100 years (and this would be excessively ambitious), provision should be made for possible expansion of strongrooms and work areas. This expansion can either be outwards or upwards. In the latter case, it should be ensured that the foundations are capable of supporting extra weight in the future. In the absence of precise and detailed calculations, a satisfactory rule of thumb is that there should be the potential to double the size of the repository.

7. Area of land required Because of all the factors discussed above, it is difficult to lay down a standard for the area required for an archive building. The area needed will vary greatly, depending on whether the building has one storey, is multi-storied or underground. It is also necessary to take account of town planning regulations, the permitted construction density ratio and the precise nature of the ground. Two French architects, Bernard Feypell and Edouard Zoltowski (the designers of several excellent archive buildings), have estimated that the minimum surface area required for a building with a capacity of 20,000 linear metres, including offices, work rooms, public rooms and entrance-ways, is 3,000 square metres, while the optimum is between 5,000 and 6,000.

41

CHAPTER FIVE THE OVERALL PLAN, ACCESS AND PARKING FACILITIES

Various questions relating to the design of an archives building have been discussed above: - purpose built or adapted (p.29) - one building or several (p. 32) - above or below ground (p. 36) - high-rise or low-level (p.37) The next stage is to consider a typical archive building - one which houses both historical documents and recent administrative records, is open to the public and has areas for appraisal, sorting, reading, exhibitions, microfilming, conservation, etc., i.e. one that has all the facilities of a full archive service. Each of these areas of the building will be examined in detail; obviously, an archivist who is responsible for drawing up the brief for his building should select those elements which are relevant to his own situation.

1. Constituent parts of an archive building A typical archive building consists of three (or four) areas which ought to be clearly set out in the design. The main criterion forjudging a design for an archive building is the layout of these areas and their relationships with each other. They are: 1. storage areas (strongrooms), see below, pp. 45-60; 2. working areas for the staff, see below, pp. 61-78; 3. areas open to the public (the offices of the director and his deputies fall between categories two and three), see below, pp. 79-92; 4. possibly one or a number of staff flats, see below, pp. 93-94.

2. A basic principle: isolation of the strongrooms from the rest of the building The strongrooms are a very distinct part of the building, firstly because they have specific technical features (size of rooms, ceiling height, floor loading, lighting, air-conditioning, etc.), secondly, because they must be isolated from the rest of the building to ensure their protection against fire. This separation can be achieved either horizontally or vertically; i.e. the strongrooms can either be built apart from the other areas, or they can be separated from them by thick walls, or they can be placed above or below them and protected by fire-resistant floors.

42

CHAPTER FIVE

The various technical problems posed by fire-resistant walls, floors and doors are discussed below (pp. 97-98). At this point, it is only necessary to consider the effects of this isolation on the design and general concept of the building. Until fairly recently, the separation of the strongrooms from the rest of the building was usually achieved by building separate strongroom and working blocks, which were connected only by corridors fitted with fire-resistant doors (pi. 10). This solution is not always possible, if only because of the large area it requires. The isolation of strongrooms can equally well be achieved by means of fire-resistant walls within the same building structure (pi. 2,11,13,20). It can also be achieved vertically by means of fire-resistant floors. In this case, the question arises: should they be on the upper or lower floors? It seems logical to place the heavier parts (the strongrooms) in the lower areas of the building; provided the lifts are adequate, the working areas can then be sited on the upper floors. In large towns, this solution has the added advantage of giving offices, reading rooms, etc., the maximum amount of peace, far from street noises and above the polluted atmosphere (like penthouses of American millionaires on top of skyscrapers). All that would remain on the ground floor or the basement would be the areas for receiving and weeding documents, some workshops and the areas for exhibitions and lectures (pi. 6,19). The other solution, in which the strongrooms are placed above the working areas, is technically feasible through the use of a thick concrete slab supported by stout columns. This allows the working areas to remain at ground floor level and avoids the constant use of lifts (pi. 3,4,18). The overall plan of the building, therefore depends on the size and shape of the site, as well as the method chosen to separate the strongrooms from the other areas. A traditional layout is L-shaped with the strongroom block at right angles to the block containing the other areas. This is very satisfactory, as is the T-shaped layout, which is similar (pi. 10-11). If the building has two strongroom blocks, the most rational layout is either shaped like an H or a TT, in which the middle bar represents the working areas (pi. 10). By using fire-resistant walls where necessary, it is also possible to use a compact layout: either square or rectangular, in which the strongrooms can occupy the centre, or one or more sides or a corner of the rectangle (pi. 7,8,13,14,20). If there are to be several strongroom blocks, a radial, star-shaped design will ensure the most efficient operation of the service (pi. 5).

3. Work-flow patterns and general layout A study of the internal work-flow patterns is equally important when drawing up the design of the building. These determine the location of the different areas of the building in relation to each other. Working out these work-flow patterns correctly is a sine qua non for the successful operation of the repository. These patterns depend on the size and nature of the repository. Four of them are fundamental and are found in all record offices (see pi. 12).

THE OVERALL PLAN

43

a) Inward movement of accessions and outward movement of documents for destruction (non-public areas) On arrival at the repository, accessions are placed in a reception room, which should have direct access to the exterior via a loading bay. Where necessary, they should go to a fumigation chamber, which should be close at hand. From there, they should go to the appraisal and sorting room. After appraisal and sorting, they are sent to the strongrooms by a goods lift. All these areas should be directly linked to one another in this order: loading bay - reception room - (fumigation) weeding - strongrooms. Documents which are to be destroyed after appraisal take the following route (the reverse of the above): strongroom - (appraisal) - waste paper store - loading bay. They are then removed from the loading bay by lorry.

b) Movement of the public Members of the public enter the building through the entrance hall where the enquiry office should be located. From there, they are directed to the reading room and its annexes (catalogue room, library, carrels for research, etc., see below, p. 81). If there is a separate administrative reading room, it should lead off the entrance hall (p. 86). Exhibition and lecture rooms should be accessible both from the entrance hall and through separate entrances (see below, p. 88). As a general rule, the public should have no access to the administrative offices of the repository. However, the director and his deputies may receive visitors in their offices (referred to here as 'areas partially open to the public'). These should be quite separate from the public areas, but accessible from them; they should also have an entrance which is not open to the public. 8

c) Movement of documents which are being consulted Here movement extends over areas which are open to the public and ones which are closed. Documents ordered by readers are taken to the reading room, which should be as close to the goods lift as possible. This flow of documents should not cross the routes used by the public.

d) Movement of staff There should be a separate staff entrance to working areas (areas for appraisal, workshops and offices), without the staff having to cross public routes.

8

In the public areas, ramps (see p. 44, n. 9) or lifts must be provided for use by the disabled where there are changes in floor level.

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4. Access It should always be borne in mind that a record office should be accessible to its users (readers, audiences for lectures and visitors to exhibitions), to its staff and to lorries or cars bringing accessions, or removing documents which are to be destroyed. Equally good access is essential for all these; this is a common argument against siting record offices in the centres of large towns. A minimum of four entrances/exits should be provided: 1. public entrance/exit giving access to the entrance hall (see p. 79); 2. staff entrance/exit (see above); 3. emergency exit for the public from the lecture rooms and exhibition areas (see p. 88); 4. loading bay for lorries bringing documents or taking them away (see p. 61— 63). Depending on the size and design of the building, the safety officer may require a number of emergency exits; these can create security problems (see p. 93). Separate entrances will also be required to the staff flats if there are any (see p. 93). Most countries have regulations which require that all staff and public entrances and exits should be accessible to the disabled by means of ramps.9

5. Car parks and garages A car park should be provided for the staff and public. Its size will depend on the number of people concerned, local regulations10 and the area of land available. Garages should be built for official vehicles and for private vehicles belonging to people living in the building (see p. 94).

9

10

In France, the standard for ramps for the disabled is that they should have a maximum slope of 5 % (decree number 78-109 of 1 February 1978). In France, regulations vary from region to region and from town to town. The most common standard is that a space equivalent to 40-60 % of the areas of the offices and working areas should be provided for parking, or alternatively that two parking spaces should be provided for every three people working in the building.

45

CHAPTER SIX STRONGROOMS: CONSTRUCTION AND EQUIPMENT 1. General characteristics of strongrooms Strongrooms (also called stacks or storage areas) are the most important part of any building devoted to the preservation and administration of archives. Their principal purpose is to provide the best possible storage for documents and, at the same time, to make it easy for them to be used. This imposes particular technical constraints on this part of the building. These constraints apply to all rooms used for the storage of archives, even if they are situated in a building which itself has other functions, for example a records room in a ministry or other government department. The technical features needed in all strongrooms, muniment rooms or records rooms are the result of three basic requirements: soundness, safety and practicality. These three requirements will be considered together and there will be a general description of the ideal features of strongrooms. Each structural feature corresponds to one or other of their primary functions.

2. Location of strongrooms Whatever the type and design of the building, the following areas should not be used as strongrooms: rooms which are - unhealthy (damp cellars, attics which are overheated in summer and frozen in winter); - dangerous (close to boilers); - difficult of access Confidential records should not be housed in areas which are unsupervized or to which access is easy. If automatic conveyors are not used (see below, p. 120), it is important to consider the facilities for moving documents, especially by trolleys and lifts. Strongrooms should be isolated from the rest of the building by fire-resistant walls, doors or floors (see p. 97).

3. The structure of strongrooms and floor loading Strongrooms by definition are intended to house shelves loaded with documents. These are heavy and their weight imposes severe constraints on floor loading. Strange as it may seem, there is no international standard for the floor loading

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CHAPTER SIX

of archive strongrooms. The weight of a linear metre of records varies according to the type of document and the way they are arranged. On average, one linear metre of shelves weighs 50 kg (excluding the weight of the shelving), but this can be as much as 80, or even 90 kg/linear metre in the case of heavy documents such as large bound volumes. Allowing a reasonable safety margin, strongroom floors should be able to support 1,200 kg/square metre of standard height (2.2 m) non-mobile shelving (see below, section 4) , n The foundations should be designed accordingly. The load per square metre is obviously much higher if mobile shelving is used. There are no standards because the weight varies according to the system adopted. Specialist engineers from the firm which installed the system should be consulted. There are two possible systems for the structure of the strongroom block: a selfsupporting metal framework or concrete columns. The self-supporting metal framework consists of metal uprights to which the shelves are attached; these uprights also support the floors. This system, which was commonly used in France in the period 1950-1960 has subsequently been rejected by a number of safety committees because of the danger which the metal framework presents in case of fire. It is still acceptable in several countries, provided that the loadbearing metal components are protected by intumescent paintwork or other fireproofing procedures. In a concrete structure, the columns and floors are made from reinforced concrete and the shelving is independent of the building structure. Whichever structure is adopted, the floors should be made of solid concrete, without any system of open-work, or gratings which could cause an up-draft of air in the event of a fire. Floors made from glass slabs are acceptable provided that they are fire-proof. The foundations can either be driven piles, or concrete columns supporting the load-bearing structures. Where the ground humidity requires it, a raft foundation can be constructed, but the difference between the weight of the strongrooms and that of the working areas of the building can cause difficulty with the balance of the raft and there is a risk of a rupture unless every precaution is taken at the time of construction. In countries where it is necessary to keep the strongrooms as far away as possible from the ground in order to combat damp, termites, etc., a system of piles is used; the piles suport a thick slab of concrete on which the whole building rests (e.g. State Archives, Udine, Italy and the University Library at Dakar, Senegal). The problem of foundations is different in countries which are subject to earthquakes, but this is a very specialized subject, which is outside the scope of this Manual.

11

This figure was the one given by French and overseas architects who were consulted during the preparation of this edition. The figure of 1,500 kg/square metre given in the 1966 edition should be regarded as no longer valid. The standard of 800 kg/square metre which is often adopted for libraries is not high enough for records; a linear metre of records is much heavier than the same quantity of library books.

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4. Height of floors and shelving units To allow the staff to have easy access to documents on the shelves without their having to use ladders, which can be inconvenient or dangerous, the height of shelving has been standardized in every country in the world at 1.8 m between the floor and the highest usable shelf. The ceiling can be situated immediately above the documents on the highest shelf - the usual system, particularly in France, is that the ceiling height is 2.2 m. Alternatively, the ceilings can be placed higher - 2.6, or even 2.8 m above the floor, thus leaving a space above the shelves where trunking, ducts and pipes can be located. Both of these approaches have advantages and disadvantages. Ceilings which are 2.2 m high allow the most economical use of space: in a 16 m high building, it is possible to have seven floors of records 2.2 m high, but only six floors 2.6 m high. However, ventilation and air-conditioning trunking would reduce the height of the gangways, which might prove to be a problem. On the other hand, the unused space of 40 cm or more above the documents on the top shelf might be regarded as wasted. In the event of a fire, this empty space could also encourage the spread of flames. Whatever ceiling height is chosen, pipes or ducts containing water or other fluids capable of harming records should not pass above the shelving.

5. Floor area of strongrooms For reasons of safety in the event of fire, the floor area of strongrooms is standardized in most countries, including France, at about 200 square metres. All rooms which are larger than 200 square metres should be subdivided by fireproof walls and doors (see p. 97).

6. Capacity of strongrooms relative to their areas If boxes and bundles are stored upright on their narrowest sides, as is the usual French practice (see p. 53), 1,000 linear metres of shelving, including gangways and aisles would, on average, occupy a room of 170 square metres. This figure applies to traditional, non-mobile shelving.

7. Exterior walls and windows Protection against climatic variations is one of the main functions of archival strongrooms. Their walls should be constructed of material which is completely impermeable to moisture and provides good thermal insulation (see chapter 10, p. 106). Interior and exterior coatings should be chosen for their ability to provide insulation against heat and moisture.

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Exterior walls should be provided with windows which are capable of being opened. These are necessary first to provide natural ventilation if the building does not have a mechanical system or if this breaks down; and second to allow a certain amount of sunlight in, both because of its germicidal properties and also to avoid the claustrophobic atmosphere of an enclosed space.12 In order to restrict solar radiation, these windows should be limited to 10 % of the areas of the walls. They should not be installed on a south facing wall in the northern hemisphere or on a north facing one in the southern hemisphere. As far as possible, windows should not be fitted in walls facing prevailing humid winds. (For the arrangement of windows, see chapter 10, p. 111).

8. Strongroom floors and floor coverings To prevent the release of concrete dust, which poses a threat to records, a washable anti-dust coating is essential on concrete floors. Because of the frequent movement of heavily laden trollies, the best types of floor coverings for strongrooms are thermoplastic tiles, or industrial composition flooring. Ceramic tiles may be equally suitable. One problem which is quite common in archive buildings is that there is a difference in floor level between the strongrooms and the work rooms. The use of stairs should be avoided; in order to make it easy to move trollies, different levels should be connected by ramps with a maximum slope of 10 %. If there are major differences in the levels of two parts of the building, it is best to connect them by means of a lift with doors on either side.

9. Protection against fire and theft; heating, air-conditioning, ventilation and lighting in strongrooms See chapter 10, p. 95-117

10. Shelving a) Definition, installation

material for shelves, general characteristics

and

Shelves are the main strongroom fittings. Nowadays, the sizes of shelves are more or less standard in every country and their installation is fairly uniform. The 12

Experiments which have been carried out in France on totally enclosed strongrooms, have, on the whole, proved to be disastrous as regards air-conditioning. The Direction des Archives de France is consequently opposed in principle to this approach. During a meeting of experts held at Vienna, Austria, in October 1985, some disagreement appeared among participants about the advisability of windows in strongrooms. The main argument against them was that they reduce thermal insulation. See Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, 39,1986.

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chapter devoted to shelving is thus one of the most important in a book about archive buildings. 13 Today sheet steel is the only material which is normally used for shelves in archives and libraries. For a long time, wood was the only material used for shelves, but it has now been abandoned because it is combustible and because it is frequently subject to attacks by termites and other wood boring insects. The cost of wooden shelving which has been treated against insects is generally prohibitive. 14 The other materials which have sometimes been used or tried out (slate, concrete, cast iron) are now only of historical interest. Several definitions are needed at this point. Shelving consists of horizontal shelves attached to vertical uprights. The unit of shelves between two uprights is called a bay. A series of contiguous bays forms a run or row. Rows can be either single sided or double sided, depending on whether there are one or two lines of shelves between the uprights. The majority of manufacturers of metal shelving have standardized the length ofshelvesat 1 mor 1.2 m. For convenience ofoperation, the maximum length of a run is 10 m; beyond 10 m, a gangway is required. As was described above (p. 47), the highest usable shelf should not be more than 1.8 m above the floor in order to avoid the use of ladders or steps. It is recommended that a covering shelf be placed above the documents to protect them from dust. This may also be necessary to provide stiffening and strength to the uprights. The most common depth for shelves for archives is 0.30 m; shelves 0.40 m deep may be needed for certain large-sized documents, notably large volumes. On the other hand, ones 0.25 m deep may be satisfactory for some smaller volumes. 15 The standard arrangement of shelves in a strongroom consists of a series of parallel runs of double sided shelving, separated by aisles. The width of these is standardized at 0.70-0.80 m. Along the length of the room there are gangways at right angles to the runs of shelving; their width is 1-1.2 m. This standard arrangement can be varied according to the size and shape of the room. There are also 'compact' or 'mobile' shelving systems in which the number of aisles is reduced and the method of installing the shelves is different. These systems are described below (p. 51). Rectangular rooms can be arranged with a gangway in the centre and runs of shelving branching off at right angles. If the runs are longer than 5 m, a small gangway 0.7-0.8 m wide should be provided along the outside walls to ensure that the shelves do not come into contact with the walls and to allow people to move from one run to another without having to return to the central gangway (see pi. 30). 13

14

15

Some documents are stored in cupboards, filing cabinets or rotary files, but this equipment is used for current records stored in offices and administrative areas and not in strongrooms for archives. Apart from certain categories of special documents such as microfilms, maps and plans, etc., (see pp. 54-59), archives are normally stored on shelves. This does not apply to shelving in offices, reading rooms, etc., where wood (a 'noble' material) is often more elegant than metal and fits better with the rest of the furniture. In record offices which have to take in records of various sizes, i. e., the majority of public archive buildings, shelves which are 0.30 m deep are generally used.

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b) Shelving

standards

Taking account of what was said above (p. 46) about the weight of archival documents, a one metre-long shelf ought to be able to support a distributed weight of 100 kg16 with a maximum flex of about 1/300 from the horizontal (with a tolerance of 10 %). This standard for load bearing applies equally to the shelves themselves, to the fastenings (see below section c) and to the uprights. The French standard for shelves requires sheet steel 10/10 mm thick, reinforced if necessary. Since metal tends to rust in contact with the atmosphere, particular care should be taken to apply an anti-corrosion coating to the shelves. The sheet metal must be carefully cleaned and degreased; the paint should be stove-enamelled and should be scratch-resistant, cover the metal evenly and be free of all bubbles, blisters and irregularities.17 In order to ensure that the shelving is perfectly rigid and stable, a system of internal bracing is needed unless the shelving forms part of the framework of the building (self supporting metal framework, see above, p. 43). Archivists generally find shelving without cross-braces more convenient because these mean that the two sides of a run cannot be used together. Given a choice between two systems of shelving of equal robustness, one of which has cross-braces and the other does not, the system without them should be preferred. For the same reason, shelves without raised edges should be preferred to ones with backstops. Solid panels between the two sides of a run are not desirable, because they impede the circulation of the air and encourage condensation. The best system is one without any partition between the two sides of the run. Solid panels are needed next to the gangways to prevent the documents which are stored on the shelves at the ends of the runs from falling into the gangways. Solid panels at the ends of runs also have the advantage of protecting the records against light and from being hit by trolleys. The use of solid panels between bays depends on the system of attaching the shelving (see below). From the functional point of view they are desirable but not indispensable.

c) Methods of attaching the shelves It is often necessary to adjust the spacing of archive shelving to allow for the different sizes of documents; the height of documents is not uniform and documents of different sizes (large volumes, files of papers, 21 by 29.30 cm., small files of notarial minutes) may have to be stored in the same strongroom. This means that the height at which the shelf is fixed has to be adjusted; it is important that this can be done easily. Adjustment should be possible in increments of about 25 mm. 16 17

120 kgforshelves 1.20 mlong. It is not possible to be more precise on this point, because of the variety of processes and their technical development. In any case, the shelving supplier should give full technical details of his painting process and provide samples.

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At this stage the system of attaching the shelves to the uprights will be discussed: The simplest system is to attach the four corners of the shelves to specially drilled angle posts by nuts and bolts. This system is normally used for industrial shelving. It should not be used for archives because the nuts and bolts project and there is a danger that they might tear or rip the bindings and covers off volumes. Moreover, fastening and undoing bolts is a slow process, and is sometimes difficult, or impossible, especially when the nuts and bolts have rusted because of dampness. The system of attaching shelves by spurs or hooks which form part of their endplates (or cheeks) is fragile because there is a risk that the endplates and spurs might buckle or break. This method was common in the 1950s, but has now been given up almost everywhere. The best system is one in which the shelves rest on brackets (supports), which are themselves attached to the side uprights in various ways - the brackets can have projecting lugs, or can fit into specially made slots in the uprights. Alternatively, the brackets can be replaced by various sorts of clips; one end of the clip fits into a slot in the upright and the other supports the edge of the shelf. Depending on the system, these brackets or clips are either supported on simple vertical posts, or on solid panels between the bays. The strength of the fastenings and of the vertical uprights is as important as that of the shelves themselves; the weight of the documents rests as much on these as on the shelves and the same standards for load-bearing apply. Given a choice between several systems which have the same strength, preference should be given to the one in which it is easiest to adjust the shelves.

d) Shelving

accessories

These include label holders, panels for shelf-marks and folding shelves on the ends of runs (pi. 31). The usefulness of these accessories varies according to circumstances. It is advisable to order them specially when the specification is being drawn up. Folding shelves on the ends of runs do not meet with universal approval. Not only do they encroach on the aisles and are consequently a potential obstacle to the movement of trollies, but they are also not very easy to use, particularly by a person carrying a load. Many archivists feel that folding shelves are not useful. In larger repositories, it is absolutely essential that runs and bays should be individually marked. Specially designed shelf-mark panels and card holders are supplied on demand by most manufacturers of metal shelving.

e) Mobile or compact

shelving

In order to make the maximum use of space, systems of mobile or compact shelving are produced; these have both advantages and disadvantages of which it is as well to be aware. The terms 'mobile' or 'compact' are, to all intents and

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purposes, synonymous and will be used interchangeably. The principle on which all systems of mobile shelving are based is the conversion of part of the runs or bays of shelves into mobile units so that they are closer to each other, thus reducing the number of aisles and the area they occupy. Different manufacturers specialize in the production of various systems for moving the shelves: on rails on the floor, hanging from rails, or pivoting on hinges, as well as different methods of propulsion (see pi. 32B,33,34,35). The most common system is to make whole runs of shelving (usually doublesided) moveable; these are arranged against a fixed stack and move apart when required to provide the space needed for access to the shelves. Some manufacturers achieve this mobility by means of small wheels which run on rails on the floor. Others suspend the stacks on overhead rails, again by using small wheels. Some systems are hand-operated; others are electrically powered and the shelves are either moved by an endless chain or by pneumatic jacks using compressed air. The best known example of this type of compact shelving is called Compactus (a registered trademark) and was originally based on a Swiss patented design. Its main feature is that it allows a large number of mobile stacks for every fixed one and consequently provides the most economical use of space. The mobile stacks run on rails on the floor and are electrically operated. A safety device prevents accidents, a special key being necessary to start the operation. The density of the Compactus system makes it very heavy and it requires considerable reinforcement of the floors. Other firms have designed much lighter systems which operate on the same principle; these have two mobile stacks out of three; in other words, in these systems, one stack out of three is fixed. As only one stack has to be moved at a time, their operation is much easier, but much less space is saved than in the Compactus system. There are also systems in which instead of having a whole row which is moveable, single-sided bays can be moved. These are not pulled forwards away from the other bays, but are slid sideways across the front of the static shelves. Their advantage is extreme ease of operation: since only one single-sided bay is moved at a time, they can be operated by hand. On the other hand, they save much less space. Some manufacturers have devised a system for making double-sided bays mobile by mounting them on hinges; they behave just like cupboard doors, closing directly onto the face of the stack and opening at right angles to it. Here again, the advantage of the system is its great simplicity in operation. Its disadvantage is that, in order to provide room for the bays to pivot, the aisles between the runs must be much wider than normal aisles and consequently, part of the space saved is lost. The layout of pivoted shelves is particularly unsuitable for storing records. Nowadays, the system is hardly used at all. Much has been written about the space which can be saved by the use of compact shelving and there are many rather exaggerated opinions about this subject. In fact, the savings vary according to the system adopted. If a strongroom 1 4 m b y l 0 m i s equipped with traditional, non-mobile doublesided rows, 0.60 m deep, with aisles 0.70 m wide, it will be possible to install 10

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53

rows, which are 9 m long. With the Compactus system, it will be possible to accommodate 20 rows of the same dimensions, representing a gain of 100 % , but this will require a corresponding reinforcement of the floor. With the system of moveable shelf units in groups of three rows (one fixed, two mobile), the same room will not be able to house more than 15 rows, producing a saving of 50 %. With the system of bays which slide sideways, the same 14 m by 10 m room will be able to accommodate five fixed rows, each of which will have a row of single-sided moveable shelves on either side of it. This will give a similar saving of 50 %. The system of pivoting on hinges will allow a saving of about 30 %. Apart from saving space, compact shelving has other advantages which are often stressed: in particular, a locking system can be incorporated which converts it into a real strongroom. These systems also provide very good protection for documents against sunlight and dust. However, the disadvantages of these systems should not be ignored. For one thing, their weight imposes particular design constraints (see page 46). For another, they reduce the flow of air to documents and consequently encourage the growth of mould. They always have to be moved by users. It is not possible to conduct searches in two stacks in the same mobile section at the same time; it is necessary to wait until one search has been finished before moving the mobile stacks and undertaking the second. In some cases, this disadvantage may not be very serious, but in others it can be crippling. Moving the units is not always as easy as the manufacturers like to claim. There are always risks of jamming, distortion, etc., apart from the problems which power failures can cause to electrically operated systems. Because of this danger, most systems have a safety system which allows manual operation in the event of a breakdown. Finally, it is impossible to store on mobile racking documents which are larger than the depth of the shelves; this is a serious disadvantage for record offices where documents are not standard-sized. Summary: compact shelving is very useful for making the maximum use of a strongroom which cannot be extended. This is particularly the case for record offices in administrative centres in the middle of towns where there is no room for expansion. However, the building must be strong enough to support the considerable extra load which shelving of this type imposes. There is no point using it when a sufficiently large site is available for the construction of a repository. It is not recommended for countries where the staff of the archive service have only had a small amount of professional training and are not familiar with modern techniques. It should also be ruled out for repositories where documents have to be consulted or handled frequently.

f ) The arrangement of documents on the shelves The size, and, to some extent, the layout of the shelving will vary according to the way in which the documents are arranged. In some countries, it is usual to store boxes and bundles on end; in others, boxes and bundles are stored on their side (referred to as the Italian method). The number of shelves which can be placed in one bay varies according to the method

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of arrangement and the size of the documents. In each 2.10 m high bay, six shelves can be fitted in where documents 21 by 29.30 cm are stored on end, eight shelves can be accommodated with the same documents stored in the 'Italian' method, and up to twelve shelves if they are stored flat (pi. 36). The amount of shelving in each bay will vary according to the size of the documents; compare large cadastral atlases with small bundles of notarial minutes. All these preliminary remarks have been necessary to show that it is not possible to give standard figures for archive shelving which would be valid for every installation.

11. The preservation of special types of documents The main part of this chapter has been concerned with standard strongrooms equipped with open shelves for the storage of traditional documents on paper or parchment, in volumes, bundles, boxes or envelopes of standard design. Special equipment is needed for the storage of certain types of documents; these will be referred to as 'special documents' in the absence of a more appropriate generic term.

a) The preservation

of maps, plans, posters and other large

documents

Maps and plans and other very large documents such as posters should not be stored folded. A wide variety of special equipment is available for them. Because of their size, it is difficult to move these documents or to use them on ordinary reading tables. For this reason, it is generally thought desirable that they should be consulted in the room in which they are stored, or very close to it (see p. 81). It is strongly recommended that record offices which have major collections of maps, plans, posters or other large documents should provide a separate room or, if necessary, several rooms for storing them. This room can also be used for consulting these records; consequently, it is important that there should be easy access for readers and constant supervision. In several large modern archive buildings, maps, plans, posters and large documents form a distinct section of the holdings and are stored in a separate area where storage equipment, finding aids and equipment for consulting and copying these records are located. This is an excellent approach, but is obviously impractical in small record offices. If a record office has few such documents, it is suggested that they should be placed in an area of the building which is close to the reading room, so that members of the public who wish to consult them do not have to go into the actual strongrooms. Plan cases fall into three categories according to the format of the records to be stored in them. Vertical storage cabinets Maps, plans and posters smaller than about 1.50 x 1.20 m can be stored vertically,

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55

hung from rods in specially designed cabinets. The upper edge of the document is fitted with a suspension strip, which is pierced with holes which correspond to the layout of the rods. Most architects store their plans in this way. The size of the cabinets varies according to the size of the documents which are to be stored in them; this is a problem which can only be decided individually by each record office. The maximum size currently available on the market is about 1.80 m (wide), x 1.20 m (high) x 0.60 m (deep). This type of cabinet provides perfect storage for these records, but it does have the disadvantage of requiring preparatory work on each individual document - the suspension strip has to be attached. Furthermore, it is poorly suited to the storage of old documents which are damaged or crumpled.

Horizontal plan cases In horizontal plan cases, the documents are stored flat, usually in protective boxes, either in drawers, or on rollers on which the protective boxes slide. On the whole, these cases hold fewer documents of a given size than vertical storage cabinets. They are, however, suitable for the storage of any sort of large documents, including old ones. They are popular with European archivists. The maximum size which is currently available is about 1.50 m (wide), x 1.0 m (high) x 1.0 m (deep), alio wing the storage of documents up to about 1.30 m x 0.90 m (see pi. 42A).

Storage of rolled documents Some very large documents are stored rolled and kept on racks or 'gutters'. These racks can be installed along walls, or on the backs of cupboard doors, or between shelf uprights in place of the shelves. Rolled documents can also be stored flat on ordinary shelves. Vertical storage is not recommended unless the documents have been rolled round a hard core (for example a wooden roller, as was common practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). Rolled documents may be stored as they are, or placed in specially made acid-free cardboard tubes.

b) The preservation of seals and sealed

documents

The preservation of old seals imposes specific constraints and requires particular precautions. This is true whether or not the seals are applied or pendant and whether or not they are attached to documents (pi. 44B ,45). Dry wax is a particularly fragile material and is sensitive to shocks, friction, humidity and excessive heat. For this reason, sealed documents and, more importantly, loose seals, should never be stored j ust as they are, in boxes without any other protection. The first precaution is to avoid overcrowding the seals, which causes friction and breakages. As far as possible, sealed documents should be stored in individual boxes or containers, or at least, only a small number of them should be kept in the same container. They must be stored flat away from anything heavy which might put them in danger of being crushed.

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If individual boxes are not available for individual sealed documents, an excellent alternative is to put each one in an envelope of strong acid-free paper. If that is not possible, pendant seals, at least, should be protected by being enclosed in a bag of cotton felting (wool and cotton waste should be avoided as they desiccate wax), or in a small envelope of strong paper or card to avoid scraping. In some record offices, mounts of card or plastic are made, these allow the seals to rest on a solid surface and protect them against shocks, while leaving them attached to their original documents. 18 When a sealed document has writing only on the recto, it might be beneficial to put it in a flat box with a transparent plastic lid, which allows it to be read without being removed from its container. The best solution for applied seals on paper or parchment is to make special card boxes with a recess to hold the seal, but the high cost of such boxes restricts their use to the most valuable documents. Short of this each document can be protected by envelopes made from strong acid-free paper. To avoid any danger of crushing, the envelopes should be separated from one another by sheets of corrugated cardboard. If the record office is particularly rich in seals and sealed documents, the possibility of storing them in special cabinets might be considered. These cabinets have shallow drawers, 3 cm or 4 cm deep, in which the documents can be laid flat without the risk of rubbing against one another. For the exhibition of sealed documents in showcases, see below, p. 89.

c) The preservation computer records

of photographs,

cine-films, sound recordings

and

Photographs, cine-films, audio-visual media and computer records are found in ever increasing numbers in record offices, to the extent that they constitute a significant proportion of the holdings of some archive services. There are also increasing numbers of specialist repositories (sound, film, video and tape archives) which are exclusively dedicated to the preservation and use of these types of documents and which can call on the most advanced technology. This study is not concerned with these specialised repositories, but solely with the preservation of photographic, cinematographic, audiovisual and computer records in traditional record offices. Depending on the number and volume of these records, it may be necessary to devote either one room, or a number of rooms, or even a part of the building to them. Because of the physical and chemical composition of their mediums, they pose different problems of preservation from traditional paper documents. In particular, the standards for temperature and relative humidity are much stricter and are not the same for all media. This is an acute source of difficulties. Because of the fragility of their supports, greater care has to be taken to protect

18

See the design produced at the Archives du Rhone, Gazette desArchives, 1978, pp. 119-123.

no. 101,2nd quarter,

STRONGROOMS

57

them against light, dust and handling. Finally, electro-magnetic records need special protection against magnetic fields. The preservation of each category of these records will be considered next. Photographic

images

Photographic prints on paper, especially colour prints are very sensitive to light and humidity. They must be stored in boxes; if possible, each photograph should be placed in an envelope made from glassine, or chemically inert oolyester. Plasticizers, or metacrylates which may attack the emulsion should b j avoided. The exposure of colour prints to light should be kept to the minimum, because of the risk of the colours fading rapidly. Old glass plate negatives are particularly fragile. They should be put in boxes made of cardboard, or rust-proof metal, with sheets of neutral paper to protect them against knocks. It is also recommended that they should be copied onto film in order to have a copy available in case the glass plates are accidentally broken. Silver-based black and white photographic negatives are fairly stable provided that they have been thoroughly washed after developing and fixing. They are, however, very sensitive to humidity, heat and light. They should be stored in boxes and separated from each other by sheets of chemically inert glassine. If there are not too many of them, the possibility of storing them in individual glassine or polyester envelopes should be considered, but polyester has electrostatic properties and there is a danger of their attracting dust after they have been handled. Colour negatives and, in particular, colour transparencies are especially fragile because of the chemical instability of the colour dyes. If it is not possible to transfer them all onto Cibachrome (which is the most stable process), they should at least be fully protected against light, humidity and dust by being stored in boxes made from neutral card or rust-proof metal. Their exposure to light should be limited to the time when they are being consulted or used to produce prints. For climatic conditions, see chapter 10, p. 105. Microforms From the point of view of preservation silver-based microfilms, microfiche, and other microforms are only types of photographic films. Everything which has been said on the subject of black and white photographic negatives is a priori applicable to microforms (pi. 44A). Without going into technical details which are outside the scope of this Manual, it should be noted that, in order to play their full archival role, several copies of each microfilm should be produced. The master copy intended for security preservation must be on silver film which has been properly processed and washed. At least one internegative (second generation) also on silver film, should be produced from this master. This is used to produce the reading copies (third generation), which can be on silver or diazo and which, by definition, are not intended to be preserved for a long time. Microfilms are usually stored in rolls, rolled round cores made from plastic or (formerly) metal. Microfilms should never be stored rolled without a central core because of the danger of the film emulsion cracking and breaking.

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CHAPTER SIX

The rolls should be stored in boxes made from rust-proof metal or plastic; these should be housed on shelves, or in cupboards, or in drawers. It is recommended that sample inspections should be carried out from time to time to ensure the safe storage of the microfilms in their boxes. Microfiche, aperture cards and other flat microforms should be stored in boxes or drawers to protect them from light and dust.

Cine-films From the point of view of preservation, cinefilms are similar to other photographic records on film. A particular difficulty arises because of the existence, happily increasingly rare, of old films on cellulose nitrate, a material which is unstable, highly flammable and even explosive. Cellulose nitrate films must be entrusted to specialized repositories; they should never be stored in archive repositories. 19 Cine-films are usually stored in special cans made from rust-proof metal and are kept on shelves either flat or upright. The climatic conditions are the same as for other photographic records (see chapter 10, p. 105). The original film or, at least, the copy closest to the original should be retained for archival preservation in preference to a third or fourth generation copy.

Mechanical sound recordings Old phonographic discs were made from material which was breakable and which could easily be scratched - before the 1950s, the materials used for sound recordings were bakelite, shellac, etc., sometimes with a metal core. They should be stored in glassine envelopes and protected by outer shock-absorbent envelopes (made from thick blotting paper, tissue paper, felt, etc.). They should be handled with great care. Polyvinyl chloride microgroove discs, which have been in use since the 1950s hardly ever break, but they are very sensitive to heat - there is a danger of distortion - and to dust. They should be stored in glassine envelopes (polyester, which is too electrostatic should be avoided) and these should be placed inside envelopes of flexible card. Some specialists recommend that they should be stored flat on shelves, others that they should be stored vertically. In either case, they should be stored in solid containers to protect them against dust and light. The climatic conditions which are suitable for paper records are equally suitable for sound recording discs (see p. 105).

Documents on magnetic mediums (computer records, sound and visual recordings on magnetic tapes, magnetic discs, etc.) The number of documents on magnetic mediums has multiplied in the past twenty years and all the indications are that between now and the end of the 19

A simple test to identify nitrate films is to put a small piece of film in a test-tube full of trichlorethylene. Put a cork in and shake: if the film sinks, it is nitrate, if it floats, it is acetate. M. Roper, 'Advanced technical media: the conservation and storage of audio-visual and machineTeadaWerecoTds',JournaloftheSocietyofArchivists, (U.K.),vol. 7,no. 2,Oct. 1982,pp. 106112.

STRONGROOMS

59

twentieth century, they will come to represent a very significant proportion of the holdings of record offices. They include sound recordings (recording tapes and cassettes), visual records (video tapes and video cassettes) and records in binary form (computer records: tapes, discs, diskettes). There is thus a very great variety of documents, of formats and of materials; their common feature is a magnetic layer, which requires very strict storage conditions. They are sensitive to heat and dust and also to the presence of magnetic fields; there is a danger that these could cause demagnetisation and thus the erasure of recorded information. 20 They are also fragile materials which stand up badly to impact, twisting, stresses and scratches which often result from their being used. A careful check should always be kept on the equipment used for reading them. As far as possible, care should be taken to prevent dust: the floors should be completely smooth and cleaning should only be done by a vacuum cleaner fitted with a fine filter. The records should be stored in thick polyethylene bags which should be sealed and placed in watertight boxes. The external air should be filtered to 2-5 microns. Tapes are stored vertically on shelves; purpose built shelves fitted with grooves are available. If possible, the rooms where magnetic tapes are stored should be fitted with a halon gas extinction system to deal with the danger of fire. Valuable documents should be stored in fire-proof cabinets. Dry-powder extinguishers should not be used because of the danger of scratching the tapes. For climatic conditions, see below, chapter 10, p. 105. It is certainly too early to describe the storage conditions for discs read by laser : either video discs, or optical digital discs. There are still only a few of these in record offices and there is a shortage of specific conservation studies relating to them.

12. Vaults In some record offices, the most valuable and most confidential records are stored in safes, or, even better in vaults or rooms which have been specially equipped to give them maximum protection. Vaults are usually built in the basement of the building. They have walls, floors and ceilings of reinforced concrete; their doors are capable of resisting an oxyacetylene torch and are fitted with security locks. Because they are, by definition, enclosed areas, they must be provided with complete, permanent ventilation, as well as air-conditioning to ensure that there is no danger of mould growing. The internal fittings of vaults are the same as those of ordinary strongrooms; metal shelves, cupboards, plan chests, etc. depending on the type of documents which are stored in them. 20

The magnetic field should be measured periodically with an instrument called a magnetometer.

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13. Work in strongrooms It is generally agreed that strongrooms are not working areas and that they should not be confused with rooms for appraisal, or with research rooms. Nevertheless, it must be accepted that some short searches can only be reasonably carried out in the strongrooms; if only the identification of a document which is required (the reference-label is not always sufficient for this purpose). It is often necessary to open and examine several boxes or volumes before finding exactly what is needed. It may also be desirable to make notes on a document on the spot without having to carry it into the offices and then returning it to the strongrooms. There are three possible ways of meeting this need: 1. Collapsible tables in the aisles (see above, p. 51); this is the usual solution, but it is often inadequate and, in any case, is only suited to very short, small-scale searches. 2. Reading tables placed in a corner of the strongroom. For want of anything better, many archivists put a table and a chair in a corner of the strongroom for this kind of research. This solution is not adequate, firstly, because the atmosphere of the strongroom is not suitable for human occupation for any length of time (temperature, light); secondly, because the tables and chairs cause an obstruction in the strongrooms and may interfere with movement. 3. Research carrels. The best solution is to set up small rooms, measuring about 8 to 10 square metres, in the repository block. These should be equipped with a table and chair and an electric light and heated to office standards. The minimum requirement is for one room on each floor of the repository and, in very large repositories, one for roughly every 800 square metres.

61

CHAPTER SEVEN WORK-AREAS CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC: WORKSHOPS AND OFFICES 1. General features As mentioned above (p. 41), there is a fundamental distinction between those areas in an archive building which are open to the public and the work-areas which are restricted to the staff. Some offices (those of the director, assistant archivists and secretaries) are in an intermediate category: the public have to pass through a control before they can reach them; their locations should be chosen accordingly. These offices will be considered in this chapter which is concerned with workareas which are not open to the public. The work-flow patterns which were described in chapter 5 (p. 42) should influence the layout of the office. Unless otherwise stated, the architectural features (area, ceiling height and floor loading) and the climatic conditions (temperature and humidity) of the work-areas in an archive building should be those laid down in the appropriate official standards in each country for work-areas, offices and workshops. 21

2. Areas for receiving and fumigating documents a) Reception

area for transfers; the loading

bay

One of the main functions of a record office is to receive transfers of documents from all kinds of public and private administrative bodies, services and institutions, which transfer them either in accordance with statutory requirements, or voluntarily. One room 22 should be devoted to receiving transfers when they arrive. The summary or descriptive list which must accompany each transfer is checked here. As a general rule, records only stay in the room for reception of transfers (or 'accession room') for the short period required to check the lists and, if necessary, to clean the records before they are transferred to the sorting room or the strongrooms. As its prime purpose is to receive documents from outside the building, the accession room should have direct access to the exterior. A loading bay should be

21

22

The French standard for floorloading for work-areas is 400 kg per square metre; a higher floor loading is needed for certain technical areas. This is specified for each of them. For climatic conditions and lighting, see chapter 10. Or even a number of rooms in large record offices.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

provided for deliveries brought by lorry or van; this should be about one metre above ground level. It should be sheltered from rain. Outside working hours, its entrance should be closed by a metal shutter to provide complete protection against theft. In big record offices where large quantities of accessions are handled, industrial-type handling and lifting equipment (conveyor belts or fork-lift trucks) should be available for unloading lorries (pi. 49,50). No special equipment is required in the accession room. All that is needed is basic metal shelving round the walls to house the files and bundles of documents as they arrive and a small office near the loading bay for checking files against the transfer lists. An accession room of about 50 square metres is needed for a medium sized repository (about 25,000 linear metres of shelving). An area of about 100 square metres is needed for a repository with more than 50,000 linear metres.

b) The fumigation

room

The fumigation chamber should be situated next to the accession room (on the subject of fumigation, see p. 115). An area of at least 20 square metres should be provided. As a fumigation chamber is a very bulky piece of equipment, access to the area in which it is installed should be through a double door at least 1.40 m wide. Because the gases used in the fumigation chamber are toxic, they must be completely evacuated. The area should be very well ventilated and should communicate directly with the outside of the building.

3. Areas for documents which are to be destroyed After appraisal (which may take place immediately after the transfer arrives, or some time later), some of the records are kept for permanent preservation (permanent archives), but the rest - usually the larger part - will be destroyed, either immediately, or after a fixed period.

a) Documents

to be destroyed

after a fixed

period

These are kept in the strongrooms until the date for their destruction. At this stage, they do not require special accommodation. The best solution is to put them in the strongrooms which are nearest to the ground floor, so that when the time comes, they can be removed as easily as possible. In a well-organised record office, documents for permanent preservation and those which are to be destroyed after a period should never be kept in the same room.

WORK-AREAS

63

b) Documents for immediate destruction: removing documents to be destroyed Documents which have reached the statutory age for destruction are stored in a special area known as the elimination room. There, the documents can either be destroyed on the spot (see below), or they can be handed over to a specialist contractor, who arranges for their destruction. If the second option is chosen, the documents will be removed by lorry; the elimination room, like the accession room should have a loading bay with direct access to the exterior. As with accessions, industrial-type lifting and handling equipment will be needed if large quantities of records have to be handled. For this reason, in medium sized archive buildings, the same room is often used for receiving accessions and for storing documents which are to be destroyed. A simple moveable partition separates the two activities. In large record offices where a special elimination room is needed, it should be located next to the room for receiving transfers so that the same loading bay can be used by lorries delivering documents or taking them away. The documents to be destroyed are laid on the floor in tidy bundles. No special equipment has to be provided for them. An area of 50 square metres should be large enough for the elimination room in a medium-sized repository, provided that there are regular collections of documents.

c) The destruction of documents There are three methods of destroying papers: shredding, burning or chemical destruction. The choice depends on the volume of papers to be destroyed. Used papers provide raw material for the manufacture of new paper and, if they are of sufficiently good quality, will be bought by manufacturers for this purpose. In most countries, archivists sell the papers which have passed their disposal date. There are some precautions which have to be observed. To prevent any indiscretions, the purchaser must carry out the complete destruction of such papers under the supervision of a representative of the record office. Destruction on the spot may be necessary, either for security reasons (if the records are confidential), or because no manufacturers are interested in buying the used paper. If the quantity of paper to be destroyed is relatively small, a shredder can be used. These either convert the paper into shreds like packing straw, or into small fragments resembling confetti. Numerous types of machines are available. Their size varies according to their capacity. A model capable of destroying one tonne of paper a day measures about 0.70 m wide x 0.60 m deep x 1 m high. It is advisable not to acquire a machine which is too small, because the smaller models can only deal with paper which is in good condition and cannot cope with thick files and boxes. Larger models can 'digest' any sort of paper, even metal paperclips. The shredded paper which they produce is an excellent packing material for commerce and industry and can easily find a buyer (see pi. 54).

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In record offices where there are large quantities of material to be destroyed, the acquisition of an industrial-type incinerator might be considered, but the use of an incinerator creates problems of security and cleanliness, which have to be evaluated in each individual case. As a general rule, the incinerator should be isolated from the archive building (for example, it could be separated from it by a courtyard or a piece of open ground). It should be fitted with a smoke-absorption device to prevent the emission of harmful smoke particles and its installation should be approved by the safety authorities. The destruction of papers by a chemical process requires complicated and costly equipment and is hardly practical in record offices; its use is confined to industrial applications.

4. Rooms for appraisal and sorting The areas for appraisal and sorting are, in a sense, the heart of a record office and great care should be taken when planning them. Although, archivally speaking, appraisal and sorting are quite separate operations, they are carried out in the same way and consequently can be carried out in the same room or in adjacent rooms, which are fitted out in a similar fashion. As the main working areas, the rooms for appraisal and sorting should be made as comfortable as possible for the staff who will have to spend much time there. In particular, they should be well-heated, well-lit and well-ventilated. The area of these rooms will vary greatly depending on the size of the record office. An area of 50 square metres is reasonable for weeding and sorting in a repository of 10,000 linear metres. At least 150 square metres would be needed for one of25,000 linear metres. When there is no appraisal to be carried out (i. e., when accessions arrive already weeded, which is uncommon in Europe at least), these areas can be reduced by about a half. Appraisal and sorting are carried out on large tables or sorting benches; these can either be made of wood or metal, the working surface should be 1.0 m or 1.10 m high to make it possible for staff to work standing up. Special stools, ad j ustable for height, will allow them to work sitting down. If the sorting benches are very long, it is useful to have stools which can move sideways along their length, giving complete mobility to staff employed on sorting. The best width for sorting benches (however long they are) is 0.60 m. This allows easy access to pigeon holes located behind them. Pigeon holes are fitted on the opposite side of the bench to the staff. Documents are placed in these during sorting or appraisal. The openings of the pigeon holes should, obviously, face the bench. There should be a row of pigeon holes at the work surface level, 0.50 m wide x 0.40 m high which are used for 'first review'. Above these, there should be one or two rows of smaller compartments for 'second review', 0.25 m wide x 0.40 m high. Both types should be 0.35 mor0.40 mdeep(seepl. 52,53A). There should be some metal shelves either along the walls or in rows for documents which have been appraised and sorted and are awaiting transfer to the strongrooms.

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65

5. The photographic studio23 a) General remarks Today, it is impossible to imagine a modern record office without a photographic studio. These have many functions: creating collections of security or acquisition microfilms, duplicating existing microfilms, copying documents in response to readers' orders or for administrative or educational use, producing photographic enlargements to help in reading difficult documents, collection of documentary photographs of historic monuments, objets d'art, etc., production of photographic enlargements for exhibitions, etc. It is very difficult, if not impossible to give a theoretical definition of the equipment needed for a 'typical' photographic studio in a record office. Everything depends on the amount and type of the work to be undertaken and each case has to be decided separately. As a minimum, every record office should have a microfilm camera. Microfilm is usually processed and duplicated in situ. It should also be possible to produce hard copy prints from microfilm. These three processes are the basis of all photographic studios in record offices. It may also be desirable to have facilities to produce other photographic formats than traditional microfilm e. g., large formats for copying maps and plans, microfiche, or 24 mm x 36 mm, 60 mm x 60 mm or 130 mm x 180 mm negatives for photographs of monuments, objets d'art, etc. The rapid evolution in the technology of photography and reprographics and the frequent appearance on the market of new equipment and processes means that before equipping a studio, it is essential to seek specialist advice and to study specialist publications. It should also be noted that record offices have different requirements for photography, particularly microfilm, from other users, for example banks. Archival documents have various formats and there are problems resulting from the way in which they are arranged which require specific microfilming techniques. Unfortunately, most of the equipment and films which are available are designed to meet the needs of banks, research organizations and large administrative bodies rather than archives. Before buying photographic equipment for a record office, it is particularly important to consult experts in this field. 24

b) Location and plan of the photographic

studio

The size of a photographic studio in a record office varies considerably depending on whether it is intended to carry out an extensive microfilming programme using one or more cameras, or simple small-scale filming. The area required will vary 23

24

Only a brief description of the equipment of a photographic studio in a record office canbe given here. This is not the place to discuss the many other problems which photography and microfilming create; specialist works should be consulted-see the bibliography on p. 158. In France the technical service of the Direction des Archives de France, 60, rue des FrancsBourgeois , 75141 Paris - Cedex 03, should be consulted.

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accordingly. A small studio with a single camera will require an area of about 100 to 120 square metres which should be divided into four rooms (see below). A studio with several cameras will require a proportionally larger area. The studio should be situated away from the most used routes through the office. It could be located some distance away from the offices or from the areas open to the public without causing any inconvenience. Because of the emission of fumes and chemicals, it should be airy and wellventilated. Every photographic studio will need at least four separate rooms: one for filming, one for processing films, one for processing prints and enlargements and one for finishing and editing. An area will also be needed for storing the film and materials needed for use in the studio. The nature of photographic work means that the different rooms in the studio should be arranged so that light cannot pass from one room to another. A system of staggered doors and light traps should be devised. It is best to consult a professional photographer about this. There should be doors, 1.20 m-1.40 m wide between the rooms to allow bulky equipment to be moved. These should be kept closed during normal working conditions. The developing and printing rooms need hot and cold running water as well as power sockets which conform to the safety standards for rooms in which water is present. There are particular safety problems in a photographic studio - dangers from chemicals, high voltage equipment, etc. The safety and fire authorities should examine the plan and layout carefully before giving permission for it to be used.

c) The camera room (pi. 57A)25 Planetary microfilm cameras are mounted on vertical columns which can be up to 3 . 2 m high. These allow automatic focussing whatever the size of the documents. Consequently, the ceiling height of the camera room should not be less than 3.30 m, alternatively, the ceiling should be coffered to accommodate the camera columns. 'Rotary' or 'flow' cameras are also available; these allow uniform-sized records to be microfilmed one after the other by means of a motor drive which moves the documents in front of the lens. This system requires the documents to be carefully sorted before filming and it can only function with records of a uniform size. This greatly limits its use in record offices. When filming large documents, the camera has to be a considerable distance from the record to be filmed. This is achieved by mounting the camera on a system of rails which allows it to be moved back or forward at will. Such a system can be bought commercially or can be constructed on the spot by a craftsman.

25

In large record offices, there may be several camera rooms, which may have specialized functions.

WORK-AREAS

d) Processing and film duplicating

67

room

This room should be totally isolated from daylight and equipped with safe lights (sodium vapour lamps) which do not affect films. To exclude light from the camera rooms, the two rooms should be separated by a system of staggered or revolving double doors which form a light-trap. Films are developed in automatic processors, these are available in different sizes according to the number of films to be handled. These processors use large quantities of water for washing the films after development; consequently, a water supply and a drain must be provided. Automatic film duplicators are available for producing negative or positive copies of films (pi. 60). The developing room should be equipped with a large sink with running water (pi. 57B).

e) Room for enlarging and

printing

The third room in the photographic studio is used for making enlargements and prints on paper. Like the processing room, it should be isolated from daylight and fitted with safe lights which do not affect sensitive papers. It too should be protected by a system of light-trap doors. Like planetary cameras, enlargers are mounted on columns which can be 3.20 m high. They require a ceiling which is at least that high. The room should be fitted with a large trough with thermostatically controlled hot and cold running water for washing and drying paper prints (pi. 58A).

f ) Room for editing and checking

films

Editing and checking of film is carried out in rooms with normal lighting at special tables called 'rewind and grading benches'. Running water is not necessary.

g) Storage of materials There are special requirements for storing the chemicals needed in photographic studios (developing and fixing baths, etc.) and for unexposed films, sensitive papers, etc. Chemicals should be stored in a dark, well-ventilated room fitted with shelves made from laminated wood. The floor should be tiled and fitted with a drainage sump for use in the event of an accident while chemicals are being handled. Sensitive materials (films and papers) should be stored separately in a cold atmosphere (see below, chapter 10, p. 105). Special refrigerated cabinets are available for this purpose. A cabinet of 2-4 square metres should be large enough for a small studio. A complete refrigerated room is needed for large studios.

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6. Areas for photocopying, duplicating and printing a) General remarks.

Location

All large record offices are expected to produce photocopies 26 of documents for internal use or for readers. Photocopying equipment is usually situated near the reading rooms but this has a serious disadvantage; the public become used to getting photocopies on the spot, which can sometimes detract from the preservation of documents. On the other hand, if the photocopiers are located in another part of the building there is a risk of complicating the work-flows. For this reason, the location of the photocopiers should be decided individually with regard to the office's working methods. No single solution can be applied everywhere. Most reasonably large record offices also have to provide duplicating services e.g. circulars to be sent out, copies of documents for the educational service, etc. or even offset printing e.g. finding aids, information brochures, etc. Each of these functions must be considered separately.

b)

Photocopying

In small or medium sized record offices, there is usually only one photocopier which serves both the public and the office itself. As indicated above, no absolute rule can be laid down concerning the location of this equipment. When there are two or more copiers - one for the public and one for the office - the one for the public should obviously be close to the reading room, while the one for official use should be near to the offices. Automatic coin-operated copiers of the sort which are found in post offices and large stores should not be allowed in archives, because archival documents should never be left in the hands of readers without supervision. Photocopying in archives should be carried out exclusively by the staff. Photocopying pages of bound registers should forbidden because it damages their bindings. Photocopying of fragile documents, particularly those with seals should also be prohibited. 27

c) Duplicating and printing As in the case of the photographic studio, the area for duplication and, where applicable, printing, should be situated away from the main work-flows of the office. It should be well lit and well ventilated. 26

27

The term photocopy is used here in its current sense: a direct copy of a document made without an intermediate negative. It should also be borne in mind that photocopying equipment can generate ozone which can harm paper. Such equipment should not be located in strongrooms. The rooms where it is located should be well ventilated. Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, vol. 39, 1986, pp. 237-8.

WORK-AREAS

69

Its area varies according to the size of the equipment which is to be installed: generally between 20 and 100 square metres.

7. The bindery and conservation laboratory a) Introduction,

location

No record office can function without frequently calling on the services of a binder. There are many applications for binding in an archive repository binding ordinary books in the working library, binding certain categories of archival documents which should be kept in homogeneous series (collections of laws or decrees, atlases of maps or plans, etc.), repairing old damaged bindings of volumes and registers. Because binding work is relevant to the operation of all archive services, having a specialised workshop on the premises can be justified everywhere except in very small offices. The size of this workshop will obviously depend on the amount of work to be undertaken. It may be limited to basic equipment or it may be a proper professional bindery. The same considerations do not apply to the repair of documents. This involves delicate techniques which require specialist staff and quite expensive equipment. As a general rule, only reasonably large record offices have a conservation laboratory. As in the case of the studios for photography and duplication, the bindery and conservation laboratory should be situated away from the main work-flows of the office. These rooms should be well lit, well ventilated and fitted with equipment for extracting fumes. They should be air-conditioned, particularly in countries with hot climates, because of the heat generated by laminating presses, heaters for glue pots and other equipment. 28 They should be fitted with double doors 1.40 m wide to allow bulky equipment to be moved. Binderies, as well as conservation laboratories should be provided with cupboards or special rooms for the storage of materials and chemicals. Dangerous substances (acetone, etc.) should be stored under lock and key.

b) The bindery The bindery contains a number of large and heavy pieces of equipment, the weight of the guillotine and the presses should particularly be taken into account for the floor loading which can be up to 1,500 kg/square metre for the heaviest items. The area of the bindery in a record office will vary according to the size of the

28

See chapter 10.

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office. The minimum area is 25 square metres, an area of 100 square metres would be suitable for a medium-sized repository. Binderies in record offices rarely have to produce artistic bindings. Archival bindings are purely functional and are only required to be robust. If it is necessary to produce an elegant binding for a precious document for example, it is always possible to turn to a binder who specialises in this sort of work. Finally, unlike library binderies which mainly bind volumes or pamphlets with folded and sewn sheets, archive binderies often have to bind separate sheets, so the equipment should be selected with this in mind (pi. 55 A). Traditional hand binding This form of binding which involves numerous operations can only be carried out by specialist staff. There would be no point in acquiring the equipment required only to find later that it could not be used because of a shortage of properly trained binders. The various pieces of equipment required are fairly cumbersome and this too should be taken into account. However, in large repositories, the number and quality of bindings which are needed require a workshop where traditional binding is carried out. An expert should be consulted about the equipment and layout of the workshop. The basic heavy equipment consists of a guillotine, a nipping press, a board cutter, a laying press and benches. A guillotine has many uses in a record office. It can be used for cutting cards, file covers, etc., as well as preparing works for binding. It is an almost indispensable piece of equipment in every sizeable record office. A model with a large cut (0.80 m) should be chosen so that bundles of newspapers, for example, can be guillotined. If a guillotine is to be used frequently and subjected to a heavy work-load, a machine with an electric motor should be acquired, otherwise a hand-operated model is adequate. It is important to take account of the considerable size and weight of such equipment, a guillotine with a large cut can measure about 1.50 m x 1.50 m and stand 1.80 m high. The number and size of benches varies according to the number of staff employed. Benches should be strong and have a hardwood top. They should be about0.90 m high. The optimum width is about 1.0 m,or2.0 miftwo binders are to work facing one another. Benches should not be less than 1.60 m long. A gas or electric stove is needed for preparing glue; it should be fitted with an extractor hood. Specialist publications should be consulted for details of the many small tools needed for traditional binding (see the bibliography, p. 158). 'American' or 'Perfect' glued bindings This simple method of binding involves trimming the sheets to be bound, coating the edge which will form the back of the volume with a special glue and glueing the cover to the sides. Bindings produced by this method, known as the 'American' or 'Perfect' method obviously do not have the strength of sewn bindings but may be quite adequate for volumes or documents which are relatively little used.

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It also has the advantage of requiring less expert staff than sewn bindings and of enabling single sheets to be bound without further preparation. The equipment needed is limited to a guillotine (see above) and a gluing machine in which the sheets to be bound are laid on a flat surface, packed down, pressed by a compressor and glued on the side required. A strip of gauze is then laid over the glue which is rapidly dried by infra red lamps. The sides and back of the binding are glued and dried in turn. The size of a gluing machine depends on the maximum size of the documents to be bound. A machine capable of handling large quarto sheets would be approximately 0.90 m wide x 0.60 m deep x 0.90 m high. It would be advantageous to acquire the largest model available. Machines for adhesive bindings stand on a table.

Binding by plastic rings There is also a simple binding technique for documents which are not valuable. This involves making rectangular perforations near the back of the volume through which plastic rings are placed. These are attached to a plastic spine. This type of binding is done with a special apparatus which is reasonably cheap and compact.

Binding collections of newspapers Special techniques are needed for binding newspapers because of their very large size. The laying presses which are used in traditional binding are too small for backing bindings of newspapers so a press is needed with an opening of at least 0.60 m, capable of taking the group of papers. A sewing frame of appropriate size is also required.

c) The conservation

laboratory

In practice the term conservation covers a variety of techniques, which depend on the nature of the documents to be repaired and the degree of sophistication of repair required. The techniques for repairing papyrus, parchment, old papers and large maps and plans are purely manual and require a high level of professional knowledge. These techniques are restricted to properly trained specialists and it is better not to repair this type of record at all, rather than to entrust them to non-specialist staff. The equipment needed for this work should be considered in conjunction with specialist staff. During the past forty years equipment which allows paper to be repaired mechanically has been developed: laminating equipment in which documents (either cold or heated) are placed between two protective layers of transparent reinforcing material, or alternatively, equipment for repairing with paper pulp (leaf casting) which allows holes in documents to be filled in (pi. 55B.56A, 56B). All these pieces of equipment, which are marketed under different names and which have different characteristics have some features in common: a need for

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specialist staff, fairly high prices29 and considerable bulk. Leaf casting equipment uses large quantities of water, although this disadvantage can be minimised by recycling. Before repair, damaged papers should be cleaned, fumigated if necessary (see p. 115) and deacidified. 30 Deacidification involves fairly complex chemical processes and requires specialized professional training. For all these reasons, there seems to be no point in listing here all the pieces of apparatus and equipment required in an archive conservation laboratory. The choice of equipment depends too much on the nature of the documents to be treated, the degree of specialisation of the staff and the financial resources available for an abstract list to be of any value. Conservation technicians should be closely involved in the choice of equipment for the archive conservation laboratory (see the bibliography, p. 158). The area of the laboratory varies from case to case; from about 50 square metres for one doing manual repair, up to 150 square metres or even 200 square metres for one equipped with large pieces of equipment for lamination or leaf casting. The electricity and water supply should be designed in accordance with the type and location of the equipment installed.

8. Workshop for seal repair and making casts of seals The great fragility of seals makes them particularly vulnerable to knocks and abrasion. Many ancient seals are broken, decayed and cracked. Consolidation and repair are needed if further deterioration is to be avoided. The technique for repairing seals is fairly delicate. While very complex equipment is not required, well trained staff are essential. Without them seal repair can do more harm than good. The basic principles for repairing damaged wax seals are the f ollowing: when a seal is broken into several pieces, the fragments are j oined together by means of a heated iron, when a sizeable piece is missing it can be replaced by new wax of a slightly different colour. The raised design of the seal is never repaired, still less reconstituted. If a seal is only attached to its document by a few strands of silk or thread, or by a partly torn parchment tag, the silk, thread, or parchment can be reinserted into the seal. As a rule, a seal which has become completely detached is never reattached to its document. Instead, it is placed in a protective bag with all the appropriate means of identification. Without going into minute detail, the equipment for this work consists of a heated electric iron of the kind used for poker work, an electric or gas stove, double saucepans or pots for melting the wax, spatulas, knives of various sizes, pliers, 31 a glass plate or marble slab, etc. The production of seal casts is a different question. Whereas the repair of 29

30 31

The prices of several models of this sort of equipment have fallen, probably as a result of the development of a wider market (note by Michel Duchein, 1988). Onacidityofpaperandthedamageitcauses,seechapterlO,p. 110. Dentists' tools are generally very suitable for seal repair.

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damaged seals is a necessity, the reproduction of seals by casting can be seen as a luxury. Moreover, it requires more complex and expensive equipment. A workshop for repairing seals and making moulds need no be very large, 3040 square metres is usually sufficient. Like the other workshops described above it should be away from the main work-flows of the office. The nature of the work requires that the workshop for seals should be well-lit, well-ventilated and equipped with gas or electric heaters, a fume hood and a sink with running water. Air-conditioning is desirable, particularly in a warm climate.

9. The packing room a) Location of room In a large record office a special room for packing is justified because of the need to wrap, box and pack documents before putting them on the shelves or sending them outside the repository, etc. An area of30-40 square metres is sufficient for a medium sized repository. This room should be as close as possible to the appraisal and sorting room of which it is a sort of annexe. When the office is not large enough to justify a special room for these activities, they can be carried out in the appraisal and sorting room. The choice of materials for wrapping or boxing archives has great significance for the preservation of documents but practice varies greatly from country to country and it is difficult to lay down rules which are applicable everywhere.

b) Archive boxes From every point of view, the best protection for documents is a closed box (see pi. 36,37,38,39). All the experiments which have been carried out, notably in England, have shown that, in practice, documents stored in boxes are protected against atmospheric pollution, solar radiation and - to a large extent - fungus. It would be difficult to understand why storage in boxes has not been adopted everywhere were it not for the fact that the cost of this equipment is unfortunately rather high. Boxes used for storing archives are usually made from cardboard (hence the name 'cartons d'archives' which is given to them in France), but they are sometimes made of metal (sheet steel) and were formerly made of wood. Experiments have been carried out to produce cardboard boxes which are fireproof, insect-resistant, acid-free and which have fungicidal properties. Unfortunately the cost of such boxes is so high that it is difficult to recommend their systematic use except for the most valuable documents. Care should be taken to choose a box with as low an acidity as possible because of the risks to documents which arise from acid boxes (see below, p. 110). In many countries, collapsible cardboard boxes are manufactured. These are delivered folded and consequently take up little space. They are only assembled when they are required for use.

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The dimensions of archives boxes naturally vary according to the size of the documents to be kept in them. To enure that the papers are not cramped in their boxes, which would lead to the danger of their edges being damaged, it is generally necessary to provide boxes which are 5 cm wider and longer than the documents which they are to contain. The majority of boxes used by French archivists measure 0.34 mx0.26 mxO.lO m, which corresponds to the standard size of writing paper in France. Boxes measuring 0.40 m x 0.30 m x 0.15 m or 0.50 mx0.35 mx0.15 mare used for larger format documents. If they are to fulfil all the requirements expected of them, archive boxes must be strong. However great is the legitimate desire to buy low cost supplies, this economy must not be achieved at the expense of strength. In particular, boxes made from thin board which are not fitted with any attachment to allow handling such as a handle, a ring, or a strip of tough fabric, should be avoided because there is a danger that they might disintegrate rapidly after a small amount of use. Provision should be made for reference labels on the side of the box which faces the aisle in the strongroom (see below, p. 75). When closed, boxes must be sufficiently tightly sealed to provide satisfactory protection against dust. Hinged lids fitted with a flap which fits into a slot are satisfactory in this respect, as are lids fitted with a cord which can be tied to keep them closed. The disadvantage of these types of boxes is that they have to be removed from the shelf to be opened. The best arrangement is a hinged panel at the front of the box which is kept closed by a cord or hook. Archive boxes only give complete protection if the documents are not too tightly packed. The edges of the documents must be clear of the sides of the box and it must be possible to shut the lid without strain. On the other hand, if the box is not full enough and is stored upright, the documents will sag and crumple.

c) Bundles in folders or

wrappers

If boxes are not available, the most common practice is to store records in bundles or in simple folders. This is not a perfect solution, because dust, light and harmful elements from the atmosphere can penetrate right inside a bundle which is not enclosed. If for reasons of economy documents have to be stored in this way, it is important to try to minimize the disadvantages of this method of storage. A strong, heavy paper should be chosen for the covers. It should be resistant to tearing and be of low acidity. Tar paper which is highly acidic and can damage documents should not be used. Covers which are open on two or three sides like ordinary office files should not be used. It is possible to make up proper packets which have all six sides closed and are tied up like postal parcels, or to use double covers or wrappers which will protect all sides of the documents (pi. 40,41). Covers are generally made up on the spot in the record office, this makes it possible to buy paper in bulk. The only piece of equipment which is needed is a guillotine for cutting sheets.

WORK-AREAS

d) Pouches,

bags or envelopes for

75

records

Half way between a simple wrapper and an archive box are commercially produced pouches, bags or envelopes of strong paper which are made to take a bundle of records. These offer a satisfactory solution provided that the paper is strong enough and not acidic, but their disadvantage is that they can only be used for bundles of standard length, width and thickness, and, of course, they are not as rigid as cardboard boxes. The pouches, bags or envelopes are kept shut by a cord or by a flap which fits into a slot.

e) Straps and string If records are stored in wrappers, there is the problem of tying or strapping them. Boxes and pouches are also often closed by a string or a strap. Thin string can be ruled out without hesitation. It cuts into the edges of the paper and is not strong enough to stand up to frequent handling. Thick string or cord should also not be used because of the damage which they do to the bundles at the places where the knots are tied. In some record offices a thin tape made of cotton or jute is used. This is a satisfactory solution provided that the tape is strong enough and that care is taken to use the tape flat, so that there is no danger of it cutting the edges of the bundles. The best way of securing bundles is to use a strap of strong webbing, 3 cm - 4 cm wide, fitted with a sliding buckle. There are commercially available straps which have buckle fastenings with metal tongues; these are to be avoided because the tongues eventually rust and using them may consequently become difficult and dangerous. For bundles of records of normal size, straps 0.80 m long are generally sufficient. 1 m long straps can be used for large bundles.

f)

Labelling

Every item in an archive (box, folder, envelope, register) should have a label giving its reference and sometimes, a brief description of its contents. White labels are preferable to coloured because they are easier to read. But paper discs in a variety of colours can be used, if it is convenient to distinguish items belonging to different record groups or items which should be evacuated as a matter of priority in an emergency, etc. (see below, p. 102). Gummed labels are generally used, but labels can be made on the spot and attached with office paste - gum with a resin base which dries out should be avoided. Aniline-based inks (ordinary writing inks or ball-point pen inks) which are not light fast should not be used for writing labels as these need to remain legible for as long as possible. Indian inks which have a base of carbon black or felt pens with an oil-based ink should be used for the written parts of the labels. An oil-based printing ink should be used for the printed parts of the labels.

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Part of the wording on labels is usually printed. The same group-letter and class-number will appear on a large number of items and it would be a waste of time to copy them by hand on to every label. There is no need to have labels printed commercially. This is expensive and not always satisfactory. Inexpensive label-printing machines are available which can produce labels of different sizes and wordings as and when required.

g) Stamping and

numbering

In theory, each document within an item should be stamped and serially numbered, but it is difficult to achieve this ideal because of the considerable work involved. At the very least no item should ever be produced to the public, or even less transferred to an outside location, unless every document has been stamped and numbered. Rubber stamps can be used for stamping but these have the disadvantage of wearing out rather quickly. Brass ones are better. Machines are available for mass stamping if large quantities of papers have to be stamped. Numbering can either be done by hand using Indian ink or by a numbering machine or, if the speed of work is important, by an (electric) numbering machine.

h) Making-up postal

parcels

In record offices where the rules permit documents to be sent elsewhere, material must be provided to make-up postal parcels; wrapping paper which should be thick and waterproof, string and scissors. Metal strip-fastening equipment may be needed for making large packages and for shipping packing cases.

10. General maintenance workshop There are many carpentry jobs to be done in a record office: making wooden shelves for the workshops, packing cases for shipping, display panels for permanent or travelling exhibitions, etc. There are also many electrical jobs to be carried out almost every day. For this reason, it is useful to have a carpentry and electrical workshop, or a general maintenance workshop in large record offices. This should be situated away from the work-flows of the office. An area of 40 to 50 square metres is usually large enough, except in a very large office.

11. The offices The number of offices and the way they are arranged will vary according to the

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size of the record office and the way in which the work-flow is organized. It is not possible to lay down rules which would be valid everywhere. 32 In some countries, it is usual for staff to work in large open space or open plan offices where 10,12, or even 15 people work together. In this situation there will be a small number of offices, but each one will be very large. In other countries, it is more usual to provide offices for two or three people at most. These have an area of 20-35 square metres. A record office should, at least, have individual offices for the head of the service (the chief archivist or whatever his title is), the immediate deputies (deputy director of administration or deputy director for professional matters) and the head of the accounts and administration department. As the chief archivist and his professional deputies may have to undertake sorting and listing work themselves, they should be provided with a small sorting room next to their offices. 33 As a rule the offices are situated in the area of the building which is not accessible to the public. However, visitors with prior appointments may be received in the offices of the chief archivist and his professional deputies. The secretaries' office should be located between the area which is accessible to the public and the non-public areas to ensure that visitors are screened.

12. Stores for materials A record office needs large stocks of materials: empty boxes, shelving which has not been assembled, stationery, packing materials, etc. Consequently, some storerooms should be provided in the basement of the building in addition to the stories of materials for the photographic, conservation and binding workshops described above and that for exhibition materials (see below, p. 89). The absolute minimum size for such store rooms is 50 square metres.

13. Staff rest rooms and canteens Depending on the number of staff employed in a record office and on its location (whether it is near or far from a town centre), it may be advisable to provide a staff rest room and a canteen. This could possibly have cooking facilities or at the very least, a refrigerator and a stove for making coffee or tea. In very large record offices which employ at least 50 people, a staff lending library, games room etc. might be provided next to these areas, depending on local customs and regulations.

32

33

The French standard is that each person should have a minimum area of 10 to 12 square metres and that the width of offices should not be less than 2.60 m. In France the offices of directors of record offices usually have an area of 25 to 30 square metres, not including the small room for sorting. An area of 20 square metres is usual for deputies and heads of sections.

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14. Shower rooms and toilets Shower rooms should be provided for the staff as archives work can be dirty. For every twenty members of staff there should be one shower cubicle for men and one for women. Toilets should also be provided in accordance with official standards. In France the official standard is one W.C. for men and one for women for every twenty people employed.

15. Technical service areas The technical service rooms, boiler room, air-conditioning plant, computer room, switchboard, monitoring room, etc. are discussed in chapter 10 with the general technical equipment of the building.

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CHAPTER EIGHT AREAS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC 1. General features In older record offices the areas open to the public were few in number and cramped, readers were rare, casual visitors were even less common. Very few record offices were equipped with exhibition areas. The idea of introducing a wide public to archives was inconceivable. Demands in this field have not stopped expanding since the Second World War. The reasons for this influx of the public into archives have often been discussed at international congresses and meetings. They include developments in the methods and working conditions of historical research, expansion of the field of historical investigation, increasing leisure time, the fashion for genealogy and family history, new methods of teaching history based on the use of documents, the spread of audiovisual techniques which has encouraged the holding of lectures and conferences. Nowadays it is no longer possible to design a record office without devoting a large area to receiving the public, e.g. enquiry offices, reading rooms, lecture theatres and exhibition areas. This situation is very different from that described in the first edition of the Manual in 1966. In some large record offices up to 40 % or 50 % of the working areas excluding strongrooms are open to the public. The areas in record offices which are open to the public should, like all such areas, be easily accessible from outside, well signposted and fitted with all the safety equipment which is legally required (see chapter 10, p. 102). In this respect the situation in record offices is very similar to that in libraries and museums. They should also be completely separated from the working areas which are not open to the public and, of course, from the strongrooms. For obvious reasons of convenience and safety, it is desirable that all areas open to the public should be located on the same floor. If this is not possible, movement from floor to floor should be easy and the distances should be reduced to the minimum. All the public areas should be accessible to the disabled in conformity with national regulations (see above, p. 44). The requirements for comfort and safety, lighting, heating/air-conditioning, ventilation and soundproofing are discussed below in chapter 10.

2. Reception hall and enquiry office a) Public entrance hall In modern archive buildings the public entrance hall should be large and attractive. This is the general trend in all administrative buildings. A record office

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with 20,000 linear metres of shelving should have an entrance hall of at least 30-40 square metres. An area of 80 or 100 square metres, or even more could be justified for a larger office (see pi. 63). Entrance halls often have large glazed areas, but security, especially protection against theft and the breakage of windows, should not be neglected. It is better to sacrifice sunlight for security than the reverse. As the entrance hall has direct access from outside and has people constantly moving to and fro, it ought to be very well protected against bad weather, especially if it is also used as an exhibition area (see below). The use of double doors as a thermal barrier against the external environment should be considered. If the reading rooms, exhibition areas and lecture theatres are situated on an upper floor, the stairs and lifts to them will be located in the entrance hall. The stairs and lifts for the public should be well signposted and completely separate from those for use by the staff. As a rule there should always be a member of staff in the entrance hall to receive and direct visitors. This may be the concierge, or attendant whose flat can be connected to the entrance hall by a window or it may be a receptionist sitting behind a glass screen. In small offices which have few visitors the same person can supervise the entrance hall and the reading room at the same time through a glass screen. Entrance halls are often fitted with showcases displaying documents, reproductions, works of art, etc. This gives visitors their first contact with archives. One tendency which is becoming more widespread is to use the same area both as an entrance hall and an exhibition area or for the exhibition area to be wide open to the entrance hall, sometimes with a glazed partition separating the two areas. In this case, everything which is said about exhibition suites (p. 88) also applies to the entrance hall. The furniture in the entrance hall should consist of some chairs or armchairs, floral decorations and, at least in larger offices, some pay-phones for public use. b) The enquiry

office

In small record offices there is no distinction between the enquiry office and the reception counter at the entrance. In large offices there is a separate enquiry office providing information to help readers with their research, dealing with registration, issuing readers' tickets, etc. Logically, this office should be situated next to the entrance hall. In modern offices it is equipped with a computer terminal, which handles the registration of readers automatically. c) The publications

sales office

The area selling archive publications, casts of seals, posters, copies of documents, postcards, greetings cards, etc. is located in the entrance hall or directly off it. It can either be a separate room or a simple counter in the entrance hall.

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3. The reading areas a) One room or several? In small or medium sized record offices there is generally only one reading room for the public. In large offices, for example national archives buildings, or record offices with a number of separate sections, it is more and more common to find several reading rooms, each of which is devoted to a particular category of records. This trend is more pronounced today because special equipment is needed to read some types of record such as microfilms, audio-tapes, videotapes, computer records, etc. and this justifies the provision of specialized areas. The specialized reading rooms which are most often found in record offices are areas for: - reading microfilms, - consulting sound and audio-visual records, - consulting computer records, - projecting or viewing films, - consulting maps and large documents, - reading large volumes, such as field books, - consulting civil registers (genealogical research). Deciding whether it is appropriate to set up one or other of these rooms in an individual record office should take account of which documents exist, how often they are consulted and how many attendants and staff there are to act as supervisors. The appropriate location for each room should be decided in relation to the overall plan of the building. In every case it should be ensured that: 1. all reading rooms are wholly situated in the area of the building which is open to the public without there being any need to pass through the non-public area; 2. the distances which documents have to be moved are reduced to the minimum, especially for heavy, fragile or bulky records; 3. the safety regulations are respected. If a special microfilm reading room is not provided, suitable equipment should be provided in the reading room (see below, p. 87). This also applies to sound, audio-visual and even computer records. Because of the size and weight of large documents (maps, plans, posters and large volumes), even small record offices should make special provision for their use by the public in order to reduce handling (see above, p. 54).

b) The problem of supervision The problem of supervising reading rooms has become more and more difficult over the past ten or twenty years, partly because of the growth in the number of readers and partly because of an increase in the number of thefts, acts of vandalism or accidental damage. It is an absolute rule that a reading room where documents are produced to the

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public should never be left without supervision. This undoubtedly imposes a heavy burden on small record offices with few staff. In cases of extreme staff shortages, it is better to put readers in an office where there are secretaries working, rather than to leave them alone in a reading room without supervision. The architecture and lay-out of reading rooms should always be designed to ensure that the whole area is visible to a supervisor, consequently internal pillars, hidden corners and large pieces of furniture in the middle of the room should be avoided. If there are a number of reading rooms, each one should have its own supervisor. This is one of the reasons why a single reading room is generally to be preferred when the staff is not very large. Closed-circuit television cameras, which can either be fixed or rotating, sweeping the room from side to side, are excellent pieces of equipment but should be used to assist the supervisor, rather than to replace him. It is not really possible to replace the physical presence of a supervisor by a simple camera. If this were done the supervisor would then have to spend the day with his eyes fixed on the monitor screen, or screens, because there are as many screens as there are cameras. Closed-circuit television is a method of reinforcing supervision, but not supervision itself. The rule is that at least one person should continuously supervise the reading room. At the same time this person can also provide an information service to the readers, something which a television camera cannot do. The same person should never be responsible both for supervising the reading room and for handling documents which have been produced. At least two members of staff are needed, one for supervision and one for handling records. In large record offices quite a team is involved in providing the service in the reading rooms. The supervisor's desk is placed on a raised dais, which allows him to see the tops of the reading tables from his seat. Functions such as identity checks can be carried out there if they are not done at the entrance to the building or in a special office. In many countries, readers have to deposit their briefcases, suitcases and document cases with the supervisor and collect them when they leave. If this is the case, the supervisor must have pigeon holes or drawers close at hand in which to store these articles. In other countries, readers only have to open their briefcases and document cases in front of the supervisor before leaving. The first approach is preferable to the second.

c) Reception of readers, cloakrooms The supervisor's post should be placed fairly close to the entrance used by readers so that they can be greeted on their arrival and checked on their departure. Readers should not have to cross the whole room in order to reach the supervisor. Two supervision posts should be provided in large reading rooms, one near the entrance and one at the opposite extremity. The cloakrooms, which should be provided with simple coat racks and umbrella stands, may be in the reading room itself or outside it; in the latter case, there is a problem of supervision. In large

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83

record offices the cloakroom should be permanently supervised. This can be done, for example, by the receptionist in the entrance hall. d) The link with the strongrooms, the distribution of documents readers and the storage of documents which are in use

to

If the reading room is not directly adj acent to the strongrooms, it should, at least, be linked to them in a way which is convenient for the movement of documents. This may be by trolley, by conveyor belt, by lift, or by a 'paternoster' type conveyor (see below, p. 120). In some large record offices readers' orders for documents are sent to the strongrooms by pneumatic tubes or even by computer if the ordering system is computerised. If the quantity of productions of documents to readers is sufficiently great, all these operations can be centralized in a special area immediately next to the reading room where the conveyor and pneumatic tube discharge points etc. can be located. The reading room supervisor should be able to keep documents which readers need on successive days in temporary storage, rather than having to send them back to the strongrooms every night. A lockable cupboard would suffice in a small record office. In a large record office, they can be kept in the document distribution area or in a special small room located next to the supervisor's office (calledpetit dépôt in France). This room should be fitted with cupboards or wallmounted shelves. Access by the public should be strictly prohibited. e) Space, internal arrangement

and furniture of reading

rooms

As they are intended to accommodate readers for long sessions of work, reading rooms should be comfortable and as pleasant as possible (pi. 64,65). Good natural lighting is desirable, but good thermal and sound insulation is no less important. If large glazed surfaces are planned, air-conditioning, curtains and blinds will be needed, to prevent excessive solar gain, particularly in countries where the sun is often fierce. If the reading room is near a street or road where the traffic is heavy, a railway line or any other source of noise, total soundproofing is essential. This can be achieved by double-glazing, sound absorbing facings, etc. In general, materials which are easy to maintain and which provide good sound insulation should be chosen for floor and wall coverings. The area of a reading room will vary according to the number of readers expected to work there. As a general rule, 5 square metres should be allowed for each reader plus the area for the supervisor's desk, display shelves and bookcases. Consequently an archive reading room is often as large as 150 square metres for 30 readers or 200 square metres for 40 readers. Specialist opinion differs over the advantages and disadvantages of individual reading tables, or shared tables for two, three or four readers. The latter choice seems to be preferable for several reasons:

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- they are easier to supervise; - it is possible for a reader to spread his work onto the adjacent space if this is vacant; - they are easier to light. It is perfectly legitimate to prefer an arrangement of individual tables provided that they are large enough. Either way, each reader should be provided with a minimum table-space of 1 m x 0.70 m. These dimensions are required because of the rather cumbersome nature of archival documents. Tables can either be made of wood or metal. The former is more pleasant to the eye and to touch. The latter is stronger and sometimes less expensive. In either case, the surface of the table should have a washable covering which should be pleasant to touch, smooth (grained or grooved material should be avoided), durable and not liable to stick to papers which are placed on it. Raised edges and barriers of any kind which would allow a reader to hide from the view of the supervisor should be avoided at all costs. The arrangement of tables in the reading room depends on several factors but mainly on natural lighting and supervision. Ideally readers should have the windows on their left (unless, of course, there is overhead lighting) and should all be facing the supervisor's desk. This is not always possible, but, at the least, readers should not be placed with their backs to the windows. To ensure that readers are not cramped, the height of the table top above the floor should be 0.60 m - 0 . 6 5 m. It is not advisable to fit drawers or shelves underneath the table-tops of the reading tables because readers will often leave papers there and they will also become dust-traps. To help with reading large volumes, filesof newspapers, etc., movable lecterns should be provided, their slopes should be adj ustable as required. They should be fitted with a special device for keeping books open without damaging the bindings or leaves. As a safety measure, the use of bottles of ink on reading tables should be strictly forbidden. In view of the long periods for which archive searchers must work, the seats for readers should be as comfortable as possible. It is not necessary to provide chairs with arms but padded seats and backs are recommended. These should be covered with a washable material which is pleasant to touch and durable. As far as possible, the seats should match the tables. Lighting and air-conditioning in reading rooms is discussed in chapter 10.

f) Finding aids and reference works Card indexes, lists, inventories and catalogues of every kind are indispensable to searchers. In a small record office these can all be grouped together in the reading room itself but in a large office it is better to devote a special room to them. This room, called the inventory room or more strictly the catalogue room as opposed to the ambiguous and imprecise term - research room, should open directly off

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the reading room. If it is not provided with a member of staff to act as a supervisor it should be located so that the supervisor in the reading room can keep an eye on it at the same time. A television camera could help with this supervision. Readers also constantly need to refer books, standard reference works, dictionaries, etc. This library of books on open access is usually housed in the reading room itself, around the walls or on bays of shelving, often on a gallery around the walls.34 It can also be in a special room which has the same characteristics as the inventory room, with which it can sometimes be joined. Books on open access, dictionaries, inventories, etc., can be housed on shelves. For the convenience of readers, these should have a maximum height of 2 m. Alternatively, they can be stored on 1.25 m high lectern-type bookcases with slightly sloping tops fitted with raised lower edges to enable readers to stand and consult books on the spot. Wooden shelves are often used in reading rooms as it is more pleasant to look at than metal. Makers of library equipment have produced special pieces of furniture with vertical compartments or sloping or horizontal shelves for displaying current journals and periodicals. All periodicals which readers are allowed to use should be directly under the eye of the supervisor. Finding aids in the form of index cards are made available to the public in card index holders, mounted on legs with drawers for cards pierced by rods. Wood or metal holders are equally satisfactory. For convenience of use, the lowest line of drawers should not be less than 0.60 m from the floor and the highest not more than 1.20 m. The various systems of index-holders: revolving, synoptic, horizontal with visible cards, etc., which are used in libraries for book catalogues are seldom appropriate in record offices. Placing tables and chairs near the volumes and card indexes of finding aids will allow readers to take notes without having to take the catalogues to their seats, a practice which, in principle, should always be prohibited. Finally, it is notable that in some record offices, finding aids are beginning to be consulted in electronic form by means of computer terminals, which are taking their place quite naturally in reading rooms.

g) Library of historical

works

The record office's history library, which may have many reference works of great value to readers, is sometimes given special accommodation. Some archivists place it in a separate room linked to the reading room and accessible to readers. This trend should not be encouraged because it presents considerable dangers of theft. Only very large offices, which can employ a member of staff specifically to supervise the reading room can use this system safely. Other offices should only make standard works available on open access (see above). The other library books should be stored in the strongrooms with the records and

34

Its height and location should not obstruct the supervision of readers.

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should be produced to the readers under the same conditions and with the same precautions.

h) Individual

research

carrels

Some types of research need special working conditions, darkness or semidarkness for reading microfilms or deciphering faint documents under an ultraviolet lamp and silence for searchers using tape-recorders. People using typewriters or stenotype machines should be isolated so as not to disturb other readers. It may also be desirable to give some readers the opportunity to work alone and in quiet conditions. For all these reasons, large record offices should have small rooms, or research carrels round their reading rooms where special research can be carried out. To make supervision easier they should be separated from the main reading room by glass partitions and located where they are visible to the supervisor. If they are well sound-proofed, these small rooms can also be used for group research work or seminars which are becoming increasingly common in universities. A reasonable area for each carrel is 10 to 15 square metres.

i) Administrative

searches: the administrative

documentation

centre

In larger record offices it is often necessary to separate readers carrying out historical research from those pursuing purely administrative searches. For the latter, a logical extension of a record office would be an administrative documentation centre where official publications, a library of works dealing with administrative questions and serious newspapers would be housed. In this way, administrators would find general documentation relating to particular matters and the relevant archival files in the same place. A special area should be provided for this type of research called the administrative documentation centre or the administrative research room. This should obviously be situated near the public reading room and the lift to the strongrooms. Its area should be proportionate to the number of searches carried out, 50 square metres for a medium-sized repository, for example. It should, of course, be supervised.

j) Special equipment for consulting

records

As mentioned above (p. 81), special equipment is needed to consult certain types of record (the word 'read' would be an inappropriate term for some of these). They cannot all be listed here because of the rapid evolution of technology in some fields such as audio-visual or information technology. Tape-recorders, video-recorders, film viewers of all kinds, cine-projectors etc., are outside the scope of this Manual. There are, however, two types of special equipment which are indispensable in all record offices, microfilm readers and ultra-violet lamps for reading faded documents.

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Microfilm

87

readers

There are numerous types of microfilm readers. The choice depends on cost, size, durability and convenience (pi. 65,66A). Almost all these readers operate on the same principle. A source of intense light projects the image of the microfilm. This is enlarged by a lens on to a mirror. This reflects it on to a screen. Some microfilm readers project the image onto an opaque reflectant surface. They should be used in a relatively low level of light, although it is possible to work with one's back to the light in a normally lighted room. If the reader has only one lens, the ratio between the size of the image and the size of the enlargement is fixed - generally at between ten and thirty times. In some readers, the ratio of enlargement can be altered, either by altering the distance of the projection screen from the lens or by changing the lens. The qualities required of a good microfilm reader for use in a record office are: - complete protection for the film: a film-winder with guards against chafing and scratching, - sufficient illumination, preferably adjustable by rheostat to ensure that the lamps are well-ventilated to avoid the film overheating, - clearness and regularity of the proj ected image, this is dependent on the quality of the lens, - adequate enlargement ratio, a minimum of 12X is advisable, - ability to rotate the image through 360°. Among features which are also desirable but which are usually confined to the more expensive readers are the ability to vary the enlargement ratio for the same image and the possibility of reading films of different sizes. The size of microfilm readers varies from model to model. Portable models are usually about 0.50 m wide x 0.50 m deep x 0.70 m high and weigh about 50 kg. Large models which stand on the floor can be up to 1 m w i d e x l m d e e p x l . 5 0 mhigh. Coin-operated models which produce an instant copy of the image displayed on the screen are available. These devices, called reader-printers, are becoming more and more common in record offices and are much appreciated by readers. Their only disadvantage is their fairly high cost. Ultra-violet

lamps

The properties of ultra-violet rays emitted by a U V lamp can be used for reading documents where the ink has faded. These rays accentuate the contrast between the light and dark parts of the document, causing old partly obscured writing to stand out prominently on the paper or parchment background. Most lamps which are commercially available are not entirely suited to the needs of record offices. The equipment consists of a transformer under a protective hood, a lamp which emits radiation and a reflector. In an apparatus specially designed for reading documents, the transformer with hood (supplied commercially by specialist firms) is fixed on a heavy base which acts as a stabiliser. The transformer is connected to the radiation lamp either by a flexible arm of the type used for office lamps or by a swivel jointed arm. This allows the lamp to be moved and tilted at will. The arm should be about 1 m to 1.20 m long.

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The lamp, which may be either a bulb or a tube, depending on the suppliers, is covered by an adjustable opaque reflector shade which prevents the rays from directly striking the user's eyes. The whole apparatus is kept in permanent balance by the weight of the base, which must be heavy. This type of apparatus has the advantage of being flexible and portable. The length of the flexible arm enables documents of any size to be read with it. The transformer can also be fixed to the wall and the ultra-violet lamp used as a wall lamp but it is then much less handy than the type described above. UV lamps run off ordinary electric sockets. They are used in semi-darkness.

4. Areas for exhibitions, cultural and educational activities a) General

features

Educational and cultural activities of all kinds have come to form an ever increasing proportion of the functions of record offices. At their national and international conferences, archivists from all over the world frequently discuss such topics as exhibitions, lectures, film-shows, audio-visual presentations and displays of documents for the scholarly public. These new function require new types of accommodation. Nowadays all reasonably large record offices should have special rooms for visits by members of the public who are not readers including visitors to exhibitions, audiences at lectures or students using the education service (pi. 67). The area and degree of specialization required in the rooms devoted to cultural activities will be determined by the size of the record office and the extent to which it is intended to develop cultural activities. This varies from country to country and even from one record office to another. The minimum requirement is for a multi-purpose room capable of accommodating exhibitions of documents for members of the public - both adults and school children. In small record offices this room, which should be 100-150 square metres, can also be used for film and slide shows, but it is better to have a separate room for this latter function. 35 All areas for cultural activities, however large and whatever their precise designation, have some technical features in common: - they should be easily accessible to the public; they should either be on the ground floor, or there should be access by lifts or escalators. Access for the disabled should not be forgotten. - they should have fire exits which conform to the regulations, the plans should be submitted to the relevant safety authorities. - they should be quite separate from the reading rooms to avoid disturbing the readers while they are working. - they should be well-ventilated, their ceiling height should be proportionate to their area. 35

It was shown above that in some modern buildings the functions of the entrance hall and of the exhibition area tend to be merged or combined.

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b) Exhibition

89

areas

A distinction is generally made between proper exhibition areas which are open to the public and rooms for scholarly exhibitions, which are referred to here as education service rooms (see below, section d). Exhibitions arranged by record offices generally have a distinctly historical theme. It is necessary to liven up the rather austere appearance of written records by more spectacular documents - posters, prints, illuminated manuscripts - as well as photographs of sites and monuments, seals, pictures, sculptures, models and diverse objects. Consequently, by force of circumstance, the choice of exhibition material is quite wide. It should be chosen to be as varied as possible. The most common type of exhibition unit for normal archival documents is the flat display case. This consists of a wooden or metal table with a top 0.90 m from the floor. There are grooves along the edges of the table top into which a 0.25 m high cover made of plate glass and metal is fitted. The exhibits are laid on the table, either flat or preferably tilted on little stands to give the visitors the best view and the cover is placed over them. If the documents on display are valuable, some method of locking or bolting the cover is necessary. To ensure that this type of showcase can be easily moved the best size is about 1.20 m long x 0.60 m deep. The walls of the exhibition areas can be fitted with wall-mounted showcases. These are cabinets0.30 m - 0 . 4 0 m d e e p a n d l . 8 0 m - 2 m high with glass doors fitted with locks. Racks inside the cases allow shelves to be installed as required on which the exhibits are placed. The back wall of the showcase can also be used for hanging or fixing large documents. Wall-cases as a rule are much more unwieldy than flat cases and cannot normally be moved about. It is fairly common for documents with seals to be displayed, foundation charters of a nation or province, charters of liberties of towns, international treaties, etc. These documents should be displayed flat, or the seals should be held up by special supports so that their weight cannot drag on the silk or string cords or parchment tags and damage them. 36 Movable screens should also be provided for archival exhibitions. These should be made of plywood, or fibreboard mounted on a light frame, and can be arranged as required - in groups, along the walls, or in zig-zags. Large-sized documents of no great value such as photographic enlargements, maps and plans and specially designed graphics which illustrate the theme of the exhibition can be displayed on them. Posters and other original records which are displayed on screens should be protected by sheets of perspex. This should be ultra-violet filtering if possible. To avoid having to display documents on the actual wooden surface of the showcases or on the plywood panels, these should be lined with felt or with imitation textiles made from plastic material. Velvet which does not wear well and is difficult to clean should be avoided. Bulky and heavy objects which are unusual in archive exhibitions, can be displayed on plinths of wood, stone or coated cement.

36

See above, p. 55.

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A picture rail should be provided round the walls for hanging pictures, prints and drawings under glass. In permanent archive museums the question of moving the material does not arise, so screens and showcases can be made to measure to fit the objects to be displayed and the lay-out of the room. It is most important to protect documents on display against light. The question of natural and artificial light in exhibition areas should be very carefully considered (see chapter 10, p. 113).

c) Lecture rooms and film

theatres

Some large record offices have special lecture and film theatres equipped with the most sophisticated projection and sound equipment. However, most institutions have much more modest rooms in keeping with the number of members of the public they are intended for. The basic furniture requirement is a supply of chairs for the public. Larger operations may need seating arranged in tiers. The projection screen situated behind the lecturer's table should be collapsable or retractable. There is no need to provide a separate projection room isolated from the lecture room unless it is intended to show films larger than 16 mm during lectures.37 Cine-projectors, slide-projectors and other audio-visual systems are outside the scope of this manual. Specialist books and suppliers should be consulted when acquiring them. It should be possible to black out the windows completely during film or slide shows. The lecturer should have a table on a platform facing the audience. There should be a blackboard behind him, which should be removable like the projection screen. The lecture room acoustics should be carefully designed. If the room is sufficiently large, an amplification system with a microphone on the lecturer's table may be needed.

d) Education

service

rooms

The purpose of the education service is to receive visits by school-children and students, who visit record offices with their teachers for an introduction to the use of archives. There are several ways of organising these services, but whichever system is adopted, there should be special rooms set aside for visits by pupils and students. These should be easily accessible, provided with an emergency exit and

37

If it is intended to show 35 mm films, a cinema expert should be consulted as well as the safety authorities.

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91

sufficiently isolated so that the noise of the children does not disturb the rest of the record office. Some teachers limit themselves to displaying documents in showcases and taking pupils round them. The equipment of the education service is then no different from that of an exhibition area but this approach lacks direct contact between pupils and documents. The pupils have to be on their feet all the time which can cause them to be tired and inattentive. It is better in every respect to restrict displays in showcases to the more valuable and fragile documents and to let the pupils handle the others. They should sit round a circular or oval table, groups of more than twenty should be avoided. The documents to be passed round should be sandwiched between two sheets of thin perspex (methyl metacrylate) lightly fastened a few centimetres from the edge of the document. In this way, the pupils can hold them in their hands without damaging them. To enable the teacher to talk about a document without the pupils having to group round a single example, a sufficient number of facsimile copies should be made of every document displayed. Facsimiles by themselves are not enough, direct contact with original records is one of the essential elements for success in an archives education service. Large-sized documents, for example bound volumes, cannot be put under perspex. The teacher should take them round the table without leaving them in the pupils' hands and facsimiles should be used for the talk. The room used for educational classes should be provided with a blackboard, a projection screen, a slide projector, screens for displaying posters, maps, plans, etc. The lecture room equipment can usually be used for this. The teacher in charge of the education service will need an office with a cloakroom and an equipment cupboard immediately adjacent to the class room.

5. Rooms for meetings, seminars, etc. All reasonably large record offices should have one or more rooms for group meetings, seminars, etc., in addition to exhibition areas and lecture theatres. These rooms may either be available to certain people outside the office for meetings of learned societies, historical seminars, etc. or alternatively they may be restricted to the staff for official meetings. The best location is next to the reading rooms or lecture theatres. The furniture should consist of a large central table with seats or armchairs around it. The area should be determined in relation to the number of people who are expected to use the room - approximately 50 square metres for a meeting of 20 people.

6. Public rest room Whatever the size of the public areas, a rest area should be provided where people can smoke and talk without disturbing the readers in the reading room.

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These areas may be located outside the reading room or in the entrance hall, with some chairs or armchairs and a low table. If the reading room is upstairs, for example, it can be situated on the landing. In large offices it is better to provide a small room specially for this purpose. This could perhaps also be part of the cafeteria (see below).

7. Cafeteria Large record offices, like libraries and museums often provide cafeterias for the staff and public, particularly if they are a long way from the town centre and from restaurants. The cafeteria's size and equipment depends on the number of members of the public. A simple automatic dispenser of hot and cold drinks with some tables is usually sufficient. For obvious reasons of security and hygiene, it is always better not to install a proper restaurant and kitchen.

8. Telephone booths In larger record offices, coin operated telephones should be provided for public use. These should be located in the entrance hall, the public rest room or the cafeteria.

9. Toilets and cloakrooms In large record offices with large numbers of readers, it is a good idea to provide a cloakroom at the entrance where umbrellas, bags and briefcases must be deposited together with other items, which may be dangerous or a nuisance if taken into the reading rooms. A separate cloakroom will need separate supervision. If one is not available, an area to deposit bags must be provided at the entrance to the reading room in full view of the supervisor (see above, p. 82). Toilets (W.C.s) must be provided for men and women. They should be easily accessible to readers, exhibition visitors and audiences at lectures. The French official standard is that one toilet for men and one for women should be provided for every twenty readers or visitors.

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CHAPTER NINE STAFF ACCOMMODATION

1. General features It is common practice in some countries, notably in France, to provide staff flats in or adjoining the archive building. This practice has two advantages: - security for the building since staff are permanently on site - ease of finding candidates for vacant posts if they can be provided with accommodation. This saves them the problem of finding a flat in town which is often difficult and expensive. The legal status of these staff flats varies. Sometimes they are provided free of charge as part of the conditions of service. Sometimes the tenant of the flat pays a rent to the organization which owns the building. The number of flats varies according to local customs and circumstances. Sometimes there is a single flat for the chief archivist or for an attendantcaretaker. The most common formula is two flats (one for the chief archivist, and one for an attendant-caretaker). Sometimes there are more, as at the Archives Nationales de France in Paris, where there are more than fifteen flats for repository staff and wardens.

2. Location and size of staff accommodation However many staff flats there are, they should be completely isolated from the strongrooms and working areas. This is a basic rule for reasons of security and practicality. Depending on circumstances, they may be situated in the block of the building containing the offices and working areas, in a special wing or even in a separate building. If they are in the same block of the building as the offices and working areas, they must have a separate entrance so that the residents of the flats do not have to use the same routes as other members of staff or the public. If they are on an upper floor, they should have a private staircase and, if necessary, a lift. If the director's flat is in the same part of the building as the offices, it is useful to provide a fire-resistant communicating door between it and the offices. The door should be permanently locked and the only key held by the director. Because of the risks of fire, special attention should be paid to the need to isolate the flats by fire-resistant walls and doors (see below, p. 97). The size of the staff flats depends to a large extent on local customs and economic conditions in each country. In France directors of departmental archive services generally have similar flats to headmasters of secondary schools (150-200 square metres). Flats for attendant-caretakers are usually 80-100 square metres in area.

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3. Fittings of staff flats This is not the place to go into details of the bathroom fittings, heating/airconditioning, telephone and kitchen equipment etc. of staff flats which depend on the general housing standards in each country. It is worth emphasizing a few points which are significant for the design of the equipment of the whole building: - for obvious safety reasons, drains and pipes for water, gas and other fluids should never pass through the strongrooms; - the heating is most often linked to the building's general heating system, but it is essential to provide a separate circuit so that the flats can be heated even when the office is closed (see p. 107). If the flats are not in the same block as the working areas, they are usually provided with a separate heating system. This also applies to air-conditioning. - the telephones in the flats are sometimes linked to the record office's switchboard. This solution is not satisfactory because it leads to confusion between private and official telephone calls. It is better for the flats to have their own telephone lines, with a facility for connecting them to the office switchboard, for example in the holiday periods. In a later chapter (p. 99) reference will be made to alarm bells and security devices installed in certain staff flats. - for the same reasons, meters for water, gas and electricity should be provided for each flat to avoid any unfortunate confusion between official consumption and personal use.

4. Annexes to the flats At least one garage and one cellar should be provided for each staff flat in conformity with national standards.

95

CHAPTER 10 GENERAL TECHNICAL ARRANGEMENTS AND EQUIPMENT

In the preceding chapters on each area: the strongrooms, working areas and staff accommodation, reference has been made at various times to the problems of security and protection against fire, climatic factors, excessive sunlight, theft, etc. and also to the technical questions of heating/air-conditioning, ventilation, internal movement and relationships, etc. As most of these questions apply to the whole building and cannot be treated in isolation from one another, they will be considered together in this chapter. This will sometimes result in repetitions of earlier chapters.

1. The importance of protection and safety in archive buildings Whatever mediums they are on - paper, papyrus, parchment, film, magnetic tapes or discs - archival documents are fragile. The most common dangers threatening them are fire, flood, humidity (or dryness, depending on the climate), atmospheric pollution, excessive light, fungus (mould), insects, rodents, dust, not to mention the human risks of theft, wilful destruction or, quite simply, negligence. The staff of the record office are themselves exposed to dangers, not the least of which is the presence of dust in documents which are being handled. The chemicals used in some workshops also require special precautions. As in all public buildings, the public must be protected, particularly against the danger which is always the most to be feared : fire. The methods of dealing with these dangers are: - architectural - building materials, design features, etc., - technical - specific equipment for fire-fighting, air-conditioning, fumigation, etc., - regulatory - security rules, arrangements for supervision, etc. Although this manual deals with buildings and equipment and not the regulatory or operational aspects of record offices, it is not possible to separate these different aspects and so the problems of safety will be considered as a whole. 38

38

There is a considerable bibliography of works on the whole question of the protection of archival documents, see in particular, F. Flieder and M. Duchein, Livres et documents d'archives: sauvegarde et conservation (Paris, Unesco, in the series 'Protection du patrimoine culturel, cahiers techniques Musées et Monuments', number 6,1983,82 pp).

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2. Construction: materials, structures and designs It is not proposed to repeat everything which has already been said above in relation to the different areas of the building about the choice of structural and external facing materials or about those structural and design features, which will provide the greatest safety and protection (see especially p. 42). It is worth repeating that, while there should be good natural lighting in the working areas and staff flats, this should be strictly limited in the strongrooms. On the other hand, waterproofing and thermal insulation are equally essential in the strongrooms, working areas and the staff flats. Sound-proofing is no less important for the offices, reading rooms, exhibition halls, lecture theatres, workshops and flats. The materials for construction and external facings should conform to national standards and should be chosen to meet these different requirements. Particular care should be taken with the foundations to provide the best possible damp proofing and, if necessary, protection against termites (see p. 114).

3. Roofs The watertightness of roofs often causes problems. Because archive strongrooms are not continuously manned, leaks can easily occur without being detected immediately, even in temperate climates. For this reason, European archivists are not very sanguine about flat roofs, where the run-off of rainwater is always least satisfactory. In any case, roofs with little or no pitch should not be considered in countries where it snows heavily. Gutters and downpipes must be carefully maintained. The traditional roofing materials - slate and tiles - are satisfactory from the technical point of view. Unfortunately, they are usually quite expensive. Metal roofs made from aluminium, zinc, copper or stainless steel have the disadvantage of being too good at conducting heat. If they are to be used, care should be taken to insulate them and to provide a large ventilated air-space between them and the top storey of the strongrooms. In industrial countries, some metal coverings cannot be used because of the danger of corrosion caused by contact with sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere. Roofs must be particularly strong in regions where there is a danger of hurricanes. This point is discussed furtherin a special chapter (p. 132). In order to provide the best thermal insulation, the top floor of the building should be separated from the roof by a false ceiling made from fire-proof, heatresistant material.

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4. Fire protection and fire fighting39 a) General remarks: the causes of fire in archive

buildings

Since earliest times, fire has always been seen as the principal enemy of archives because paper is very inflammable. The risks are even higher with some modern mediums - films, magnetic tapes, etc. - than with traditional materials. In an archive building, fire may break out in the strongrooms as a result of electrical short circuits, carelessness, cigarette ends, workmen's blowlamps, etc., or in the technical areas. The most common occurrence in the working areas is as a result of negligence or failure to observe safety regulations. The areas of greatest fire risk are the boiler room and the workshops for photography, binding, conservation and carpentry because many flammable materials are stored or used there. Special care should be taken to protect them. Computer rooms also need special protection. For the same reasons, if staff flats are situated in the building, they should also be regarded as areas of high fire-risk, as should cafeterias and canteens.

b) Protection

against fire: building

design

The main way to protect a record office against fire is to ensure that, as far as possible, the strongrooms are isolated from the working areas so that if a blaze breaks out in one part of the building, it will not spread to the others. This is achieved by fire-resistant walls, doors and floors, as well as fire escapes. Fire-resistant walls and floors Official safety standards for fire-resistant walls and floors vary slightly from country to country. Partitions with a two hour fire-resistance are generally considered to be satisfactory for record offices. As stated above (p. 47), in order to prevent the spread of fire, strongrooms should be subdivided by fire-resistant walls so that each subdivision is no larger than 200 square metres. This is a statutory requirement in France and in various other countries. The example of the fire at the National Personnel Records Centre at Overland, USA, in 1973, where the fire spread from one end of the building to the other in a few minutes shows that this arrangement is fully justified. A wall is not really fire-resistant unless all the doors in it are equally fire-proof (see below).

39

All the safety measures against fire are given in Règlement de sécurité contre les risques d'incendie et de panique dans les établissements recevant du public (arrêté du ministere de l'Intérieur du 25 Juin 1980), in Journal officiel de la République française, 14 August 1980, N. C. 7363-7416; and in booklet form in editions of the Journal officiel; these are updated periodically.

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Fire-resistant doors Fire-resistant doors usually consist of two sheet steel surfaces insulated from each other by a heat resistant material. They are so constructed that in the event of a fire no distortion will occur within one hour. In theory they should be kept permanently shut. However, for convenience, they can be kept open with a wedge but should be capable of being closed immediately if the need arises. Where a fire detection and alarm system has been installed (see below, p. 99), it should automatically close the fire doors. It must be possible to open the doors from the inside without difficulty, in case anyone is shut in the room where the fire has broken out. Isolation of stairs and lifts Stairs and lifts to the strongroom floors must be enclosed in a solid shaft built of material capable of resisting fire for one hour. Access to the strongroom floors from this shaft should be through fire-resistant doors of the type described above. The glazed sections of the stair-well should be fitted with armoured, flame-proof glass. These arrangements are intended to prevent the stair-well or lift-shaft from acting as a chimney through which a fire might spread from one strongroom floor to another. Isolation of ducts and shafts:

smoke-vents

Ducts for air circulation, ventilation, air-conditioning, etc. should be fitted with dampers which close automatically to prevent fire spreading along them. In addition, all areas should be equipped with smoke-vents in accordance with official safety standards. Lightning

conductors

Some national regulations require lightning conductors to be installed to protect buildings. This requirement is becoming less common, except for isolated or very tall buildings. There is no agreement among specialists as to the most suitable type of lightning conductor for archive buildings and it is not certain that there is an ideal solution to this problem. Fire escapes Providing fire escapes from the strongrooms is a different problem from providing them in working areas. In the latter case, the location of fire escapes is part of the overall design of the building and is determined by the number of people who work in it or have access to it. In the case of the strongrooms, it is a question of ensuring that nobody could be trapped in them in the event of a disaster. Consequently emergency stairs must be provided. Doors opening onto them should only open from the inside. They must be capable of being opened simply by pushing. Illuminated fire-escape signs are a statutory requirement (see below, p. 102).

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Special arrangements in strongrooms Some special precautions are needed in strongrooms. If there are any chimneys, these should be completely isolated and shelving should not be placed against the walls near them. Electrical wiring must be in metal conduits and the installation should conform to safety rules for switches, plugs, fuse boxes, connections etc. (seep. 117).

Arrangements in high-risk areas High-risk areas - notably the boiler room, fuel stores and storage areas for inflammable materials - are subject to specific protective measures i. e. reinforced walls and doors, raised door sills, etc.

c) Fire detection Every room or building used for archives should be fitted with automatic firedetection equipment. There are numerous systems which are based on rapid rise in temperature, on the emission of smoke or combustion gases (ionisation or optical detection systems) on luminous radiation produced by the flames, or on a combination of these different principles. Because of the nature of fire in archive strongrooms, where a slow charring may happen a long time before the appearance of flames, systems based on the emission of smoke and combustion gases are to be preferred. Systems triggered off by heat or by luminous radiation are better suited to the working areas, the boiler room, staff flats and, especially, the workshops. If an alarm is triggered, it should set off a bell. It is important that this should be audible throughout the building. The exact location of the fire should appear on an indicator panel which should be located in the secretariat or, if there is one, in the security control room (see p. 123). The detection system usually controls the automatic closure of the fire doors and dampers in the ducting, as well as opening the smoke vents. In some towns, fire alarm systems in record offices (which are seen as high-risk buildings) are connected directly to the fire station, so that the fire brigade can respond automatically if the alarm is triggered. This practice is becoming less common in large conurbations because there is a risk that the fire brigade might be called out unnecessarily by an over-sensitive alarm, when the archives staff could easily control the fire themselves. One of the great disadvantages of fire-detection systems is that they are very fragile. Despite all the progress which has been made in this field, alarms quite often go off when there is no fire at all. The equipment must be carefully checked and adjusted at frequent intervals in order to prevent increasing numbers of false alarms or a malfunction in the event of a real emergency. The maintenance agreement should be carefully planned when the detection system is chosen.

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d) Fire extinction: 1. automatic extinction

systems

For a long time, attempts have been made to install automatic extinction systems, which may or may not be linked to an automatic detection system, and which allow a fire to be put out without any human intervention. It must, however, be admitted that at present there is no system which is totally reliable or wholly satisfactory. Sprinklers In the United States many archive buildings and libraries, like most public and even private buildings, are fitted with a network of sprinklers. This consists of a series of water nozzles on the ceiling, which are opened automatically by metal elements melting at a predetermined heat level. According to the experts, the progress which has been achieved in the design of sprinklers in recent years has made it possible to eliminate most of the disadvantages which previously restricted their use, particularly the danger of an untimely activation causing a flood. However, the use of sprinklers is still unusual in European archives. In France only one of the buildings for which the Direction des Archives is responsible is fitted with sprinklers, but professional opinion is obviously moving in their favour. 40 Carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide gas (C0 2 ) extinguishes fire by depriving it of oxygen. On several occasions, people have tried installing pressurized carbon dioxide gas systems triggered by automatic detection systems in archive areas. However, carbon dioxide has the great disadvantage that it can asphyxiate people and is consequently a danger to anyone who, for one reason or another, may be trapped in the area. In addition, large and heavy tanks are needed to store the gas and the danger of an untimely release should not be taken lightly. This happened in a French archive building in 1980 and the pressurized gas damaged documents. For all these reasons, automatic extinction by carbon dioxide gas is not suitable for archive areas. Halons Halon gases have the advantage of being both fire extinguishing and relatively harmless to people. Their only disadvantage is, unfortunately, the high installation cost, which in practice prevents their being used for large areas. Rooms where particularly valuable or delicate documents or equipment are stored - notably rooms for computers and for the storage of magnetic tapes should be equipped with an automatic halon extinction system linked to the automatic detection system. For financial reasons it is rarely possible to consider 40

On the use of sprinklers, see the controversy which was reviewed in the proceedings of the GIS (Groupement des installateurs de sprinklers) in January 1981:28, avenue Hoche, 75382 Paris Cedex 08. See also the discussion at the meeting of experts in Vienna, 1985, Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs,vo\. 39,1986, pp. 256,265-267;on the whole, the meetingwas in favour of sprinklers in archive repositories.

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equipping whole archive buildings with halon systems. It should also be noted that halons smother the fire rather than extinguish it and that, in the case of major fires, there is a risk that the fire might break out again once the rooms are reopened. The two halons most commonly used are Halon 1211 and, in particular, Halon 1301. High expansion foams High expansion foams are used to extinguish fire automatically in high risk areas such as boiler rooms and stores of inflammable materials, for example, such a system has been installed at the Public Record Office, Kew, England.

e) Fire extinction: 2. Hand-held

extinguishers

Every archive building should be equipped with hand-held extinguishers and staff should be accustomed to using them. Their type, number and location should be decided in collaboration with the fire officer, taking into account the particular nature of fire in archives (burning solid materials) and the particular dangers in some areas: boiler room, photographic studio and the bindery. Reference should be made to national standards covering fire extinguishers. 41 As a general rule, water spray or dry powder extinguishers are best suited to archive buildings. They have a much less dramatic effect than pressurized water extinguishers where the action of the water can, unfortunately, damage documents. 42 Foam extinguishers have the effect of checking, rather than actually extinguishing a fire. They may also be dangerous to people because they release carbon dioxide gas (CO z ). f ) Fire extinction: 3. the role of the fire

brigade

If the fire brigade is not summoned directly when the detection system is activated (see above, p. 99), it should be called as soon as the fire has taken hold and if it is seen that automatic or hand-held extinguishers are inadequate. Hydrants for fire hoses should be provided in various areas of the building. Their location should be decided in agreement with the fire officer when the building is under construction. Some stirrup pumps, holding about 15-20 litres (preferably fitted with atomisers) are also necessary. Their location should be decided in collaboration with the fire officer. In the event of a fire it is essential that the record office staff collaborate fully with the firemen, if only in order to draw their attention to the damage which j ets of water can cause to documents. 41

42

In France, see circular A D 66-35 issued by the Direction des Archives de France on fire prevention and fire-fighting. Dry powder extinguishers should not be used in areas where documents on magnetic mediums are stored. These areas should be equipped with an automatic halon gas extinction system.

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g) Safety measures. Safety regulations A s mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the existence of and respect for, safety regulations is as important in protecting people and records as are architectural and technical arrangements. T h e safety regulations should be approved by the fire officer. Once approved they should be displayed in all parts of the building. A l l members of the staff should take part in a fire drill at least once a year, if possible with firemen present, to ensure that, in the event of a disaster, everyone will know their precise roles and responsibilities. A m o n g the safety measures which are required the most notable is an absolute ban on smoking or the introduction of a naked flame in the strongrooms, the high risk areas - photography, binding, conservation, carpentry, etc. - and in the reading rooms, exhibition areas and lecture theatres. Obvious precautions are also essential when storing, handling and using inflammable or explosive products e.g. acetone. Arrangements for evacuating the public, staff and documents should be carefully planned. Emergency lights which clearly show the location of exits are required by law. They run off emergency batteries which switch on automatically if the electricity supply breaks down. T h e location and arrangement o f the emergency exits and fire escapes (see above, p. 98) are the main essentials f o r evacuation. It is sometimes recommended that chutes should be installed running f r o m the top to the bottom of the building. If fire breaks out these can be used f o r documents which have to be evacuated urgently. T h e problem with these chutes is to prevent them f r o m creating up-draughts. For this reason, they are better situated on the outside of buildings like fire escapes. T h e y should be accessible f r o m each floor by means of trap doors. T h e y should end up at ground floor level in an area where the documents can be easily gathered together to be taken to safety, if possible, by lorry. If a fire puts the lifts out of action, the chutes will be the only way of evacuating records. Consequently, documents to be evacuated urgently (see below) should be stored near them. T h e order of priority f o r evacuating documents in the event of an emergency should be an important part of the safety regulations. A l l members of staff should know precisely what are their areas of responsibility and how they should act. In many record offices, the most valuable documents, which should be given priority in an evacuation, are marked with special luminous labels and stored near the emergency exits. T h e only disadvantage of this practice is the danger of drawing the attention of thieves to these documents. Apart f r o m these regulatory measures, firm steps must be taken to prevent papers and inflammable materials from being piled up in high-risk areas and to ensure that all corridors, gangways, doors and entrances are kept free of clutter. A careful watch should be kept on workshops used by plumbers, carpenters, roofing contractors, etc. A systematic safety check should be carried out every day after the workmen, public and staff have left. In large record offices, it is usual to have regular patrols throughout the night. This also has the advantage of helping to prevent theft (see below).

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5. Protection against theft a) General

remarks

Like protection against fire, protection against theft in record offices is partly a matter of discipline and rules and partly an architectural and technical problem. Record offices should not be confused with museums or large shops. Archival documents rarely attract thieves because of their financial value, nor even because they contain confidential information. It is quite rare for documents to be stolen as a result of a break-in. However, record offices do have increasing numbers of valuable items of equipment e.g. photographic equipment, tape recorders, video tape recorders, binding materials, etc. which might well attract thieves. When thefts occur, they are usually carried out by readers in the reading rooms. Strict separation of the areas open to the public from the other areas (see above, p. 41) is thus the first and the most important precaution against theft in record offices. Good layout and supervision of entrances (including emergency exits) is also equally necessary. b) Technical methods of

protection

All openings on the ground floor or those which are easily accessible from the outside should be protected against break-ins by the use of unbreakable glass, and/or grilles or shutters. These precautions, which are absolutely essential, have unfortunately been very much neglected in some modern buildings. Intruder alarms, which are triggered automatically when a window is broken, or a door opened at the wrong time, or a solid body passes through an electronic beam, are still unusual in record offices for the reason given above. They can, however, be used in areas where valuable equipment or materials are stored and even in vaults where highly valuable documents are kept. Doors between the areas open to the public and the other areas, notably the strongrooms, should be fitted with a system of combination locks which prevents anyone who does not know the code from gaining access and means that the staff do not have to use keys, which are always awkward. c) Security

regulations

Measures to be taken to provide supervision were given in the chapter on reading rooms. It is increasingly common in large record offices, as in libraries, to require that briefcases and bags should be deposited at the entrance to the building or at the entrance to the reading room. If this does not happen, bags should be opened in front of a member of staff before the reader leaves. The same measures for supervision are needed in exhibition areas. This is standard practice in museums. The security arrangements in large offices should include a systematic inspection after the building closes in the evening and night-time patrols.

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Electronic detection devices (security tags) are also available. These are placed on an item and set off an alarm when a thief passes through an electronic beam at the exit. It is not really possible to consider using these with archival documents which have different characteristics from library books or articles on sale in large shops, but they can be - and actually are - used to protect books belonging to the record office's library. The most elementary safeguard to dissuade thieves and possibly to recover stolen records is to stamp each document individually before giving it to a reader. In most countries, including France, this is required by regulations. Although it does impose a heavy burden on record offices, it is essential. The actions which should be taken if a thief is caught red-handed should be covered in the office's regulations but are outside the scope of this manual.

6. Protection against flooding The only totally effective protection against flooding caused by a river overflowing is, obviously, to choose a site which is sufficiently high up to rule out this danger. If there is no choice but to build on land which is liable to flooding, the strongrooms and working areas should be constructed as far above the flood level as possible. If there is a danger of infiltration from the water table below ground, it will be necessary to install pumps which can run off batteries or a generator in the event of a power failure (see p. 118). The most common reason for floods in archive buildings is internal: burst pipes. This is why water pipes should never pass over the shelving in strongrooms (seep. 47). Regular checks and maintenance of pipework is essential. The treatment of flood-damaged documents is outside the scope of this manual. It has been the sub j ect of a great many other publications, the main ones are listed in the bibliography.

7. Protection against humidity, dryness and climatic variations a) General remarks: optimal climatic

conditions

Archival documents of all kinds are sensitive to the atmospheric conditions in which they are stored. Without having to go into all the details of the damage caused to documents by humidity and dryness (see the many specialist books and articles listed in the bibliography), it should be remembered that, as well as causing direct damage, humidity encourages the growth of fungus or mould, while excessive dryness is equally harmful, although less spectacular than excessive humidity. The quantity of water vapour in the air is measured in terms of 'relative humidity' i.e. the relationship between the actual quantity of water vapour contained in air at a given temperature and the quantity of water vapour that the

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air would have to contain at the same temperature to reach dew point. Relative humidity (RH) is expressed in percentages: thus at 17°C, a relative humidity of 58 % would represent 7g of water vapour per kilogramme of air. However, at 9°C, air containing 7g of water vapour per kilogramme would have a relative humidity of 100 %; i.e. the point at which condensation occurs (dew point). Given that too high or too low a level of relative humidity can cause serious physical, chemical and biological damage to documents, effective control of both temperature and relative humidity is essential for the preservation of archives. This is one of the main criteria by which the quality of the atmosphere of a strongroom can be judged. Unfortunately, this problem is particularly complex because: 1. optimal climatic conditions (temperature and humidity) are not the same for all categories of documents: paper, parchment, photographic films, tapes/ discs etc., 2. there is no universal agreement about the best climatic conditions for repositories holding paper records. Expert opinion as to the optimal temperature varies from 13° to 20°C and between 40 % and 60 % relative humidity. In the absence of strict international standards, the recommendations of the Paris based Centre de recherche sur les documents graphiques are given below: Paper and parchment based records Temperature 18°C (± 1°C), relative humidity 55 % (± 5 %). The British Standard recommendation (British Standard 5454) is 13°- 18°C and55 % - 6 5 % RH. Black and white photographic

materials (including

microfilm)

Temperature 12°C(± 1°C), relative humidity 35 % ( ± 5 %). Coloured photographic

materials

Temperature 5°C (± 1°C), relative humidity 35 % (± 5 %). The Federation Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF) recommend a temperature of-5°C and an RH of 30 % - 5 0 % for colour films. Records on magnetic

mediums

Temperature 18°C (± 1°C), relative humidity 40 % (± 5 %). It is particularly important for the air to be filtered of dust (c. f. p. 59). Work areas for public and staff Minimum temperature 19°C (official French standard). There is no French standard for the maximum temperature or relative humidity in work areas. The British standard is a minimum of 16°C (Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act, 1963). The best relative humidity for the comfort of human beings is between 40 % and 70 %. It can be seen from the above that it is quite difficult to achieve the ideal climatic

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conditions for the preservation of all the different types of documents within the same building. The British Standard (BS 5454, section 9.6) recommends a temperature of 13° - 16°C and a relative humidity of 50 % - 60 % as a broadly acceptable compromise except for colour photographs and documents in magnetic mediums which require specific conservation precautions (see p. 57 and 58). However, the Paris-based Centre de recherche sur la conservation des documents graphiques considers that this compromise is not satisfactory for paper and parchment as the temperature is too low.

b) Measurement

of temperature and relative

humidity

In view of what has just been said, it can be seen that it is essential that the temperature and relative humidity of archive rooms should be measured frequently to ensure that the danger points have not been reached. This applies in all geographical zones and in all types of buildings. It is usual for the temperature in record offices to be measured. The thermometers used for this should be properly calibrated and the temperature should be measured several times a day in different areas of the building. This should be done at different heights from the floor; it is well known that cold air tends to fall and hot air to rise. Hygrometers are used for measuring humidity. These range from the very simple (hair hygrometers) to the very complex (mechanical or electronic recording hygrometers). Recording thermohygrographs measure and record both temperature and relative humidity. They are quite costly, but the importance of measuring climatic conditions in archival strongrooms effectively fully j ustifies the expense. They should be carefully calibrated and checked from time to time.

c) Architectural

measures: insulation against heat and

humidity

The architectural methods of insulation will be addressed first, then the technical methods of modifying the atmosphere within buildings (heating, cooling, humidification and dehumidification). The choice of materials and the architectural arrangements for protection against cold and heat were discussed above (p. 47). Particular attention should be paid to preventing overheating in work rooms which have large areas of glass and are exposed to the sun - a problem which has too often been ignored in many recent buildings. The techniques for protecting buildings against humidity are more complex. Rainwater can be excluded by keeping a strict watch on roofs and the watertightness of doors and windows. The openings of air-vents should be fitted with protective devices. Gutters, channels and rainwater pipes should be regularly inspected and cleaned to avoid blockages. The simplest way of protecting against damp rising from the soil by capillary action is to dig waterproof foundations. An insulating raft should be used if the soil is very wet. Water-resistant materials

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should be chosen for construction and, where appropriate, drainage channels should be dug to take the water seeping from the soil. There should be no trees or plants immediately next to the walls. If an existing building becomes damp, the walls and floors should be treated with a water-resistant coating. There are many types of such materials. They often act as both insulators and fungicides. A specialist should be consulted as to the most effective type. T h e conditions of the foundations should be improved by installing drains. In some cases, however, the walls are too damp and the building too impregnated with water for simple water-proofing to have any effect. In this situation it is necessary to install drains or to use electro-osmosis. This process is very effective but unfortunately it is expensive and can only be installed by specialist firms.

d) Heating Heating is the simplest method of protection in regions with cold or temperate climates. Any method of heating is acceptable in archive strongrooms provided that it incorporates the necessary safety precautions against the risk of fire from chimney flues and floods from fractured pipes in hot water circulation systems. The layout of the pipes should be designed with this in mind. They should never pass above shelving where archival documents are stored (see p. 47). Excessive heat, particularly dry heat, produced by a heating system which is too powerful or badly regulated, is as harmful to documents and people as a temperature which is too low. If several zones at different temperatures are needed in the same building, different heating circuits fitted with distribution valves will be needed. This technical problem must be clearly described and defined in the brief for the construction and equipment of the building (see above, p. 27). Careful and regular maintenance and adjustment of the heating system is essential, both to save fuel and to prevent possible accidents.

e) Cooling In the absence of proper air-conditioning (see below, p. 109), it is justifiable to cool the work areas for staff and public and the staff flats, in periods of great heat - when the exterior temperature is above 30°C. This is achieved by devices which are usually referred to as 'air-conditioners'; this title is inappropriate as their role is limited to taking in outside air, cooling it and circulating it through the rooms. These devices are commonly used nowadays and can be bought everywhere. They do not have any effect on the preservation of records because they do not have any impact on the level of relative humidity or on air pollution.

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f ) Humidification

and

dehumidification

Excessive atmospheric humidity in a room can be controlled by using special devices called dehumidifiers, in addition to the insulation measures described above (p. 106). Dehumidification usually works by cooling: water vapour is removed from the air by being condensed in a refrigeration unit. The equipment is quite costly because the air has first to be sucked in before being treated in an apparatus which is itself quite complex. Hygrostats are incorporated so that the equipment will switch itself on when the relative humidity exceeds a given level - 55 % for a record office. If refrigerant dehumidification equipment is not available, excessive humidity in showcases and cupboards (but not whole rooms) can be treated by the use of large flat containers of silica gel. This product, which comes in the form of bluish crystals which turn yellowish once saturated, can absorb water equivalent to 38 % of its own weight. It can be regenerated by drying in an oven or furnace at 100°C, but it cannot be regenerated indefinitely. If the atmosphere of a room is too dry (RH below 40 %), it can be humidified by water spray using a centrifuge-type humidifier fitted with a fan which spreads the water vapour round the room. Alternatively water can simply be evaporated by placing it on a radiator or even on a stove - attention should be paid to the dangers of fire and excessive humidification. A system of ventilation/ humidification can also be used in which the air is drawn into a machine, passed over a sponge saturated with water and recirculated after humidification. This last process is the most expensive of the three but it is the most satisfactory in terms of the quality of the air which is circulated. In all cases hard water should be softened before use.

g)

Ventilation

Good air-circulation in strongrooms is essential because it plays a vital role in the battle against fungus and anaerobic insects. It is equally necessary in work areas, particularly where there are large numbers of people - rooms for appraisal and sorting, reading rooms, lecture theatres, etc. - and in workshops (on these subjects, see chapters 7 and 8). In regions with temperate climates which do not suffer from pollution, the work areas and often even the strongrooms can be ventilated by simple natural circulation of air. This can be achieved by opening windows or by special vents which utilise the difference between the density of cold air near the ground and warm air near the ceiling. This system of natural ventilation is satisfactory in many cases especially in work areas. All Europeans know that, outside polluted zones, nothing is better than opening the windows for airing flats or offices (except in very cold or hot spells). However, natural ventilation does not solve the problems of humidity or of pollution by harmful gases which is so common in industrialised regions. Consequently it is becoming increasingly necessary to use forced-air ventilation

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coupled to a system which filters the air drawn in from the outside. If the ventilation is also coupled to a system of heating/cooling/humidification/ dehumidification, then proper air-conditioning is achieved. It is worth recalling here what was said above (p. 98) about the closure of airducts by dampers to prevent their carrying fumes and combustion gases if a fire breaks out. The most common standard for ventilation of archival strongrooms is that there should be one air-change every two hours, while there should be one airchange every hour in work areas.

h)

Air-conditioning

Air-conditioning results in the creation of an artificial atmosphere in the" conditioned rooms. This is continuously controlled and means that doors and windows have to be kept permanently closed. Conditioned air comes from a central air-conditioning plant and is distributed through ducts to the different areas of the building. The plant combines equipment for heating, cooling, humidification/dehumidification and airfiltration. This is linked to fans and to hygrometers and thermometers, which maintain permanent control. This system is expensive to install, run and maintain. It is risky to install it in a building where there was no provision for it at the time of construction, particularly if its layout is ill-suited to the installation of air-conditioning vents. At the outset, when the building is designed, it must be decided if air-conditioning is required. Archivists' opinions are divided as to the value of this sort of installation in temperate countries. The fate of innumerable archives in western European countries which have survived since the Middle Ages without air-conditioning and with a minimum of damage lends weight to the argument against airconditioning. However, the walls of archive buildings used to be thicker and consequently there was better thermal insulation, while the air was not as polluted as it is today. Experiments which were carried out in the 1960s in the House of Lords Record Office in the Victoria Tower, Palace of Westminster, showed that because of acid pollution, the damage suffered by documents in the past twenty years has been more severe than that in the preceding six centuries. Because it is very costly and requires constant maintenance and supervision, airconditioning should not be used unless the climatic conditions justify it. It is not an inconsequential gadget, but a considerable investment both for the present and for the future. A breakdown of the air-conditioning at the Public Record Office, Kew which occurred in the spring of 1984 led to an extremely rapid proliferation of bacteria which resulted in the office being closed for ten weeks and required a disinfection operation which cost £100,000. In temperate climates the dangers to documents from air-conditioning breakdowns, are as serious as those from the ambient air. Air-conditioning is required for records on modern mediums (see above, p. 58). It is also essential in tropical countries where the combination of humidity

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and heat leads to the rapid destruction of paper and other archival materials by hydrolysis, growth of fungi and other physical, biological and chemical processes. 43

8. Protection against atmospheric pollution a) General

remarks

Almost everywhere the external air contains harmful gases (ozone, sulphur dioxide, chlorides, nitrogen oxides), germs (spores) and solid particles (dust, sand, metal particles, tar). No region is really free from this pollution but it is particularly acute in industrial areas, large towns and zones where humidity, harmful gases and smoke combine to form smog - an acidic, gaseous mixture, which is aggressive both towards archival documents and human beings. Dry regions with sandy winds and maritime areas, where the atmosphere is heavily loaded with water and salt, are equally exposed. For all these reasons exterior air should not be allowed into archive buildings in polluted regions, unless the harmful elements have been filtered out.

b) Measurement

of pollution

and acidity. The acidity of paper

Measurement of air pollution requires complex techniques which are not within the competence of a record office, however well equipped. Specialist bodies have to be called in for this purpose. The acidity of paper is caused both by air pollution and by materials contained in the paper itself or in the ink. It can be measured easily by acidity tests using chemical indicators which change colour according to the level of acidity. A drop of the liquid is placed on a corner of the paper and the colour is observed. This test should be carried out regularly because acidity of paper is one of the most serious and most common causes of decay, not only in industrial countries, but also in all hot and humid climates. Acidity is measured on the pH scale, the highest numbers of the scale correspond to the lowest level of acidity. The best level for the preservation of papers is pH 5.5. Below pH 4.5, there is an excess of acid, paper becomes yellowish or brownish, crumbles and becomes a dust. From pH 3 downwards there is a risk that the paper will self-destruct. The most commonly used acidity indicator is universal indicator which turns to yellow, then to orange towards pH 5 and to red at pH 4. (For the deacidification of acid papers, see chapter 7, p. 72).

43

Air-conditioning, by lowering the temperature, can play an important role in eliminating those insects which can only survive in a warm atmosphere; this is true of most tropical insects.

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c) Filtration of exterior air If the tests described in the preceding paragraph show that air pollution has reached a level which poses a danger to the preservation of the records, the exterior air must be filtered before it is allowed into the building. After filtration the external air can be allowed to come into the building by simple natural flux - if the climatic conditions (temperature and humidity) permit. The air vents (duly protected against the danger of water getting in) should be fitted with glass-wool filters which stop solid particles and spores. Filtration of harmful gases requires more complex equipment based on active carbon and alkaline reagents. This can only be done by a system in which the air is drawn in through ducts. In this case the air is drawn in from the outside, passed through chemical filters and is circulated in the rooms by ventilation shafts. In most cases, air pollution is associated with excessive humidity which requires full air-conditioning and not just simple air-filtration. In this case airfiltration is incorporated into the system of air-conditioning which is described above (p. 109).

9. Protection against excessive light. Lighting a) General

remarks

Everyone knows that sunlight damages paper, parchment, inks and pigments. All archivists have seen documents which have lain in places which were too exposed to sunlight and which have become discoloured, yellowed and dried up. The process of deterioration is even more rapid with poor quality papers such as newsprint, some modern inks and colour photographs and films; a few days are sometimes enough to cause irreparable damage. Contrary to what is often believed, it is not only ultra-violet rays which are harmful, but also some of the radiation in the visible spectrum. Artificial light is no less harmful than sunlight. The intensity of light, which, to a large extent determines how harmful it is, is measured by an instrument called a luxmeter. The unit of luminous intensity is the lux. Below 200-300 lux, the light level is low. In bright weather, daylight can reach 10,000 lux or more.

b) Protection

against sunlight in

strongrooms

Archive strongrooms are no longer built with large windows to avoid the use of lamps, which used to be considered a fire risk. However, such buildings still exist. In such cases it is essential to block most of the windows by solid shutters or thick, opaque curtains. The possibility of replacing the panes by filtering glass will be discussed below. There has been a recent trend in modern archive buildings towards eliminating all windows in strongrooms. The reasons why this should not be done were

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discussed above (p. 47). It was shown that the windows should be kept to 10 % of the area of the walls and that there should be no windows in south-facing walls in the northern hemisphere or in north-facing walls in the southern hemisphere (see pi. 1,4,5, etc.). The best location for the windows to prevent the sun's rays from falling directly onto the documents on the shelves, is in line with the stacks, unlike the usual practice which is to have them in line with the gangways. In very sunny regions the windows should be protected by sun-visors - movable shutters or louvres made from aluminium or concrete - which intercept and diffract the sun's rays. Attempts have frequently been made to reduce the harmfulness of sunlight by using filtering glass which absorbs most of the ultra-violet radiation. Most of the glass described by manufacturers as 'filtering' is, in fact, refracting and is of no value for the preservation of archives. The only effective filtering glass is cadmium sulphate through which only a yellow-orange light can pass. Unfortunately, it is very costly and is not commonly manufactured at present. It should be remembered that the first and most important way of protecting documents against light is to put them in closed boxes. If closed boxes are not available, documents should, at least, be wrapped on all six sides.44 All labels and lettering on the outside of bundles and boxes should be written in light-fast carbon ink (Indian ink).

c) Protection

against sunlight in exhibition areas and work areas

Protection against light is particularly important in exhibition areas where documents are on display and not kept in closed boxes or bundles. Only moderate quantities of daylight should be allowed in and only then during the periods when the public are present. At other times the windows should be completely blacked out. Documents which are particularly sensitive to light, illuminated manuscripts, wash drawings, documents with faint inks, poor quality papers, etc., should only be displayed in exceptional circumstances and then only for short periods. It is also possible to use an old technique in which showcases containing documents can be covered with a lid or a veil, but this detracts from the appearance of exhibition areas. The best protection is only to use artificial light in exhibition areas (see below). Natural light should also be restricted in work areas because direct sunlight can be dazzling. This can be achieved by blinds, curtains or shutters. A check should be kept on these to avoid the 'greenhouse effect' which is so common with curtains and internal blinds. Overhead lighting by skylights has its supporters and opponents. Its main disadvantage is that it is difficult to control.

44

See above, p. 74.

GENERAL TECHNICAL ARRANGEMENTS

d) Electric lighting in

113

strongrooms

The electric lighting in strongrooms should be strong enough for the labels and writing on bundles and boxes, particularly those on the bottom shelves, to be clearly legible. The forms of lighting which are most commonly used are low ultra-violet emitting fluorescent tubes or incandescent lamps fitted with frosted glass diffusers. Lamp shades which cast shadows at the sides should be avoided. It is important to protect bulbs or tubes against impact to avoid their being broken when documents on the top shelves are moved. The average light level should be 150 lux. To avoid excessive use of electricity, strongroom lighting is usually controlled by individual switches in each aisle. A main swith at the entrance to each room allows all the lights to be switched off. A check should be maintained to ensure that strongroom lighting is not left on outside working hours - this can be done by an illuminated control panel (see p. 117).

e) Electric lighting in work areas and areas open to the public The French standard for artificial lighting in offices is 300 lux at the work surface. In corridors and circulation routes: 300 lux. In the entrance hall, public foyer and rest area and the cafeteria: 300 lux. In workshops where strong lighting on the work surfaces is required appraisal, binding, restoration, seal moulding and repair-individual lighting can reach 400 lux or more. The best arrangement in reading rooms is to have ambient lighting of 150-200 lux throughout the whole room and individual lights of 300 lux on the reading tables. Individual lighting can either be by ceiling lamps or by individual table lamps - the latter solution is better in large rooms. Consideration should be given to the shape of shade which will be most comfortable for the reader's eyes and will not cast annoying shadows or result in users being dazzled. For a long time there has been a dispute between supporters of fluorescent and incandescent lamps; this is nowhere near to being resolved. Incandescent lamps are less tiring to the eyes, but are bad at colour rendering. Fluorescent lamps emit a light which is closer to daylight but some people find them tiring. If fluorescent lamps are chosen, they must be fitted with grilles to cut down direct radiation and special low ultra-violet emitting tubes should be used. The use of halogen lamps which spread their light by reflection is becoming more and more widespread. Exhibition areas have two contradictory requirements, the need to make the documents on display as visible as possible and the need to protect them against the harmful effects of light. Ambient lighting of 150 lux by low ultra-violet emitting fluorescent lamps is recommended, together with some 300 or 400 lux spot lamps for lighting the obj ects. The spot lamps should preferably be mounted on tracking and be movable and adjustable. Lamps are sometimes used inside showcases (internal lighting) for documents

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which are on display. This is only acceptable if the display cases are fitted with time switches so that the lighting is only on for a short time. The period for which documents on display are exposed to light should be kept to the minimum. The lamps should be switched off as soon as the public have left the room. If, for any reason, a valuable document has to be kept on display permanently, it should be placed in a display case made of special filtering glass.45

10. Protection against insects and fungi; fumigation a) General remarks Protection against fungus and, to a lesser extent, against insects is closely linked to the control of humidity and light (see sections 7 and 9 of this chapter). It should also be noted that although fungus (mould) is harmful in every climate, insects are particularly fearsome in hot regions, although they are also found in temperate zones. This is not the place to describe all the insects and fungi which attack paper, other archival materials and even buildings.46 It is worth recalling that they get into buildings either in the air (spores) or by crawling (insects) or most importantly on documents which have been contaminated before they get to the record office.

b) Architectural

precautions

Architectural precautions against humidity are also valuable against the development of fungi. Good ventilation is essential. Fine wire mesh made from metal or plastic placed over the windows is effective against flying insects. It is more difficult to deal with an invasion by crawling insects, particularly termites. Several architectural methods of protection are available in countries which are infested by termites. Buildings can be raised up on concrete piles which should be surrounded by concrete channels with vertical sides. Metal flanges should be fitted round all pipe channels and air vents and wire mesh should be carefully attached to these. Underfloor spaces fitted with DDT-based chemical insulating material can play a useful role in the foundations. If the ground is badly infested, the building should be isolated by a ditch with vertical concrete sides. This should be watched carefully for the characteristic signs of termites. Termites avoid daylight and build tunnels from earth or brownish organic debris in order to move about in the open air. These can be easily spotted on the surface of the concrete. 45

46

Air-conditioned showcases with reinforced filtering glass like those in which the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence are displayed in Washington are technical curiosities rather than standard equipment in record offices. O n this subject, see Flieder,F. andDuchein, M.,op. cit.

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c) Fumigation of rooms When fungi or insects are discovered in a strongroom, the first step is obviously to remove the contaminated documents or obj ects and fumigate them (see below). Fumigation of the room itself can take place at the same time. If there is a problem with fungi, this should be done by spraying with Caequartyl BE (lauryl-dimethylcarboxymethylammonium bromide) in a 10 % alcohol solution using a compressed air sprayer. Alternatively, a 'swing fog' nebuliser can be used to diffuse decahydrate-diborolactate-triethanolammonium. If there is a problem with insects, all the outlets from the room should be hermetically sealed and Lindane (Gamma HCH or 1,2,3,4,5,6-hexachlorocyclohexane) should be used at the rate of 1.5 g per cubic metre of air. This should be sublimated by heating for an hour on an electric stove. Wooden structures, shelves, beams and floors should be treated by injection with Xylophene SOR. Commercial insecticides based on DDT are usually ineffective against termites which need specialist treatment.

d) Fumigation of

documents

Many experiments which have been carried out in different parts of the world have shown that the only product which is really effective for fumigating documents affected by fungi or insects is ethylene oxide. Unfortunately, this chemical, which forms an explosive mixture with air, can only be used under vacuum or mixed with carbon dioxide or freon in a fumigation chamber. Ethylene oxide fumigation chambers are expensive pieces of equipment and require careful maintenance. Despite their disadvantages, they are essential in regions where, because of climatic conditions, archives are in serious danger of being destroyed by insects and mould (see pi. 51). If an ethylene oxide fumigation chamber is not available, documents attacked by fungi can be treated in a well-sealed cabinet - an old refrigerator or a metal cupboard whose doors are fitted with airtight draught excluders. Formalin or a 40 % solution of formaldehyde in water should be vaporized in this cabinet at the rate of250 g per cubic metre of air. The documents should be placed on shelves or open grids and the cabinet sealed for a period of two to four days. This process should not be used for parchment. Documents which are infested with insects should be treated by sublimating lindane (see above: fumigation of buildings). They should be spread out and left in a hermetically sealed area for twenty four hours to allow the chemical to settle on them. Other processes which are mentioned in various publications - impregnation with methyl bromide, sublimation or impregnation with thymol, diffusion of chloroform or paradichlorobenzene - are considered by the Centre de recherches sur la conservation des documents graphiques of Paris to be either dangerous or ineffective. "Although it is possible nowadays to suggest a large number of methods of dealing with biological agents of deterioration, sufficient funds must be available

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if they are to applied. The treatments described are not costly in themselves but they can never, or only rarely, be carried out on the spot. They all require some handling of records - putting them into crates and moving them to the nearest fumigation chamber, arranging bundles on tables and airing them, cleaning strongrooms and shelves, etc. All these operations take a long time, are tiresome and require a considerable number of staff. " 47

11. Protection against rodents To a large extent, the methods of protection against rodents (rats, house mice, field mice, etc.) and against insects are identical. Care should be taken to seal openings of heating pipes, ventilation shafts and, most importantly, drain pipes as rats most commonly get in through these. The areas which are most often infested by rodents are basements and rooms in old buildings with wooden floors. Rat poisons should be used with care because they can be harmful to documents and dangerous to human beings. The traditional type of trap is usually sufficient to eliminate rodents unless there has been a large-scale invasion. In serious cases, a specialist should be called in and, if necessary, the documents should be removed from the areas to be treated.

12. Protection against dust Dust is a serious danger to archives, particularly in industrial regions where it is oily and acidic. It has to be fought against but it can never be entirely defeated. It finds its way in everywhere and even the best designed strongrooms are never entirely free of it. A distinction should be made between dust which comes from outside the building and dust which is emitted inside strongrooms. The best way to protect against dust from outside is only to allow filtered air into the rooms (see p. 110). The main internal source of dust comes from bare concrete floors which are crumbling away. Consequently, it is absolutely essential to provide a protective covering for the floors (see p. 48). Documents should be dusted on arrival at the record office before they are transferred to the appraisal room or the strongrooms. Dusting should take place before fumigation and can either be done by hand or with a vacuum cleaner. Large-capacity, high-powered vacuum cleaners are needed to clean the strongrooms and work areas. Semi-industrial type cleaners should be used, ultraquiet operation is not necessary. The cleaners chosen should not be more than 0.65 m wide to allow them to be moved easily in the strongroom gangways. They should have flexible hoses at least 0.25 m long to allow access to the top shelves.

47

F. FliederandM. Duchein, op. cit., p. 73.

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In theory, all documents in an office should be dusted twice a year; if this is not possible, there should at least be an annual cleaning. Dusty documents should never be produced. Every box or bundle which is ordered should be systematically dusted before it arrives in the reading room. 48

13. Sound insulation The problems of soundproofing in archive buildings are sometimes - quite wrongly - neglected. There is a double problem; first, the staff and the public have to be protected against exterior noise. This is particularly important for readers, who have a special need for quiet for their work. Second, areas which are potentially major sources of noise have to be isolated. These areas are the workshops, secretaries' offices (typewriters), rooms for receiving accessions, appraisal and sorting areas (a great deal of handling of records), individual research carrels next to the reading rooms (typewriters, tape-recorders) and, of course, lecture theatres and meeting rooms. The use of sound absorbing material and, if necessary, thick, insulated glazing allows these problems to be solved without difficulty.

14. The electrical installation A well-equipped record office is quite a large user of electricity - the lighting, airconditioning and the various workshops require a large supply. This is not as large as that of a factory but is appreciably more than an ordinary administrative building. The electrical installation must obviously conform to national safety standards for conduits, switches and power points. The regulations require special protective measures in the photographic, binding, repair and general maintenance workshops and the boiler room. A 30-amp supply (three phase) is needed in certain areas: - binding and repair workshops, - fumigation chamber, - shredding machine, - photocopying and photography areas if they are equipped with high-output machines, - possibly the general maintenance workshop. It is also needed for technical equipment which has a high consumption of electricity, such as heating, air-conditioning, ventilation, etc. The number and location of power sockets should be planned according to the needs of each room, particularly the workshops. It is recommended that flush fitting power socket with safety covers should be installed at ten metre intervals in the strongrooms for vacuum cleaning.

48

Dust is particularly harmful for records on magnetic mediums (see above, chapter 6, p. 58).

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Lighting in the different areas has been discussed in the preceding chapters. Outside working hours, the power supply in the strongrooms should be switched off at the main fuse box. It is strongly recommended that an illuminated control panel be installed to ensure that lights are not left on in the strongrooms when staff are not present (see p. 113). This panel could be located in the main control room if there is one (see below, p. 123), in the attendant-caretaker's room or in the appraisal room where there are staff working continuously. The staff flats should have an independent electrical installation with individual meters.

15. Batteries and emergency generators Emergency batteries must be provided so that illuminated signs will remain lit and lifts can complete their j ourneys in the event of a fire or a power failure .These must be checked and maintained regularly. It is essential to install emergency generators in regions where power cuts are common.

16. The water supply Running water should be available in the following areas: - photographic studio, bindery, conservation laboratory, workshop for making seal moulds (hot and cold water), - staff and public washrooms (hot and cold water), - cafeteria, staff restroom (hot and cold water), - flats (hot and cold water with separate meters), - garages (cold water). In addition, a cold water supply is needed on each strongroom floor for cleaning. For the water points for fire fighting, see p. 101.

17. The gas supply If the safety rules allow, gas should be laid on to the following areas: - bindery, conservation laboratory, workshop for making seal moulds, - cafeteria, staff restroom, - flats (with separate meters).

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18. Telephones a) Telephone connections

to the external

network

Archivists do not all agree about the value of providing telephones linked to the external network in all areas of the office. Without taking sides on a point which is, to a large extent, a matter of individual methods of work and national regulations, some general indications can be given. Access to the external network is essential at least for the following areas: - the offices of the director, his deputies, heads of sections and the secretariat, - the enquiry office, - the flats. It is not so apparent that the workshops, appraisal and sorting rooms and other offices need such telephones. The type of switchboard depends on the size of the office and the number of staff. A proper switchboard with a full-time telephonist may be needed in offices employing more than 30 or 40 people. In smaller offices, calls are usually received and redirected in the secretariat. If there is a resident attendant-caretaker, calls outside working hours should be automatically redirected to his flat. If not, they should go to the director's flat. As mentioned above (p. 94), the personal telephone lines of the director and the attendant-caretaker should be separate from the official lines. One or a number of pay-phones should be installed in large offices - the public will be very grateful for them. They should be located in the entrance hall.

b) Internal telephones and

intercom

Opinions among archivists differ even more about internal communications systems (internal telephones, intercoms with loudspeakers, walkie-talkies, etc.) than they do about the external telephone network. Whichever system is chosen, the aim should be that every member of staff can be found and contacted at any time, because people move about a great deal in record offices.

19. Handling and internal movement Internal movement is very important in the effective operation of a record office. Receiving accessions and moving them to the strongrooms, appraisal, sorting, producing documents to readers, microfilming, binding, repair, etc., all involve a great deal of handling. It is essential that the whole problem of handling and movement should be considered with particular care.

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a) Elevators and goods

lifts

Except for elevators which are exclusively for public use or provide access to the flats, all elevators in archive buildings are goods lifts, i.e. they provide transport both for trollies loaded with records and for people. 49 Ideally, an elevator for archive strongrooms should have the following features: - dimensions of the car: 1.50 mx0.80 m, - height of the car: 2 m, - working load: 500 kg - 800 kg according to the amount of material to be moved. 50 There should be an automatic interior light which comes on when the car is loaded and goes out when it is empty. On the landings, solid doors, possibly with glass panels, are preferable to sliding or open folding ones. They should have a minimum width of 1.20 m to allow trollies to be manoeuvred easily. Most countries use three-sided cars without a door, but the safety rules in some others insist on a door or grille which separates the car from the lift shaft. In our opinion, this is quite useless. The sizes given above allow room in the lift car for a trolley and for the person using it. This presupposes that the car stops exactly on a level with the floors. The speed of ascent and descent does not have to be very great, except in a very high repository building, 0.30 metres/second is usually sufficient. Operation should be very simple with a call-button on each floor. Systems of 'memory call' are generally useless for this type of lift but it is helpful to have indicators on each floor to show whether the lift is stationary or in use and where it is. There are safety regulations in every country relating to lifts; these apply to goods lifts and there is no need to go into details here. The number of goods lifts required in each archive building cannot be defined without more information. It obviously depends on the size of the office and the number of times documents have to be moved. Without pretending to set any sort of standard, a reasonable estimate is that the minimum requirement is for one lift for 20,000 linear metres of records.

b) Conveyors,

'paternosters',

etc.

In large offices where there are large numbers of movements of records, it might be worth considering the installation of an automatic conveyor to move the documents between the strongrooms and the reading rooms. However, as a circuit several hundred metres long would be required to serve all the 49

50

National standards should be consulted for lifts solely for use by people. In France, at least one lift in each building should be accessible to the disabled, with a door 0.80 m wide. The public must never be allowed into the office's goods lift. Where appropriate, every route along which the public travel should have a lift solely for transporting people and which conforms to the standards for the disabled. A lift of a capacity of 300 kg to 500 kg would suffice for a small record office.

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strongrooms in a major record office, this might be considered impractical or even impossible. If the arrangement of the rooms is suitable, it might be more convenient to service the reading room by a goods lift or box lift from the strongrooms. This obviously requires a member of staff to be permanently stationed on each strongroom floor to put the documents into the lift. Transport systems called 'paternosters' are complex systems which combine horizontal and vertical transport with various automatic functions. They are very expensive and are not very well adapted to the operation of record offices and at present are little used in them. Conveyor belts or roller conveyors are the normal method of moving documents over short or medium distances, for example between the room for receiving accessions and the appraisal room, or between the appraisal room and the lift serving the strongrooms.

c)

Trollies

The most common method of transport in archive buildings is still the handtrolley. There cannot be too many of these. An archive trolley must have several features which are not always easy to find combined in commercially produced models. For this reason it is often necessary to have them specially made. A trolley must be: a) extremely stable whether empty or loaded, b) very mobile and able to swivel round on the spot, c) light but strong, d) not too cumbersome, so that it can get into narrow strongroom aisles and into lifts. Ideally, a trolley which meets these various requirements should be 0.50 m wide x 0.85 m or 0.90 m long x 1 m high, the top shelf on the trolley should be exactly level with the surface of the sorting benches (see above, p. 64). Trollies can run on three or four wheels, four wheel trollies are more stable. All the wheels should be mounted on pivots so that they can be swivelled round on the spot. The frame should be made from two solid sides (the ends), joined by two horizontal shelves without rims, one just above the wheels and the other 1 m or 1.10 m from floor level. Four sided trollies in box form where it is difficult to put the documents into the bottom of the box or to get them out should be avoided. A bar fixed 1 m from the floor on each of the two ends allows the trolley to be pushed and steered. The four corners should be fitted with rubber buffers our bumpers to soften jolts which often occur when they are being used (see pi. 46). An archive trolley must be capable of carrying a load of 300 kg. Some very large offices, such as the Public Record Office at Kew use battery operated electric trollies. The cost of such trollies greatly limits their use. Similarly, some large record offices have special trollies for transporting maps, plans and other large documents (pi. 47).

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d) Lifting and handling

gear

In large record offices, various sorts of lifting and handling equipment are used for loading and unloading lorries when receiving accessions or removing documennts which are to be destroyed. These include fork-lift trucks (of the Fenwick type), roller conveyors, 'grasshoppers', etc. This equipment is not sufficiently widely used in archives for it to be possible to describe it in detail here, it can be found in specialist catalogues of handling equipment. Flat roller trucks and hand trucks are commonly used for moving boxes. The ones used in archives are the same as those used in factories and warehouses (pi. 48,49,50).

20. Computers and computer terminals The introduction of computers in record offices is a very recent phenomenon, it was not an issue when the first version of this manual was written in 1966 and barely one when the English edition was published in 1977. It is thus difficult, if not impossible to establish a standard pattern of development. Terminals can be situated in the offices, where they can be used for office administration, accounts, personnel management, etc., or in the rooms for receiving accessions or appraisal where they can be used for recording accessions and appraisal, particularly for establishing which documents are to be destroyed. They can also be installed in the catalogue rooms next to the reading rooms where they can be used for research (see p. 85). The computer itself should be located with the other technical equipment which require continuous supervision and maintenance.

21. Facsimile transmission, remote access, etc. Remote access is, as yet little used in archives, except in some very advanced countries. It is more than likely that it will develop rapidly over the next few years because it can be very useful for transmitting documents over a distance. They can either be displayed on screens or printed out. It is particularly valuable in record centres (see below, p. 129). In principle, no special equipment is required, as it operates over the telephone network.

22. Television aerials A television set is needed in the education service area, as well as in the staff flats. The necessary aerials and cables should be provided.

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23. Security, continuous monitoring of equipment, automatic building management Every archive building should have continuous security and monitoring of equipment. Monitoring is all the more important because the equipment of buildings - heating, air-conditioning, fire detection, etc., is increasingly complex. The problem of security is not easy to resolve and depends primarily on the possibilities of taking on staff. The difficulties will not all be resolved even if it is possible to provide accommodation for an attendant-caretaker on the premises (see above, p. 93) because it will be necessary to make allowance for statutory rest periods, holidays and periods of sickness. In the case of a large record office, especially if it is on a slightly isolated site, the best solution is to use a specialist security firm, which can provide the necessary staff, or to have three or four security guards working on a rota. Night-security involves patrols of the building at regular intervals. When not on patrol, the guard should stay in a special room equipped with a telephone and the alarm system. In buildings with a lot of automatic equipment, it is desirable, and increasingly common to locate all the meters (water, gas and electricity), the illuminated control panel for the strongroom lighting (p. 118) and the control panels for the heating/air-conditioning, fire-detection, burglar alarms, and the screens for the closed circuit television monitoring equipment in a single room (pi. 62B). This is referred to as the technical control room, or in Frangíais as the 'salle de monitoring'. If there is not a general technical control room, the control panels and meters should be located in an area where there is usually always a member of staff and where there is the least chance of their being left without anyone tokeepaneyeon them. They could be situated in the appraisal room, the secretariat, the enquiry office or the attendant-caretaker's lodge, depending on circumstances. Whatever the size of the building, it is always advantageous to group all the meters and control panels together in the same area to facilitate maintenance and supervision. Finally, in very large buildings, there is an increasing tendency to install computerised building management systems. In these all the automatic systems in the office - fire detection, burglar alarms, heating/air-conditioning, etc., are managed by a specially programmed computer. This approach obviously involves a large initial investment, but it is particularly attractive from the operational point of view, provided that staff with sufficient technical skills are available.

127

CHAPTER 11 RECORDS CENTRES OR INTERMEDIATE REPOSITORIES

At the beginning of this manual a distinction was made between an archives building and a records centre. The former houses administrative documents waiting to be appraised and historical documents to be preserved indefinitely. The latter only houses documents awaiting appraisal or destruction.51 The public cannot gain access to records centres and only officials from the institutions or departments which produced the records can consult them there. This is the system for running records centres, Zwischenarchive and archivos intermedios in different countries. There are five practical considerations for the construction and equipment of records centres: a. the possibility of locating them outside town centres, b. the absence of areas open to the public, c. the significance of the problems of handling documents, d. the importance of the reception and appraisal areas, e. the equipment of the storage areas is simpler.

1. Location and overall design The documents in records centres are not regularly consulted by the departments which produced them. Consequently, they can be located a long way from the creating departments without any inconvenience. Records centres are usually located on the edge of urban areas, on sites where land is cheaper than in town centres. Dangerous or unhealthy locations should be avoided (see p. 33). Access for lorries bringing transfers should be easy. The lay-out of industrial-type warehouses with large interior spaces and twostorey self-supporting shelving which is independent of the walls of the buildings is particularly well-suited to records centres.52 As the public are not admitted, the only facilities which should be provided are strongrooms, reception and appraisal areas, workshops and offices.

51 52

Seeabove,p. 32. The best examples in France are the records centres of the Archives de l'Aude at Carcassone, de l'Aveyron at Rodez and du Tarn at AJbi (pl. 29).

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2. Strongrooms, shelving Documents only stay in records centres for limited periods because after appraisal they will either be destroyed or transferred to record offices. Storage areas do not have to be equipped to such a high standard as in historical archives. In particular, shelving can be of a lower standard. Provided that it is strong, the shelving chosen may be very simple, even a system with bolted shelves may be acceptable. Any system with sharp edges which could tear the documents should be avoided. Equipment for protecting records against fire, theft, floods, excessive sunlight, insects and rodents (see chapter 10) is essential, particularly because records centres are often situated a long way from town centres and consequently are less easy to supervise at night. It is essential that after their stay in records centres, records should be free from moulds and insects and in a good state of preservation.

3. Working areas a) Reception of records A records centre is intended to deal with transfers of administrative records. It should have a large reception area with a loading bay (see p. 61). A centre with a capacity of 20,000 linear metres for example, should have a reception area of at least 50 square metres with an office for checking transfer lists on arrival. A fumigation chamber (p. 115) is essential if transfers of documents which are suspected of being contaminated by insects or mould are likely to be received.

b) Appraisal and sorting Appraising transfers is almost the only activity of a records centre. The appraisal room should consequently be very large; at least 100 square metres in a centre with a capacity of20,000 linear metres. It should be equipped with all the supplies needed for packing, making bundles, wrapping documents, etc. (see p. 73).

c) Documents to be destroyed A large proportion of the documents transferred to a records centre will be removed for destruction after spending varying periods of time there. Documents ready to be destroyed are kept in a special area. There are two possible ways of dealing with them: 1. they can be destroyed on the spot using an incinerator or a shredder (see above, p. 64). This can be located in the building itself or nearby and should be easily accessible for the documents which are to be destroyed. 2. they can be taken away to be destroyed by a specialist firm. In this case, the

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129

area in which they are stored before leaving the building should be very large the area should be the same as the reception area - and there should be a loading bay with direct access to the outside (see p. 63).

d) Consulting

documents

As a general rule only members of the staffs of the departments which have transferred records are authorised to consult the documents in a records centre. A modest-sized room - about 30 square metres for a centre of a capacity of20,000 linear metres - is sufficient for this purpose. 53 A photocopier is usually considered necessary. A system of long-distance communication, telex of facsimile transmission may be necessary if the centre is a long way from the departments which need to consult the records.

e)

Workshops

According to the size of the centre, a photographic studio (see p. 65), a bindery, a conservation laboratory for damaged documents (p. 69) and even a general maintenance workshop may be required.

f)

Offices

The bulk of the work takes place in the appraisal room. Offices must be provided for the director and his professional assistants as well as a secretariat. The registration of accessions, control of disposals, etc., should take place in a special office adjacent to the loading bays, as mentioned above.

g) Toilets, exits, garages, technical equipment

and technical

areas

These should be identical to those of an ordinary record office, except that no provision has to be made for the public.

h) Staff flat If the building is situated a long way from the town centre, it is useful to provide at least a flat for an attendant-caretaker (see p. 93).

53

People who are not employed by the archives service should never be allowed into the strongrooms. This is an absolute rule which applies as much to records centres as it does to record offices.

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i) Transport and communications

problems

There is a great deal of movement inside a records centre, more than in an ordinary record office - arrival of documents, transfer from reception room to appraisal room, from appraisal to storage areas, from storage to disposal areas, etc. This sometimes involves large quantities of papers. The question of internal transport by goods lifts, trollies, conveyors, conveyor belts, roller conveyors, etc., (see above, p. 119) should be given particular attention. If the centre is exclusively for departmental records there must be rapid links with the different departments which may need to withdraw documents which they have transferred. Each records centre located outside an urban area should have a permanent communication service at its disposal (telephone, car, cyclist, etc.), reference was made above to communications by telex.

131

CHAPTER TWELVE ARCHIVE BUILDINGS IN TROPICAL COUNTRIES

Tropical climates - i.e. all hot and humid climates, whether they are technically classified as equatorial, sub-equatorial, tropical proper, or monsoon climates present special problems for the preservation of documents and require special precautions in the construction and equipment of archive buildings. 54

1. The problem of humidity and fungi: protection and fumigation Everything that was said in the second part of this manual concerning the protection of records against atmospheric humidity and moulds (p. 104—110) applies particularly to tropical countries where the air is sometimes so humid that it is nearly saturated. The level of humidity in strongrooms should be checked frequently by means of a hygrometer (p. 106). Permanent air-conditioning is essential (p. 109). Failing this thorough ventilation must be ensured. Care must be taken that this does not result in the introduction of harmful insects. The air should be filtered before it enters the building. The shelving chosen should allow the greatest air-circulation, solid shelves and back panels should be avoided. Compact shelving is inadvisable because it interferes with the circulation of air (see p. 53). Special care must be taken to ensure that the roofs and openings are watertight. Rain-water run-off must be considered carefully. It is useful if the roofs have eaves projecting some way over the walls to prevent water running down them. Trees and plants should not be placed close to the building. The foundations should be designed to prevent damp rising up the walls due to capillary action. Basement strongrooms should not be used. Anti-fungal coatings - paints or distemper - should be used on walls, floors and ceilings. Anti-fungal waxes should be used on book bindings. From time to time, checks should be made with Petri boxes for the presence of fungal spores. Once a year, the air in strongrooms should be disinfected by fungicides diffused either as aerosols (nebulisation) or vapours or smoke. Needless to say any room where the presence of fungal spores is suspected should be disinfected straight away (see above, p. 115).

54

The technical problems of constructing archive buildings in tropical countries are discussed in Bell, L. and Faye, B . , La Conception des bâtiments d'archives en pays tropical, Paris, Unesco (Collection 'Documentation, bibliothèques et archives: études et recherches', no. 9), 1979, 190 pp.; and Duchein, M., 'Les bâtiments et équipements d'archives dans les pays tropicaux', in Actes de la seconde Conférence des Archives Antillaises 1975, Archivum, special issue no. 2, 1980.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

2. The problem of hurricanes Tropical countries are subject to periodic storms known as cyclones, tornadoes, hurricanes or typhoons, characterised by very strong winds and torrential rain. All architects in those countries are familiar with the problems of hurricanes, but watertightness is particularly important in archive buildings. Reference has been made to roofs and run-off of rain-water. The roofs should be solid and strongly attached to the walls to ensure that the wind cannot carry them away; anti-cyclone tiles should be used. The windows and all the openings should be strong and protected by a method of sealing designed to prevent windows breaking and water getting in during a storm. It is desirable that buildings should be raised slightly off the ground to deal with the possible consequences of flooding caused by hurricanes. Raising the building on piles also has the advantage of providing protection against termites (see below, s. 4) and rodents.

3. The problem of solar radiation Sunlight in tropical countries contains a high proportion of harmful blue, violet and ultra-violet rays. The frequently humid atmosphere increases the danger of this radiation by causing greater refraction of the rays. In these countries it is particularly necessary to protect records from sunlight. The construction of strongrooms entirely without natural light is undesirable because of the need to deal with termites (see below). But it is necessary to ensure that: a. the amount of light which is admitted should be very restricted (see p. I l l ) ; b. that solar radiation is systematically broken up by awnings, sunblinds, shutters, etc.; c. that windows should be protected against hurricanes (see above). Plate-glass slabs must not be used to provide lighting because they act as magnifying glasses and increase the dangers of excessive sunlight. Architects in tropical countries have various methods of providing shade for offices, work areas and houses. These include verandahs, awnings, cloisters and sunblinds.

4. The problem of termites The battle against insects is relatively simple in temperate climates but it is particularly difficult in tropical climates because of the presence of many varieties of termites. These burrow underground and creep through every available chink in buildings to eat the woodwork. An extremely close watch should be kept on the building and its surroundings. To make this easier, it is recommended that archive buildings should be constructed in the middle of a bare site which has been cleared of all tree trunks

ARCHIVE BUILDINGS

133

and stumps which might attract termites. There should be no trees and plants close to the building. All the architectural methods of protecting buildings against insects described in chapter 10 are of prime importance in tropical buildings. These include raising them on piles, using protective trenches and mixing insecticide with the cement (p. 114). It is also worth recalling that termites have two deadly enemies, sunlight and fresh air. Consequently totally dark strongrooms should be avoided and permanent ventilation must be provided. A record office which has a moderate amount of daylight and good ventilation is much less exposed to invasions by termites. If termites are found in the ground round the building it can be cleared by digging trenches at least 50 cm deep (these should be thoroughly impregnated with insecticide) and by the injection of D D T or gammexane dissolved in petrol although precautions should be taken against the dangers of fire. Pentachlorophenol also gives excellent results. If, despite all these precautions, termites get inside the building, infected wood should be treated with sprays or injections of DDT or highly concentrated gammexane. Infested rooms should be emptied and all the documents aired and shaken. Spraying or vaporisation with special chemicals (see above, p. 115) is also required. An essential precaution in tropical countries is that all documents should be disinfested on arrival at the repository. For this reason, all record offices in such countries should have disinfestated equipment (see above, p. 115).

137

APPENDIX 1 SUMMARY OF THE MAIN DIMENSIONAL REQUIREMENTS AND TECHNICAL STANDARDS FOR ARCHIVE BUILDINGS

1. Area of land needed on which to build archive buildings (see p. 38) There is no standard for the area of land required. The amount of land occupied will depend on the height and density of the buildings which are constructed. As an indication, an area of 3,000 square metres is the minimum required for a building of medium height with a capacity of 20,000 linear metres of shelves, including offices, work areas, public areas and entrances.

2. Capacity of archive buildings The unit for measuring the capacity of archive buildings is the linear metre (l.m.) of shelving. This corresponds to the quantity of documents which can be stored on a 1 metre long shelf. On average, a 170 square metre strongroom with a useful height of 2.20 m can hold 1,000 l.m. of conventional shelving, including gangways and aisles (c.f. s. 4 below). A 170 square metre strongroom fitted with compact shelving can hold up to 1,800 l.m. of shelving but this imposes constraints in terms of weight and convenience of operation (c.f. p. 51). The expression "archives building with a capacity of 20,000 l.m. of shelving" refers to an area of 170 x 20 = 3,400 square metres of strongrooms equipped with traditional shelving, to which must be added work areas, public areas, technical areas and possibly staff flats (see below s. 5).

3. Relationship between linear measure, weight and volume of archives The weight of a linear metre of archives varies according to the size and thickness of the documents, one l.m. of large volumes weighs much more than one l.m. of small bundles of India paper. It is not possible to give precise relationships between the linear measure, weight and volume of archives, only averages can be given.

138

APPENDIX 1

1 l.m. ofarchives ll.m.of archi ves

= 35 to 80 kg (average: 50 kg) = 0.06to0.120 m 3 (average: 0.0016 m3)

1 kg ofarchives 1 kg ofarchives

= 0.01 to 0.04 l.m. (average: 0.025 l.m.) = 0.0008to 0.003 m3 (average: 0.0016 m3)

ltonne ofarchives ltonne ofarchives

= 10 to40l.m. (average: 25 l.m.) = 0.80to 3 m (average: 1.6 m)

lm 3 ofarchives lm 3 ofarchives

= 8 to 16 l.m. (average: 12 l.m.) = 400 to 800 kg (average 600 kg)

4. Dimensions of strongrooms and of shelving - Maximum area of strongrooms: 200 m 2 (see p. 47). - Floor loading: 1,200 kg/m2 for conventional shelving. Up to 2,400 kg/m2 for compact shelving (see p. 46). - Maximum height of the highest usable shelf: 1.80 m. In many countries, notably in France, the ceiling height of archive strongrooms is standardised at between2.10 mand2.20 m(seep. 47). - Maximum length of row of shelving: 10 m. The ends of the rows should be separated from the walls by a gangway at least 0.70 m - 0 . 8 0 mwide. - Average depth of shelves: 0.30 m(i.e.0.60 m for back-to-back shelving). It is desirable to have some 0.40 m deep shelves for large documents (p. 49). A 1 m long shelf should be able to carry 100 kg of documents (120 kg for a 1.20 mlong shelf). - Width of gangways: 1 m - 1 . 2 0 m(seep. 49). - Width of aisles: 0.70 m - 0 . 8 0 m(seep. 49). - Natural lighting: the windows should be limited to 10 % of the areas of the walls (see p. 48); strongrooms totally without natural lighting are inadvisable.

5. Dimensions of work areas and staff flats There is no standard for the relationship between the area of the strongrooms and the areas of the work rooms and the staff flats, nor for the relationship between the area of the rooms open to the public and the area of the work rooms for the staff. These relationships depend on the nature of the building, on the work which is carried out there and on the space which it is intended to devote to the different workshops, exhibition areas, etc. As an example, the floor areas of the most recent archive buildings constructed in France for the Direction des Archives de France (archives départementales) are divided as follows (average figures):

APPENDIX 1

139

% -

strongrooms work areas not open to the public + offices + technical areas areas open to the public staff flats

70 13 11 6

100

The dimensions of the work areas and staff flats (area, ceiling height, etc.) are those laid down in national standards relating to offices, workshops, flats, etc. See chapters VII, VIII, and IX.

6. Climatic standards (see p. 105) In strongrooms housing paper and parchment documents the climatic conditions should be: temperature 18°C (± 1°C), relative humidity 55 % ( ± 5 %). For the preservation of black and white photographs: temperature 12°C (± 1°C), relative humidity 35 % ( ± 5 %). For the preservation of colour photographs: temperature 5°C (± 1°C), relative humidity35 % ( ± 5 %). For the preservation of documents on magnetic mediums: temperature 18°C (± 1°C), relative humidity 40 % (± 5 %). The air must be filtered to remove dust. In the work areas and staff flats: minimum temperature 19°C. There are no official standards for relative humidity, but the best conditions for the comfort of human beings are between 40 % and 70 % relative humidity. Ventilation: one air change an hour in work rooms, one air change every two hours in strongrooms.

7. Electric lighting (see p. 120) In strongrooms: 150 lux. In work areas, an average of300 lux at the work surface, 400 lux on work surfaces which require particularly bright lighting.

8. Acidity of paper and packing materials (see p. 110) The acidity of papers, boxes, wrappers, etc., should be kept above pH 4.5. Below pH 3, there is a risk of self-destruction and deacidification is necessary.

140

APPENDIX 1

9. Goods lifts (see p. 120) Goods lifts which are not for public use should have a working load of500-800 kg. The minimum area of the car should be 1.50 m x 1.80 m. The minimum width of the door should be 1.20 m. National standards determine the number of people who can be carried in lifts used by the public. Lifts which are accessible to handicapped people should have doors 0.80 m wide.

141

APPENDIX 2 MODEL BRIEF FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF DÉPARTEMENTAL ARCHIVES IN FRANCE This document was drawn up by the Direction des Archives de France and is periodically updated. It is used as the basis for drawing up individual briefs for the construction of buildings for 'départemental' (i. e. provincial) archives. Figures for areas and other information for each building are left blank on this document as they vary from one département to another. Special rooms and equipment needed for each building are added to the brief as appropriate. T h e climatic figures given in this brief (temperature/relative humidity) conform to the standards of the C N R S (Centre des Recherches sur la Conservation des Documents Graphiques, 36, rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, 75005 Paris) and are the best conditions for the preservation of documents.

1. General remarks 1.1 Functions of the building Several essential functions relating to records are carried out in archive buildings - reception, appraisal, arrangement, storage, production to users (the public or administrators), preservation and repair. Other activities to be taken into account are : the reproduction of documents by microfilm or photocopying; the organisation of exhibitions, lectures illustrated by slides, sessions of the educational service and other cultural activities and the publication and distribution of finding aids. T h e maj ority of traditional archival documents are on paper of a fairly standard size. They are stored in bundles, boxes or bound volumes. Special conditions of storage and use are needed for certain documents because of their sizes or the supports they are on. These include large maps and plans, posters, audio-visual documents, documents on magnetic mediums, etc. The existence of these documents should be taken into account when the plans of the building are drawn up.

1.2 Location and area of land required The site chosen should be healthy, dry, not liable to flooding, not exposed to dangers of landslides and not situated in a very humid area. It should be a long way from all dangerous areas where there is a risk of fire or explosion or which might become strategic targets in the event of war. Trial borings should be undertaken before finally fixing on the choice of site.

142

APPENDIX 2

Particular attention should be paid to the accessibility of the site, both for the public and for lorries bringing or removing documents. It is usual to choose a site which would allow the building to be extended in the future. As a minimum, it should be possible to double its size. Without being able to set a precise relationship between the area of the site and the capacity of a building - this varies according to the size and density of the building - it is possible to say, in principle that the minimum size of site for a building of a capacity of 20,000 linear metres is 3,000 m2; an area of 5,000 to 6,000 m2 is the optimum.

1.3 General

plan

The building to be constructed consists of four distinct zones: a. storage areas (strongrooms), where the staff work only occasionally; b. work areas which are not open to the public - rooms for receiving accessions, appraisal, destruction and sorting; workshops, administrative offices; c. areas open to the public - entrance hall, enquiry office, reading rooms and reference rooms, lecture theatre, exhibition area, rooms of the education service; d. staff flats. 1.4

Work-flows

The different areas should be arranged according to the following work-flow patterns. The public routes should not cross the routes used by members of the staff. 1. arrival and treatment of accessions (staff only): unloading of documents (loading bay) —> room for receiving accessions —*• fumigation room —> room for appraisal and sorting - » strongrooms; 2. removal of documents to be destroyed (staff only): appraisal room or strongrooms shredder or loading bay;

area for documents to be destroyed —»

3. consultation of records (staff only): strongrooms —» reading room —> strongrooms; 4. public routes: a. b. c. d.

entrance hall —> information office; entrance hall —»reading rooms; entrance hall —» exhibition areas, lecture theatres or the education service; entrance hall —> secretariat —» offices. All routes which may be used by loaded trollies (particularly numbers 1,2 and 3

APPENDIX 2

143

above) should be level or, at most have slopes with a maximum angle of 6 % and a maximum length of 2 metres. There should be no stairs. In order to allow the disabled to move around the building, the same considerations should apply to the public routes (4a, 4b, 4c and 4d). Corridors which may be used by loaded trollies should have a minimum width of 1.50 m.

2. Strongrooms 2.1 General characteristics Strongrooms should meet the requirements for security and cleanliness. They should be equipped with metal shelving. They should be separated from the rest of the building by fire-resistant walls and floors having a two hour fire-resistance and fire-resistant doors with a one hour resistance. Because of the weight of loaded shelving, strongroom floors should be able to support the following loads: - 1,200 kg/m2 for an installation of fixed shelving of a height of 2.20 m (see below, s. 2.5'Shelving'); - the load should be decided case by case for mobile shelving (up to 2,400 kg/ m2). In cases where several floors of shelving are constructed on a self-supporting metal framework (see below, s. 2.2 'Structure'), the load on the ground should be decided in each individual case in relation to the number of floors.

2.2

Structure

The normal structure for archive buildings is a concrete framework, which is independent of the shelving uprights. Where there is only a limited number of storeys, a self-supporting metal framework could be used. In this system, the vertical uprights of the framework also act as the uprights for the shelves. The agreement of the safety services is required if this system is to be adopted. In either case, the floors must be solid ; systems of open-work or gratings should not be used.

2.3

Dimensions

The strongrooms should be able to accommodate linear metres of metal shelving, which will occupy an area of m. A room of 170 m can hold 1,000 linear metres of conventional shelving. If mobile shelving is to be installed the area should be decided for each individual case. Each strongroom should have a maximum area of 200 m2. They should be

144

APPENDIX 2

separated from each other and from the other areas by fire-resistant partitionwalls and doors. Strongroom doors should have a minimum width of 1 m. There are two alternative ceiling heights: 1. A height o f 2 . 1 0 m - 2 . 1 5 m ; i n this case the shelving would fill all the available space between the floor and the ceiling, trunking can only pass above the gangways. 2. A height of 2.50 m; in this case there is a 0.35 m - 0.40 m space above the shelving where trunking for ventilation and air-conditioning can be located. Pipes carrying water or other liquids should not be installed there.

2.4

Windows

The strongrooms should be fitted with openable windows, which should be no larger than 1/10 of the areas of the walls to ensure a minimum of natural lighting and to allow natural ventilation if required.

2.5

Shelving

The shelves should be metal. They should be installed in back-to-back runs, 0.60 m deep (i. e., each side should be 0.30 m deep). For large documents, several runs of 0.40 m deep shelves ( i . e . back to back rows, 0.80 m deep) should be provided. The usable height of shelving is 2.10 m-2.15 m. In order to calculate the linear measurement, it should be assumed that each run will be 5.5 shelves high. Runs should not be more than 10 m long. The aisles between the runs of shelving should be at least 0.80 m wide and the gangways at right angles to the runs should be at least 1.20 m wide. There should always be a gangway at least 0.80 m wide between the ends of the runs and the walls. The shelves and their supports should be capable of supporting a distributed weight of 100 kg per 1 m shelf with a maximum flex of 1/300 (with a tolerance of 10 %). There should be no rough patches or sharp corners, which might damage documents or injure people. The shelves should be capable of being moved up or down in increments of about 25 mm. Systems of attaching the shelves by nuts and bolts should not be used. If possible, cross braces between the two sides of a run should be avoided so that if necessary, two adjoining shelves can be used. In order to ensure good air circulation, there should not be solid panels between two sides of a run. The sheet-steel shelving and the uprights should be given an anti-rust treatment and coated with enamel paint, which should be applied by dipping, have a minimum thickness of 15 microns and be resistant to impacts and scratches. Solid panels should be fitted at the ends of the runs adjacent to the gangways. Solid panels between adjacent bays are desirable, but not essential.

APPENDIX 2

145

The shelving, uprights and the method of attaching the shelves should be tested before the contract is awarded.

2.6 Special

strongrooms

Special strongrooms are needed for the storage of certain types of documents: maps and plans, microfilms, audio-visual records, computer records, etc. Some types of records require particular climatic and technical conditions, for example, 12°C and 35 % relative humidity for microfilms. The location and equipment of these special strongrooms should be decided in each particular case. Details of current standards for temperature and relative humidity can be obtained from the Direction des Archives de France. An area should be provided for plan cases in every record office.

2.7 Vertical

communication

Communication between different levels should be provided by a goods lift for transporting trollies of documents and staff, stairs and emergency stairs. As a rule, one goods lift should be provided for every 20,000 metres of shelving. Goods lifts and stairs should be enclosed in fire-resistant walls (2 hour resistance). The best location for stairs and goods lifts is at the junction between the strongrooms and the administrative areas. The emergency stairs should be equipped with a door which can simply be pushed open and should be situated at the opposite side of the strongrooms from the normal entrance. The goods lifts should be able to carry a minimum load of 750 kg. The car should be able to carry a trolley and a member of staff. The minimum size should bel.50 m x l . 2 0 m; the entrance should be at least 0.90 mwide. The stairs should have a minimum width of 1.20 m.

2.8 Protection

against sunlight in the

strongrooms

As was indicated above (s. 2.4), in strongrooms, the glazed areas should not be more than 1/10 of the areas of the walls. As far as possible, glazed surfaces should be avoided on south-facing walls. In very sunny areas sun shades are necessary. The runs of shelving should be at right angles to the windows. Given the small size of the windows, the use of filtering glass is recommended, but not compulsory, except in very sunny regions.

2.9 Protection

against fire and theft

See below, s. 5.6 and 5.7.

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APPENDIX 2

2.10 Climatic conditions. Heating

Protection against dryness and

humidity.

Materials used for construction and covering should be chosen for qualities of strength and because they provide good insulation against heat and humidity. An efficient way of achieving this is to build strongrooms with double walls with an intermediate air gap. The foundations should be designed to avoid the possibility of damp rising up by capillary action. There should be an empty space between the roof and the ceiling of the rooms on the top floors. The top floor should be insulated from the roof by a fireresistant, thermally insulating material. Particular care should be taken with waterproofing and thermal insulation if flat roofs are used. For the storage of paper records, relative humidity should be kept at 55 % (± 5 %) and temperature at 18°C (± 1°C). The technical service of the Direction des Archives de France should be consulted for the relative humidity and temperature required for documents other than those on paper. N.B. In areas with a humid climate, air-conditioning is required to maintain a relative humidity of 55 %. In areas with a dryer climate, a system of humidification in the summer may be sufficient. In all cases, the temperature should not fall below 15°C because of the danger of condensation and a ventilation and filtration system providing a change of air every two hours should be installed. Each case should be the object of a special study, which takes account of local climatic conditions. Whatever system is adopted, provision should be made for possible breakdowns and also for the times of year when the conditions of the exterior air are satisfactory and artificial control of the climate is unnecessary by providing opening windows in the strongrooms (see above, s. 2.4).

2.11 Protection

against dust

Cement floors should have a covering w liich prevents the emission of dust. The windows should only be ope ned when the external air is free from dust and pollution.

2.12

Electrical

installation

The cabling in the strongrooms should be in safety conduits. Lighting may be incandescent or fluorescent with the lowest possible level of ultra-violet radiation. Switches should be located in the main gangway at the end of the runs. There should also be a main switch for each room.

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147

Standardised safety power sockets fitted with covers should be installed every 4 to 6 m (at a height of 1 m from the floor) to allow vacuum cleaners to be used. Warning lamps for all the strongrooms should be installed on the main control panel (see section 4).

3. Work areas not open to the public 3.1

Definition

The work areas for the staff should be independent of the storage areas and the areas open to the public. Communication between them should be possible, but it should be controlled. The offices of the director and some of his assistants should be accessible to the public, but this should be controlled. If this area of the building is on more than one floor, stairs and lifts should be provided which are separate from those serving the strongrooms. 3.2 Room for receiving accessions

m2

This room should be directly accessible to lorries through a covered loading bay. This should be sheltered from prevailing winds. There should be shelving along the walls. The loading bay should be 1 m above ground level; a platform lift or a system of ramps can be used to cope with differences in levels. 3.3 Appraisal room

m2

This should be well ventilated and lit and should be directly linked to the room for receiving documents and also, if possible, with the room for documents which are to be destroyed. It should be provided with large work tables, as well as pigeonholes and shelves. 3.4 Room for documents which are to be destroyed

m2

This should be accessible from the loading bay and, if possible, from the appraisal room. 3.5 Fumigation room

m2

Documents which have been infested by insects and mould are fumigated in an ethylene oxide fumigation chamber. The fumigation room should be close to the room for receiving accessions, but should be quite separate from it. It should be divided into three parts:

148

APPENDIX 2

- A room for receiving documents which are to be fumigated (... m 2 , fitted with openwork shelves). - A room containing the fumigation chamber and its machinery (.... m 2 , well ventilated). This room should have direct access to the exterior through which the fumigation chamber can be moved. Its ceiling height should not be less than 3.50m. The removal of the gas from the fumigation chamber should conform to the safety regulations; these should be discussed with the relevant authorities. The width of the door should be determined by the size of the fumigation chamber which is to be installed. - Airing room (.... m 2 , well ventilated), this is intended to house the documents for 24 hours after they have been treated to allow the gas which is impregnated in the paper to escape.

3.6 Photographic

and microfilm studio

m2

The total area should be divided into four rooms: one for filming, one for processing films (dark room), one for making prints and enlargements (dark room) and one for finishing and mounting (with natural light). Two small rooms (.... m2) should also be provided for the storage of papers and films and chemicals. These rooms should be windowless but well-ventilated. Unexposed films and papers should be stored at a temperature of 12°C ( ± 1°C) and a cold room or refrigerated cabinet is needed. Planetary cameras and enlargers can be up to 3.20 m high. The ceiling above them should be 3.30 m high (it might be necessary to coffer the ceilings). All rooms in the workshop should be efficiently ventilated and lit. In dark rooms, white and actinic lighting should be available. The floors should be tiled. Those in the darkrooms and the room for finishing and mounting should be fitted with drainage sumps. There should be a supply of hot and cold water (which should be filtered and softened) in all the rooms, except the one used for filming. Doors into the darkrooms should be fitted with light traps to prevent light getting in. The doors of the rooms in the photographic studio should be 1.40 m wide to allow bulky equipment to be moved; the light traps should be demountable for the same reason.

3.7 Bindery

m2; if necessary, this should be divided into several rooms

The bindery should be airy, well ventilated and well lit by daylight and by artificial light - the lighting should be of the industrial type, using hanging incandescent lamps fitted with reflectors and spot lamps on the work surfaces. Hot and cold water should be supplied and a drainage sump fitted. Special furniture - worktops and benches should be installed. The floors should be tiled. The doors should be 1.40 m wide to allow equipment to be moved.

APPENDIX 2

3.8 Conservation

laboratory

149

(this may be merged with the bindery)

The conservation laboratory should be very airy, well ventilated and lit - by daylight and artificial lighting, using industrial lighting. The floor should be tiled and there should be a drainage sump in the centre. There should be a supply of hot and cold water, the cold water should be supplied at the rate of at least 10-12 litres/minute, this sometimes requires boosters. The type of equipment to be installed should be discussed with the technical service of the Direction des Archives de France. The doors should be 1.40 m wide to allow equipment to be moved.

3.9 Reprographics

area

The choice of reprographics, printing and duplicating equipment should be decided in each individual case. Provision should be made for a 30-amp electricity supply and, if large items of equipment are to be installed, higher floor loading. The doors should be 1.40 m wide to allow equipment to be moved.

3.10 Room for packing,

carpentry,

etc

m2

A workshop for packing, wrapping and boxing records. In large record offices, it can also be used for carpentry work and making frames for exhibitions.

3.11

Offices

- Director's office: ... m2. This should be large enough for small meetings, unless a special committee room is provided. It is desirable to provide a small adjoining room, where the director can undertake his own work on records (... m2). A television aerial socket and cables for carrying video signals (if it is planned to install such a system, see below, section 5) should be installed in the director's office. - Offices for archivists and editors: office of.... m2. It is desirable that each of these offices should have a small sorting room attached to it. - Offices for other members of staff: the number and size of these should be decided for each individual building. - Secretariat:... m2. In a small office, the telephone switchboard can be located here; in large record offices, the switchboard should be in a separate room. The secretariat should be situated close to the offices of the director and the archivists. It may have to accommodate other methods of communication as well as the switchboard and provision should be made for cabling (c.f. section 5).

150

APPENDIX 2

3.12 Staff cloakrooms

and

washrooms

.... washbasins, .... W.C.s (... for men and ... for women), .... showers and a cloakroom for .... people should be provided. There should be washrooms on each floor. The norm is one W. C. for men and one for women for every 20 people.

3.13 Staff canteen ... m2 An area where staff working during the day can have lunch and possibly heat up food.

3.14 Other technical areas.

Stores

- Boiler room and, possibly an air-conditioning plant... m2. The location and installation should be discussed with specialist engineers. C.f. section 5. - Garages:... m2. Separate garages with a separate entrance should be provided for the staff flats (section 6). - Areas for storing material... m2, for storing supplies of stationery, pieces of woodwork, unused furniture, etc. - Individual cellars for the staff flats... m2 per flat. - A small room for cleaning materials. - Area for refuse - this should conform to current hygiene standards.

4. Areas open to the public 4.1

Definition

The areas open to the public should allow easy access and movement. Signs are essential. Routes used by the public should never give access to the strongrooms. Special entrances and routes should be provided for the disabled. Particular attention should be paid to the quality of the floors and floor coverings to avoid the need for excessive maintenance and to prevent their wearing out too quickly.

4.2 Entrance hall, enquiry office and exhibition

area

The entrance hall may just be used for receiving visitors or it may also be used as an exhibition area. In the first case, the area should be... m2. The public enquiry office should be located here behind a glazed screen with a counter. In the second case, the area should be... m 2 (see below, s. 4.7).

APPENDIX 2

151

4.3 Reading rooms and catalogue rooms The total area of the reading and research rooms should be... m 2 . They should be easily accessible from the entrance hall and there should be sufficient signs. There should be good connections between the reading room itself and the strongrooms to facilitate the production of documents. The area should be determined by the number of readers (5 m2 per reader). The supervisor's desk should be located where it is possible to control the entrances and also the document production service. Pillars which obstruct the view should be avoided. For equipment used for supervision, see s. 5.7. ... individual research carrels. These should be glazed and sound-proofed and have an area of about 5-10 m2. They should be installed where they are visible to the supervisor. They can be used by readers using tape-recorders, etc. There should be a catalogue room annexed to the reading room housing catalogues, inventories, card indexes and reference works. It should be directly accessible from the reading room. It can either be supervised by the supervisor in the reading room, or it can have its own supervisor. The inventories can also be housed in the reading room itself. The ventilation, lighting, air-conditioning and sound insulation should be specially designed to provide comfortable conditions for readers.

4.4 Area for reserved documents ('kept-out' area) ... m2 There should be a room close to the supervisor's desk for storing documents reserved by readers; ... m 2 , fitted with some shelves or cupboards. This room should not be accessible to the public.

4.5 Photocopy room ... m2 The photocopier is usually installed next to the reading room in a ventilated room which is sufficiently large to house the equipment and a table on which to place documents which are to be photocopied. It is a good idea to provide several shelves in this room. The public should not have access to it. The area for reserved documents ('kept-out' area) and the photocopier can be in the same room.

4.6 Lecture theatre ... m2 The lecture room should be fitted with a projection booth, a control room for sound and films (see section 5 below on cabling), a projection screen and a sufficient number of chairs. The arrangement of entrances and exits should be discussed with the fire service; there must be an emergency exit. The room must be capable of being blacked out. Emergency lighting must be fitted. The ventilation and sound insulation should be specially designed.

152

APPENDIX 2

4.7 Exhibition area ... m2 This should be easily accessible to the public. It should be fitted with both fixed and moveable lighting; the space in the room should be capable of being altered by the use of mobile fire-proof panels. A large number of power sockets should be provided. The layout, entrances and exits should be discussed with the fire service. There must be an emergency exit and emergency lighting. There should be a . . . m 2 store room for display panels and exhibition cases. Exhibitions may be held in the entrance hall, see above, s. 4.2. N.B. It is possible to make exhibition areas and lecture rooms into multipurpose areas by using partitions and moveable equipment.

4.8 Education service room This room can be used for sound and visual presentations using portable tape recorders or cable links (for the latter case, see s. 5.4). It should be provided with a large number of power sockets. It should be well ventilated and have an emergency exit which conforms to safety standards. A room should be provided close to the education service room for teachers of the education service (.. m 2 ). Ventilation, lighting and sound insulation should be specially designed.

4.9 Public cloakrooms and washrooms...

m2

The number of cloakrooms and toilets should be decided in each individual case. The norm is one W.C. for men and one for women for every 20 people.

5. Technical areas and installations 5.1 For the strongrooms, see above, s. 2.10 Administrative regulations should be followed for the offices and areas to which the public are admitted. There should be a mechanism to make it possible to reduce the heating in the offices and administrative areas without affecting the climatic control in the flats and strongrooms.

5.2 Electricity The wiring should be in safety conduits which conform to the building standards. There should be a control panel to allow the room lighting to be checked and controlled. There should be a main switch to cut off the current in the strongrooms if they are unoccupied.

APPENDIX 2

153

There should be an independent power supply for the computer installation. The offices, reading rooms, lecture theatres, exhibition areas, education service rooms and other work areas should be fitted with a number of power sockets. Power sockets in workshops should be high up and in humid areas they should conform to current safety standards. The current may vary from 10 to 2530 amps. The system should be earthed in accordance with current standards.

5.3 Water There should be a supply of hot and cold water in the following areas: photographic studio, bindery, paper conservation laboratory (where filtration and water pressure is important), flats, washrooms, and rooms used by cleaners and maintenance staff. The supply and the water pressure should be designed specifically for the equipment which is to be installed. Care should be taken to ensure that there is no danger of damage from water or heating pipes, especially in the strongrooms. Pipes in workshops should be resistant to acidic or corrosive chemicals. No water pipe should pass above shelving containing archives. A drainage sump for water should be installed in the basement with a trap to prevent smells.

5.4 Cabling If surveillance equipment, videos, data processing equipment, computers, facsimile transmission equipment, video players, or a public address system are planned, a room should be provided to house the equipment forming a 'node' for receiving, sending and controlling the different signals. A television aerial should be provided, together with cables connecting it to the user-points in the flats, entrance hall, director's office, secretariat, photographic studio, exhibition area, education service room and the lecture room (in the projection booth and in the room itself).

5.5

Telephone

There should be a switchboard, which allows calls to be connected to all the offices, work areas and staff flats and an internal telephone line linking the strongrooms to the switchboard. The switchboard should be located in the secretariat; calls should be redirected to the caretaker's flat outside working hours.

154

APPENDIX 2

5.6 Protection

against fire and fire fighting

All the building materials should be fire-resistant. The building should be designed to prevent the creation of an up-draft in the event of a fire. Flues should be isolated in conformity with building standards. No shelving should be placed against walls through which flues pass. An automatic fire-detection system should be installed throughout the whole building linked to a smoke venting system which conforms to current standards. Fire-detection, fire-prevention, fire-protection and fire-fighting measures should be discussed with the safety services. The installation of sprinklers which automatically release water can be envisaged provided that it is accepted by the safety services. Automatic extinction by gas - Halon 1301 or an equivalent is recommended. Emergency lighting and exit signs should conform to current safety standards.

5 . 7 Protection

against theft and

vandalism

All openings on the ground floor should be protected by grilles or shutters. Intruder alarms should be provided. All areas which are not open to the public, particularly the strongrooms and workshops, should be isolated by means of doors which cannot be opened by the public. Areas open to the public - notably reading rooms, catalogue rooms and exhibition areas - can either be supervised directly or by closed circuit television cameras. Hygiene measures and arrangements for protection against fire, theft and physical attacks should be discussed with the relevant local services. Lines may be installed connecting alarms directly to the local security services.

6. Staff flats staff flats should be provided for the director, the attendant-caretaker and possibly other members of staff. The flats should have separate entrances. Their electricity supply, telephone and heating should be independent of the archives proper. Details of the areas of each flat should be provided. An individual cellar and garage should be provided for each flat. In the caretaker's flat, there should be a separate room with its own WC, bathroom and kitchenette to accommodate the relief staff during the regular caretaker's holidays.

155

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

There is a large and constantly expanding literature on the construction and equipment of archive buildings and the conservation of archives generally. To avoid having too many pages, it has been decided to produce only a select bibliography which - with some justifiable exceptions - only includes works produced in the past ten or fifteen years. This bibliography can only give some pointers about specific problems, particularly those relating to the preservation of 'new' archival materials - documents with sensitive surfaces or in magnetic mediums, etc. It does not pretend to be exhaustive. As the original text was in French, the majority of works listed here are in the French language but a number of works in English, Spanish and Italian are also given.

Bibliographies Evans, Frank B. Modern archives and manuscripts: a select bibliography. Washington, 1975 [p. 29-34: "Buildings and storage facilities"]. Basic international bibliography of archive administration/Bibliographie internationale fondamentale d'archivistique. Archivum, vol. XXV, 1978 [p. 128153: "Conservation etrestaurationdes archives"]. Bibliographies are published periodically in archive journals, notably American Archivist.

The general concept of archive buildings. General studies Current thinking about design and construction was discussed at a meeting of experts held in Vienna in late 1985. The proceedings of this meeting were published as "Archive buildings and the conservation of archival material", Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, vol. 39,1986 p. 197-289. Actes des 8 e et 9 e Conférences internationales de la Table ronde des Archives (Budapest 1963, Londres 1965): "Progrès récents en matière de construction d'archives". Paris, Archives nationales, 1965. Actes des 18e et 19e Conférences internationales de la Table ronde des Archives (Nairobi 1978, Gosier 1979). Paris, Archives nationales, 1981. [La 18e Conférence, Nairobi 1978, était consacrée aux "Normes pour l'établissement et l'organisation des institutions d'archives": normes de sécurité, p. 28-37]. Bell, Lionel. "The archivist and his accommodation". Archivaria (Ottawa), 8,1979, p. 83-90. Bell, Lionel. "Archivai accommodation in the United Kingdom". Journal of the Society of Archivists (London), vol. 6, n°6,1980, p. 345-364. British Standards Institution. Recommendations for the storage and exhibition of archival documents (BS 5454:1977).

156

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Christian, John F. and S. Einnegan. "On planning an archives". American 37,1974, p. 573-578.

Archivist,

Crespo, Carmen. "Mejores técnicas en la preservación y reproducción de documentos de archivo" (report to the 8th International Congress on Archives, Washington 1976). Archivum, XXVI, 1979, p. 93-103. See also the discussion of this report, p. 105-116. Duchein, Michel. "Les bâtiments et installations des archives", in: Manual d'archivistique. Paris, Direction des Archives de France, 1970, p. 565-606. F aye, Bernard. "Conception des bâtiments d'archives". Revue de l'Unesco pour la science de l'information, la bibliothéconomie et l'archivistique, vol. TV, n° 2,1982, p. 93-99. Flieder, Françoise et M. Duchein. Livres et documents d'archives: sauvegarde et conservation. Paris, Unesco 1983, 88 p. ("Protection du patrimoine culturel. Cahiers techniques Musées et Monuments", n° 6.) Kathpalia, Yash P. "Conservation et préservation des archives". Revue de ¡'Unesco pour la science de l'information, la bibliothéconomie et l'archivistique, vol. TV, n° 2, 1982,p. 100-109. Library interior layout and design, ed. by Rolf Fuhlrott and Michael Dewe. München, K.G. Saur, 1982, 145 p. ('IFLA Publications 24'). Notably: J. Boot, 'Physical conditions and their influence on library layout and design', p. 83-93. National Archives and Records Services (USA). Federal Archives and Records Center facility standards. Washington, General Services Administration, new editions are issued periodically. Prévention et sécurité dans les musées. Paris. Direction des Musées de France, 1977, 189 p. Rhoads, James B. "New archivai techniques" (report to the 7th International Congress on Archives, Moscow, 1972). Archivum, XXIV, 1974, p. 77-134. See also the discussion of this report, p. 135-150. Thomas, David. "Conservation: new techniques and new attitudes", Archives (London), vol. XVI,no. 40,1983,p. 167-177. Thomas, David. "Archive buildings: international comparisons", Journal of the Society of Archivists, vol. 9, no. 1,1988, p. 38-44. Walsh, Timothy. Archives and manuscripts: security. Chicago, Society of American Archivists, 1977,30 p.

Monographs on buildings Individual studies are usually produced on the major archive buildings when they are opened. These are published in national journals or as individual brochures and are essential sources of information for the study of modern buildings.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

157

Shelving Duchein, Michel. Les Rayonnages d'archives. Paris, éd. du CIMAB, 2e éd, 1974, 43 p. [The CIMAB journal also includes studies on new models of shelving every year]. Duchein, Michel. "Les rayonnages d'archives: quelques réflexions et informations". Gazette des Archives, 84,1974, p. 43-49. Fourgeot, Roger. "La rentabilité des rayonnages denses et compacts". organisation et méthodes (Paris), 52,1974, p. 19-29.

Bulletin

Preservation of special documents Bertram, Neal. "Archivage des bandes magnétiques". Sonorités (bulletin de l'Association française d'archives sonores, 2, rue de Louvois, 75002 Paris), n° 9, février 1984, p. 3-14. Ehrenberg, Ralph E. Archives and manuscripts: maps and architectural drawings. Chicago, Society of American Archivists, 1982,64 p. Ferry, Ferréolde, et A Perotin-Dumon. Archives, 103,1978, p. 236-243.

"Les archives photographiques". Gazettedes

Fontaine, Jean-Marc. "Conservation des enregistrements sonores sur bandes magnétiques", in: Centre national de la Recherche scientifique. Analyse et conservation des documents graphiques et sonores. Travaux du Centre de recherche sur la conservation des documents graphiques 1982-1983. Paris,éd. du CNRS, 1984, p. 179-257. Glenisson, Jacques. "Les documents audiovisuels", in: Manueld'archivistique. Direction des Archives de France, 1970, p. 540-555. Hendriks, Klaus B. "La conservation des documents photographiques". (Québec), vol. 13,n i , juin 1981,p. 21-30.

Paris, Archives

Hendriks, Klaus B. The preservation and restoration of photographie materials in archives and libraries: a R A M P study with guidelines. Paris, Unesco, 1984,118 p. (PGI-84/WS/1). Himly, François J. et M. Le Moel. "Les documents cartographiques", in: Manual d'archivistique. Paris, Direction des Archives de France, 1970, p. 474—496. Mc Williams, Jerry. The preservation and restoration of sound recordings. Nashville, American Association for State and Local History, 1979,160 p. Meras, Mathieu. "La protection des sceaux aux Archives départementales du R h ô n e " . Gazette des Archives, 101,1978, p. 119-123. Metman, Yves. "Les sceaux et documents scellés", in: Manuel d'archivistique, Direction des Archives de France, 1970, p. 463-473.

Paris,

Oral en boîte (L'). Guide pratique pour la collecte et la conservation des enregistrements sonores. Paris, Association française d'archives sonores, 2, rue de Louvois, 1984,54 p.

158

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Patrimoine (Le) audiovisuel en France". Gazette des Archives, 111,1980. Pérotin-Dumon, Anne. "L'audiovisuel, nouveau territoire de la conservation". Gazette des Archives, 109,1980, p. 91-124. Roper, Michael. "Advanced technical media: the conservation and storage of audiovisual and machine-readable records". Journal of the Society of Archivists (London), vol. 7,n°2,1982,p. 106-112. Scufflaire, Andrée. "Le moulage des sceaux aux Archives générales du Royaume de Belgique". Miscellanea Archivistica (Bruxelles), X, 1975, p. 17-26. Volkmann, Herbert. The preservation and restoration of colour and sound film. Berlin. International Federation of Film Archives, 1977,205 p. Weill, Georges. "La conservation des documents audiovisuels dans les archives" (rapport au 24e Congrès national des Archives de France. Montpellier 1981). Actes du Congrès de Montpellier, Paris, Archives nationales, 1982, p. 138-150.

Binding and repair Califano, Elio. "Le sauvetage et la restauration du patrimoine archivistique italien sinistré lors des inondations du4novembre 1966". Àrchivum, 18,1968, p. 115-138. Duchein, Michel. "Le traitement et la restauration des documents endommages" in: Manueld'archivistique. Paris, Direction des Archives de France, 1970, p. 607-620. Kathpalia, Yash P. Conservation et restauration des documents d'archives. Paris, Unesco, 1973, 231 p. ("Documentation. Bibliothèques et Archives: études et recherches", n° 3). "Problèmes de restauration dans les archives et les bibliothèques". Archives et Bibliothèques de Belgique, XLVII, 1976, p. 1-43. "Teoria e principi del restauro: tavola rotonda". Bolletin dell' Istituto Centrate per la Patologia del Libro "Alfonso Gallo" (Roma), XXXV, 1978-1979,p. 111-189. (See also the large specialist literature, notably the journal Restaurator, published in Copenhagen.)

Microfilm Encyclopédie des matériels de micrographie (fasicules are published periodically). Éd . Informascience, Centre de documentation scientifique et technique du CNRS, 26, rue Boyer, 75971 Paris, Cedex 20. Goulard, Claude. La conservation des microformes. Paris. Centre de documentation scientifique et technique du CNRS, 1983. Goulard, Claude. Le stockage et l'accès aux informations enregistrées sur microformes. Paris, Centre de documentation scientifique et technique du CNRS, 1981. Leisinger, Albert H. La microphotographie aux archives. Paris, Conseil international des Archives, 1975,58 p.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fumigation and protection

159

against pests

Flieder, Françoise et M. Duchein. "Ladésinfectiondesdocumentsd'archivesattaqués par les micro-organismes et les insectes". Gazette des Archives, 87,1974, p. 225237. Gallo, Fausta. "Esperienze nel campo della disinfezione e disinfestazione del materiale librario". Bollettino dell'Istituto Centrale per la Patologia del Libro "Alfonso Gallo" (Roma), XXXIV, 1976-1977, p. 53-91. Strassberg, R. "The use of fumigants in archival repositories". American Archivist, vol. 41, n° 1,1978, p. 25-36.

Climatic control in buildings Guichen, Gaëlde. Climat dans les musées: mesures, fiches techniques. Rome, Centre international d'études pour la conservation et la restauration des biens culturels, 1980. Jayot, Franz. "L'humidité dans les dépôts d'archives: instruments et méthodes de mesure". Gazette des Archives, 123,1983, p. 232-245. Plenderleith, H.J. et P. Philippot. Climatologie et conservation dans les musées. Rome, Centre international d'études pour la conservation et la restauration des biens culturels, 1960. "Pollution (La) atmosphérique par l'anhydride sulfureux : sa détection dans les dépôts d'archives". Gazette des Archives, 47,1964, p. 163-166. Thomson, Garry. "Climate control policy", in: ICOM Committee for Conservation, 5th triennial meeting (Zagreb 1978), Paris, ICOM, 1980. Thomson, Garry. The Museum Environment, London, 1978.

Fire-protection

and

fire-fighting

Bell, Lionel. "Fire detection and extinction in British repositories". Journal of the Society of Archivists (London), vol. 6,no°6,1980, p. 361-362. Guyonnet, Jean-François et al. La Maîtrise de l'incendie dans les bâtiments. Paris, éd. Maloine, 1983,307 p. ("Publications de l'Université de Compiègne"). Quétin, Michel. "A propos de la prévention et de la protection contre l'incendie". Gazette des Archives, 92,1976, p. 33-47. Sécurité contre l'incendie dans les établissements recevant du public. Paris, éd. des Journaux officiels, rééditions périodiques mises à jour. Stender, Walter TV. and E. Walker. "The National Personnel Records Center fire: a study in disaster". American Archivist, vol. 37,n°4,1974, p. 521-549.

160

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Use of old, buildings for archives Haymond, Jay. "Adaptative re-use of old buildings for archives". American Archivist, vol. 45, n° 1,1982,p. 11-18.

Archive buildings in tropical

countries

Bell, Lionel et B. Faye. La Conception des bâtiments d'archives en pays tropical. Paris, Unesco, 1979,190 p. ("Documentation, Bibliothèques et Archives: études et recherches"). Duchein, Michel. "Les bâtiments et équipements d'archives dans les pays tropicaux", in: Actes de la seconde conférence des Archives antillaises (Guadeloupe-Martinique 1975). München, K.G. Saur, 1980, p. 127-145 (Archivum, volume hors série n°2).

Journals The main archive journals publish articles on the construction and equipment of archive buildings fairly regularly, notably: American Archivist (United States), Archivalische Zeitschrift (German Federal Republic), Der Archivar (German Federal Republic), Archivaria (Canada), Archives and Journal of the Society of Archivists (United Kingdom), Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique, Archivmitteilungen (German Democratic Republic), Gazette des Archives (France), Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato (Italy). The series of RAMP studies and related documents published by Unesco include a number of studies on the preservation of archives and the design of archive buildings. See also the Proceedings of the International Congresses on Archives published in the journal Archivum. Volume XXXI of Archivum, the Journal of the International Council on Archives (1986, 142 pp.) is devoted to studies of the major national archive buildings constructed from 1970 to 1984. Specialist journals on architecture, engineering and audio-visual, photographic, film and computer technology should not be ignored. There are too many to list here.

161

Index Access to buildings 44 administrative documentation 86 air-conditioning 104—111 air filtration see air pollution air pollution 110-111 aisles see gangways alarms see fire and theft appraisal and sorting 64 architect and archivist 28 archive museums see exhibitions archives-definition 25-26 - m e a s u r e m e n t of 46,137 area of site 38 see also strongrooms Bindery 69-71 blinds see sunlight boxes 73-74 b r i e f - architectural 27 - m o d e l 141-154 buildings - access to 44 - c o n v e r s i o n 29-31 - e x t e n s i o n 37-38 - f o u n d a t i o n s 46 - h e i g h t 37 - l o c a t i o n 33-36 - m a n a g e m e n t 123 - o r i e n t a t i o n 35 - p l a n 41^14 - s t r u c t u r e 45-46 bundles 74 Cafeteria 92 -staff 77 card indexes see finding aids carrels - in strongrooms 60 - for public use 86 catalogues see finding aids ceilings, height of 47 chutes for emergency evacuation 102 cine-films 58 cloakrooms 82,92 compact shelving see shelving computer records 58-59,105 computers 122 conservation laboratory 71-72 conveyors, automatic 122 copyingseephotographicstudio and reprographics workshop Data processing see computer records and computers definitions 25-26 dehumidification see airconditioning destruction of records 62-64 disabled,access for 44 discs see sound recordings display panels see exhibitions

doors, fire resistant 98 dryness see air-conditioning dust 116 Education service 90-91 electrical installation 117-118 elimination see destruction entrance hall 79-80 exhibitions 89-90 exits, emergency 98 extensions see buildings extinguishers see fire Facsimile transmission 122 finding aids 84-85 fire 97-102 floors - coverings 48 - fire resistant 97 - loading 45—46 - strongroom 45-46 foundations see buildings fumigation 62,115-116 fungi 114-116 Gangways and aisles 49 garages 44 gas 118 glass, filtering 112 goods lifts see lifts Handling 119-122 heating see air-conditioning humidity see air-conditioning and insulation hurricanes see tropical climates Inquiry office 80 insects 114-116see also tropical climates and air-conditioning insulation-humidity 106-107 - sound 117 - thermal 106-107 intercom see telephone intermediate storage 127-128 internal transport 119-122 inventories see finding aids Labelling 75-76 lamination see conservation laboratory lecture rooms 90 library 85-86 lifts 98,120 lighting 113-114 lightning conductors 98 loading bay see reception areas and destruction of records location see buildings

Magnetic mediums, documents in 58-59,105 maintenance workshop 76 maps and plans, conservation of 54-55 meeting rooms 91 microfilms - conservation 57-58 - use 87 museum see exhibitions Numbering see labelling Offices 76-77 Packing see boxes and bundles paper, acidity of, 110 parking 44 paternoster 120 photocopying see reprographics workshop photographic studio 65-67 photographs, conservation of 56-57,105 plan cases see maps and plans plan of buildings 41-44 Reading rooms 81-88 reception areas - public 79-80, 82-83 - goods deliveries 61-62 record centres see intermediate storage reprographics workshop 68-69 r e s e a r c h - administrative see administrative documentation - by the public see reading rooms and inquiry office - in strongrooms 60 rest room 91-92 rodents 116 roller trucks 122 roofs 96 Seals - moulding and repair 72 - preservation of 55-56 secretariat 76-77 security 103-104,123 see also fire and theft semi-current records see intermediate storage shelving 47,48-54 showcases see exhibitions showers 78 site see area and buildings, location sorting see appraisal sound insulation see insulation

162

INDEX

sound recordings 58-59 staff flats 93-94 stairs 98 stamping 76 standards, dimensional and technical 137-140 storage, intermediate 127-130 stores for materials 77 strongrooms 45-69 - area of 47 - isolation of 41-42 - research in 60 - specialise maps and plans, computer records, magnetic mediums, sound recordings, microfilms, photographs, seals

- see also air-conditioning, lighting, fire, theft structure see buildings sunlight 111-112 Telephones 119 - public 92 temperature see air-conditioning termites see insects and tropical climates theft 103-104 thermal insulation see insulation toilets 78,92 transfers see reception areas transport, internal 119-122 trollies 121 tropical climates 131-133

Ultra-violet light 87-88 underground repositories 36-37

Vaults 59 ventilation see air-conditioning

W a l l s - e x t e r i o r 47 - fire resistant 97 water supply 118 windows in strongrooms see sunlight work-flow patterns 42-43 workshops see under t h e type of workshop: photography, binding, etc.

ILLUSTRATIONS

163

164

ILLUSTRATIONS

üiisiii;«. iilIÏSillg i i m i u a g IÜJÜ1I2« "lUIMIH&llluinvw

III 2. A r c h i v e s d é p a r t e m e n t a l e s d e la S e i n e - M a r i t i m e , R o u e n , F r a n c e ( 1 9 6 0 ; a r c h i t e c t s : B a h r m a n n , L e r o y , D u s s a u l x a n d N o ë l ) . An 8 3 m h i g h t o w e r ; t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i v e a r e a s are in the lower two-storey building.

ILLUSTRATIONS

III 3. Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne, Créteil, F r a n c e ( 1 9 7 4 ; architects: D. Badani and P. R o u x - D o r l u t ) . T h e windowless strongrooms are in the b l o c k supported on sixteen concrete pillars; the administrative areas are underneath it.

165

166

ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS

167

Hl 5. Archives d é p a r t e m e n t a l e s de la Haute-Vienne, Limoges, F r a n c e ( 1 9 8 5 ; a r c h i t e c t : J. Portejoie). A trefoil-shaped building; the s t r o n g r o o m s are in three blocks r o u n d a central core; the administrative areas are on t h e g r o u n d floor.

Ill 6. Archives d é p a r t e m e n t a l e s de l'Hérault, Montpellier, F r a n c e ( 1 9 7 9 ; architect: M. Charrier). The s t r o n g r o o m s are on t h e f o u r lower floors; t h e administrative areas are on t h e t o p floor.

168

ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS

169

170

ILLUSTRATIONS

III 9. Archives nationales d u Quebec, Sainte-Foy, Canada ( 1 9 7 9 ; a r c h i t e c t s : Begin a n d Rodrigue). Use of a c h u r c h w i t h a vast interior space for t h e archives.

ILLUSTRATIONS

WORK AREA

1 1

STACKS

« CIRCULATIONS

WORK AREA

STACKS

2

WORK A R E A

STACKS

III 10. Diagrams showing the isolation of strongrooms from the working areas.

171

172

ILLUSTRATIONS

STACKS 1

STACKS 2

WORK AREA

1

III 11. Diagrams showing the isolation of strongrooms from the working areas.

ILLUSTRATIONS

TT

X

T

FUMIGATION SORTING ARRANGEMENT

I

TRANSFERS

1

— a r

1

2

SEARCH ROOM

3FFICES

Tt i

DOCUMENTS FOR DESTRUCTION

173

T 4

]

i

EDUCATION SERVICE EXHIBITIONS LECTURES

J

SECRETARIAT

T 5

A . ENTRANCE H A L L

1

I

D I A G R A M OF THE SIX PRINCIPAL WORK FLOW PATTERNS 1. Incoming documents 2. Documents for destruction 3. Documents being consulted

Ill 12.

Plan of the main circulation routes.

4. Searchers 5. Visitors to offices 6. Visitors to exhibitions etc.

1

174

ILLUSTRATIONS GROUND FLOOR

M 13. Plan of the ground floor of the Archives départementales du Val-d'Oise, Cergy (see plate 8). The entrance hall and the exhibition area form an open space which can be subdivided by mobile partitions.

ILLUSTRATIONS

III 14. Plan of the first f l o o r of t h e Archives d é p a r t e m e n t a l e s du Val-d'Oise, Cergy (see plate 8).

175

176

ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS

177

III 16. Plan of the ground floor of the Archives départementales des Alpes-Maritimes, Nice, France (1981; architects: Toscan and Mosser).

Ill 17. Plan of the first floor of the Archives départementales des Alpes-Maritimes, Nice, France (1981 ; architects: Toscan and Mosser). The area above the appraisal room and the caretaker's flat, shown as a terrace on the plan, will eventually allow the construction of two strongroom blocks which will double the capacity of the repository.

178

ILLUSTRATIONS

III 18. S e c t i o n of the Archives d é p a r t e m e n t a l e s d u Val-de-Marne, Créteil, F r a n c e (see p l a t e 3). T h e s t r o n g r o o m s are divided into f o u r b l o c k s o n t o p of one a n o t h e r f o r m i n g a f i r e - p r o o f b o x . Each block c o n t a i n s three f l o o r s of shelving o n a self-supporting m e t a l f r a m e w o r k ; t h e r e are a total o f twelve floors in all.

180

ILLUSTRATIONS

STACKS