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Iron Mountain is Commission's top pick for storage: Pa. facility sought for archival quality(The Dominion Post in Morgantown (WV) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jan. 31--The high security surrounding the vaults at Iron Mountain isn't the most appealing feature of the underground storage facility, according to county officials. Monongalia County Clerk Carye Blaney said the county is most interested in the storage facility, located in Slippery Rock, Pa., because it offers "archival-quality" preservation. The Monongalia County Commission signed a lease with Iron Mountain during its Wednesday meeting, and plans to move the county's old documents to a 750-square-foot vault in the facility. The county has deeds and wills dating back to the 1700s and 1800s. There are election results from 1912. There are County Commission meeting minutes from 1923. The state requires the county to keep all its documents, Blaney said, and the county is currently keeping them in several storage areas throughout the courthouse, as well as in the Monongalia County Magistrate Court building. Many of those documents have turned yellow and brittle, Blaney said. The paper is cracking and tearing. The words are fading. Microfilm backups of the paper documents are also aging. "You can visibly see the deterioration and destruction," she said. "It's not like you can take these documents and just stick them in a file and put them in a filing cabinet. That won't preserve the quality of the paper for an extended period of years, which is the point." The vaults at Iron Mountain are temperature-controlled, Blaney said. Air flow through the vaults is regulated. Humidity vapor barriers will protect the papers' condition. "Those are all of the things that are important to preserving paper documents and film," she said. Blaney said Iron Mountain is the closest storage facility of its kind to Morgantown. There are storage facilities as close as Pittsburgh that offer temperature-controlled storage spaces, but they do not offer the other services Iron Mountain uses to preserve the documents. There are other benefits, aside from document preservation, the county gets from choosing Iron Mountain, officials said. County Commission President Asel Kennedy said the facility offers highly secure vaults with protection from intruders, as well as earthquakes and other disasters. "We don't need the security at all," he said. "But it's nice. It's nice to know it won't be tampered with." Blaney said an archivist with the state Division of Culture and History visited the courthouse and went through the county's old documents and its microfilm collection. The archivist recommended Iron Mountain as a way for the county to store and preserve those materials, she said. The County Commission acted on Blaney's recommendation, Kennedy said. He said the county is renting the smallest space Iron Mountain offers because of the price, but the county has enough documents to rent a larger storage space. "Right now we're only taking up the documents that are critical," Kennedy said. "We could rent a bigger space, but in my mind, if a book will last 200 years, there's no reason to take it up there in year 199." The county will pay about $2,700 a month to rent the 750-square-foot space, which adds up to more than $32,000 a year. The county is also paying Iron Mountain to install shelving, prepare the documents for transfer and transfer the documents to the storage facility. The cost is estimated to be about $22,613, according to a project proposal Iron Mountain gave the county. "It is expensive," Kennedy said. "But we can afford to do it. It's protecting the oldest of our documents." Blaney said the preservation of the documents was an issue that needed to be addressed, especially since the documents and their microfilm backups were being stored side by side. If anything were to happen, such as a fire at the courthouse, all would be lost. "You have to use the best judgement here," she said. "We'll be able to preserve and protect our documents for the next 50 and 100 years. I believe it's a valuable investment for the residents of Mon County." To see more of The Dominion Post or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dominionpost.com/. Copyright (c) 2009, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |