When I was at Colonial Williamsburg we researched and installed compacting
shelving units in our Collections & Conservation building which opened in 1997.

We went with the custom made storage units made from anodized aluminum by the
Crystallizations company. We liked the light weight and superior strength of
those units along with their non-reactive qualities to house collections.
Furthermore their hand cranked motive system worked almost effortlessly. There is
almost no shaking with the Crystallizations units that I can recall.

We prefered the hand-cranked system because you never know when power will be
disrupted - and it is important to access collections at all times,
especially if you are in the midst of a disaster when power may be cut-off.

For instance we installed a compacting system for registrarial records that
was electriclly powered and had periodic failures with it - even when the power
was on - and it always took a company technician to come out and do the
repair work.

The only problem that we encountered with the Crystallizations units was that
of remnants of metals chips and machine oils from their manufacturing - they
had not cleaned up the units thoroughly and so we had to contact them to
ensure that the units were clean and degreased before we could start to install the
collections. This prompted a bit of a delay in the process but we had no
extra expense since it was in the contract that the units be clean and suitable
for use before their final payment was sent.

The Crystallizations units are expense - sort of the Cadillac of compacting
storage - but well worth the investment!

Here is their web site:
http://www.csistorage.com/

I'd be interested to hear of anyone else's experiences with the CSI products.



Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Artifacts
2930 South Birch Street
Denver, CO  80222
303-300-5257
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