A question for you all:  If you were starting your museum from the ground
up, would you store your collection on- or offsite?  My institution
collects a wide variety of formats, some of which need to be stored in
strictly controlled environments.  Onsite storage seems most sensible to
me: the collection is not liable to be damaged by frequent transport to
and from an offsite storage area; the museum is in control of
environmental conditions and can set up micro-environments for certain
formats (cold storage for color motion pictures and still  prints and
negatives, eg.); staff would be more likely to monitor the overall
condition of the collection if it were nearby.

I can appreciate the wisdom of storing copies of valuable items (sound
recordings, motion pictures, documents) in a remote site to insure that,
in case of a disaster at the main site, unique materials are not
permanently lost.  But the original items?  We'd lose too much control if
they were stored remotely, I think.  On the other hand, building
controlled storage areas is costly.

Do you have strong feelings about this issue?  Or any experiences that
should convince our staff to store collection items on or off the
museum's site?  If so, please let me know about them.  If I'm going to
make the case for onsite storage, I have to do it in the next 3 weeks or
so.  Many thanks.

Marsha Maguire
Experience Music Project
(206) 450-1997
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