You have done your due diligence, analyzed your agency’s mission and identified your most essential and irreplaceable government records. These are the records that you will need to meet operational responsibilities under national security emergencies or disaster conditions. These vital records are the critical 5-7% that you can’t live without. These are the critical assets that will ensure that your agency can recover from a disruption or emergency and continue operations. So what’s next?
Select the right storage for the material
When you are faced with an unfortunate event or disruption, access to your vital records is critical to continuing operations and meeting FEMA regulations. The risks are real—and that’s why preserving the accessibility and usability of these records is so important. To ensure that your material does not degrade and the records remain useable, you have to consider the right storage method. Selecting the right storage solution hinges the material of the records. Without proper storage, materials can and will deteriorate—making a vital record completely unusable or extremely expensive to recover.
What to consider?
Paper
All paper isn’t created equal and, unfortunately, a government record may not have been seen as vital when it was first created. Paper discolors, turns brittle and becomes moldy. Older technology electrostatic copies may transfer ink to other objects. And, the dyes from highlighting and handwritten markups on documents are very susceptible to fading.
Film
Film records and the dye image layers on top of these plastics degrade rapidly unless kept at lower temperatures and humidity. For example, acetate-based film, used from the 1930s to the present, is inherently prone to a type of deterioration known as “vinegar syndrome” unless controlled storage conditions are provided. If left unchecked, film may be rendered useless over time.
Magnetic media (audit, video and computer tapes)
These records are also plastic-based, although they are more stable than film. However, they bring the added concern of stabilizing the polymers containing magnetic particles holding the data on the material—which degrade rapidly at room temperature.
Digital records
There are special concerns with digital records due to risks associated with hardware and software obsolescence and the difficulty of properly preserving metadata. As technology continues to rapidly evolve, the “care and feeding” of vital digital records can become extremely costly. But, if proper steps aren’t taken to keep digital records in sync with new hardware and software levels—while safeguarding metadata—these records may become worthless.
Vital Record Storage
Once you’ve identified your vital records and know what materials must be preserved, the next step is determining the best way to care for them. Storage is the single most important factor determining the useful life of information media. Proper preservation of vital records calls for a storage solution that provides the following highly specialized features:
- Subterranean facilities with high resistance to seismic activity, tornadoes, hurricanes and other natural and man-made disasters
- Controlled environments tailored to meet the special requirements of the materials to be preserved, most importantly highly stable temperatures and relative humidity
- Temperature options should range from 68 to 25 degrees
- Fahrenheit
- Relative humidity options should range from 20 to 50 percent
- Class A three- and four-hour National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) fire ratings
- Advanced gaseous fire suppression systems to eliminate the risk of water damage
Multiple levels of security, including 24/7 access control
Done properly, such storage solutions minimize risk by using approaches to preservation that are well understood, documented and have proven successful time and again.
Related Content:
- Managing Government Records: Vital Records are Vital
- Federal Mandate: Presidential Memorandum – Managing Government Records
- Ten Steps to Cost-Effective Government Information Management
- How Long is Long Enough: Records Retention and Your Agency
- How Researching Ernest Hemingway’s Past led me to Federal Records
