Storage strategy

If you were starting a 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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                  Conservation DistList Instance 9:36
                 Distributed: Sunday, October 22, 1995
                        Message Id: cdl-9-36-010
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