The archival collections begin their move into their refurbished home.
New shelving being assembled.
The archive repository 2 years ago (when our current archivist began work)
Although the archival repository room had always had good climate control, its shelving (or lack thereof) left something to be desired. Many of the most historically interesting collections had been stored in enclosed metal cabinets, which were not only an inefficient use of space, but also not ideal from a conservation standpoint.
This spring we purchased 30 units of used industrial-quality steel shelving from a local NJ dealer. Setting them up, however, required that the repository room be almost completely emptied in order to provide space for the shelf assembly. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as it forced our archivist to make a more detailed inventory of the collections than he had previously done, and even led to the "discovery" of some materials we thought were lost (or did not know existed), such as three additional volumes of Oleksii Balabas diaries.
The refurbished archive room not only makes much more efficient use of the space, but allows for proper location control for cataloging purposes, and represents another step forward in bringing our archives up to modern professional standards of storage, description, and accessibility.