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Sunday, October 04, 2009

Ind. Gov't. - State archives still waiting for new roof

In 2005 I wrote an article for Res Gestae titled "Indiana appellate court records – how accessible?" From p. 4:

Skipping backward to the earliest Indiana court records, 18th and 19th century order books, docket books, pleadings and briefs are stored in State Archives. This agency, with funding provided by the Supreme Court, is currently engaged in a push to open up Indiana court records from 1817-1868. But it will be very slow going.

I took a trip out to Public Records and State Archives, located in the east side of Indianapolis, in October [2005], and was given a guided tour though the temperature and humidity controlled vault where these early records are kept. * * *

Each of these 1817-1868 cases is folded up in thirds, like a will or similar document may be folded today. At some point in history the case records were wrapped in kraft-type paper and boxed in narrow file boxes. Most have remained undisturbed for more than a century. There are 12,522 of these cases. * * *

After the 1817-1868 cases have been processed, there are bankers boxes of the 1869-1900 records. These records may include the trial transcript. Then, on to the 20th century, where there are the 52 skids of uncataloged court records.

State Archives has only six people on its staff. I’m told their active volunteer programs are what keeps them going. Archives is hoping that Indiana lawyers will volunteer to help with the Stage 2 processing of the 1817-1868 records.

What I remember most about the archives is that they are located in a gigantic warehouse building, housing seeming acres of metal shelving, and that everything was sheathed in plastic sheets, the kind painters use. Why? Because of severe leaks through the much-repaired flat roof of the old RCA building. Employees were very concerned about the continuing leaks, and were hopeful something permanent would be done soon by the powers that be.

That was four years ago. Today the Indianapolis Star has this story by Will Higgins, titled "Archives are at the mercy of nature: So far, efforts to provide rainproof way to store state's treasures have come up dry." Some quotes:

Indiana's state archives, original and irreplaceable paperwork documenting the people's business since before statehood, got rained on a few weeks ago -- for the third time this year.

A fourth time seems inevitable.
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Among the most treasured documents are the state constitution; the earliest state Supreme Court cases; John Dillinger's prison records; and the contract, from 1964, between the Indiana State Fair Board and the Beatles.

The building that houses them, built nearly four decades ago by RCA as a warehouse for eight-track tapes, has a leaky roof. And while Indiana's Department of Administration has scheduled some patch-up work in the coming days, people familiar with the building say the roof surely will leak again -- as it has for the past decade, despite repeated repairs.

The recent soaking -- 30 boxes of House and Senate bills from the 1960s -- was discovered promptly, and the documents were dried out and saved. They've been returned to their shelves and covered by sheets of clear plastic.

There is no other help in sight. The Department of Administration hoped to put a new roof on the building this year and included in its budget $2.4 million for that purpose.

But Gov. Mitch Daniels killed that plan. "In December 2008, we got a revenue forecast that showed we had a three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar hole in our budget," said the governor's spokeswoman, Jane Jankowski. "Beginning right then and there, we had to make a lot of decisions about what we could and couldn't spend." * * *

Budgets to store and maintain historical documents vary widely from state to state, because some archivists are responsible for every county's documents while others are primarily concerned with state business. Iowa's budget was $434,000, according to the CSA's study; Washington state's was $10 million.

Indiana's building, said Jerry Handfield, Washington state's archivist and a board member of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, is "an accident waiting to happen."

He speaks with authority -- he has visited half the states' archives and, in the 1990s, was Indiana's archivist.

The old eight-track repository, on East 30th Street, initially was intended as temporary quarters. The archives needed to be cleared out of the basement of the State Library, where they'd been since 1932, because the basement was being remodeled.

That was in 2001.

Leaks aren't the only worry, said Pierce, who notes that several tornadoes have touched down near the building. The way he sees it, "we're at a point now where we're one day closer to a disaster."

[Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington] said he plans to bring up the issue again in the next legislative session.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 4, 2009 08:44 AM
Posted to Indiana Government