[NHCOLL-L:847] re: compactor systems

[Judith Price]

Depending on the size of your collection room, think about the number of aisles you will have.  Most compactor installations only plan on having enough slack to open one aisle at a time between  units.  Plan on how wide you really need that space to be for access with carts, rolling stair units, etc.; also consider the frequency of access and how many people are involved.  

You will have to get used to the fact that if several people are accessing several different parts of the collection, that the row you want will not be the one open when you come back.  Either plan for more than one aisle, or talk among the staff about being patient with this eventuality.  Have "parking spaces" (tables, carts) available to put things down while you crank the units open.

Here at our new building we had our compactors put in flush with the new concrete floors, and one unit at each end of a range is fixed so we don't have the problem with stoppers sticking up in the middle of the floor.  We do notice a real difference in performance between the manual units in the scientific collections and the electric ones in our library.  Even without power outages, the library units have trouble staying on-line, and users often need to fetch the library staff to help reset the system.

Think about disaster plans, too.  If the sprinklers go off or the roof leaks, how are you going to protect the collection?  We have plastic sheets cut and folded on top of each row, ready to pull into position, but a dry run (pun!) showed that even with rolling ladders this is not going to be very speedy.

And as John mentioned, try to discourage speed trials when cranking the units open.  Not only can they really crash into each other and jolt all the specimens therein, but the danger exists of breaking the chains or other mechisms which run the operation.

And I thought I only had a short message brewing...
Judith

(Ms) Judith C. Price
Secretary, Canadian Society of Zoologists
Assistant Collection Manager, Invertebrates
Canadian Museum of Nature
P.O. Box 3443, Station D
Ottawa, ON  K1P 6P4
jprice at mus-nature.ca
tel. 613 566-4263
fax 613 364-4027

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