 National Archives was created in 1934. That's pretty late in the history of the United States. We came pretty late to the creation of a way, an agency that was going to be responsible for record keeping in this country. Prior to 1934, each of the agencies that created the records were responsible for maintaining those records for whatever uses they needed until they no longer needed them. Because they were kept in agency custody for such a long time and under varying conditions, sometimes very poor, there were some losses through poor storage conditions, but the major losses occurred because of fire. There were some dramatic and devastating fires in various agencies throughout the history of the United States that destroyed a lot of historical records. Because of that concern about the records and their future developed among primarily the historical organizations in the United States. And there was a lobbying effort that began with the American Historical Association and affiliated groups trying to get the Congress convinced that the United States needed to set up a National Archives and agency that would care for the records into the future. Well, the mission of the National Archives is to ensure that the history of this nation, as it is told through its government records, are preserved so that future generations will know what the country did, how it did it, and can help chart what they need to do in the future. In the Washington area, all of the records of the federal government were stored in the National Archives building, downtown Pennsylvania Avenue, and unfortunately, the space in that building ran out by the late 1960s. And at that time, we basically needed a new building then. In the intervening period of time, we stored records in leased space. We also used our Federal Records Center in Supland, Maryland, as a storage place for archival records. It had never been designed for that. It was for the storage of temporary records. We took administrative staffs and put them in leased space so we were scattered in a dozen different locations throughout the Washington metropolitan area. We started looking for alternative places to store records. We thought it was important to try and provide an easy access to any new building and it seemed sensible to try and find another location within the District of Columbia. However, there were very few parcels of land left that were in federal control. We could not afford, we knew, to go out and pay commercial rates to buy the kind of land that we were going to need for this facility. And there really wasn't a big enough site that wasn't already dedicated to some other purpose that was still in federal control. And at that point, we began broadening our search out to the suburbs. The land that Archives 2 is built on was donated by the University of Maryland and that donation was brought about in large measure by the intervention of Steny Hoyer who talked to the President of the University of Maryland and didn't have to do much of a sales talk to convince him that it would be a good thing for the University to have the archives built on property adjacent to the University of Maryland. So once we got his support for the project, things began to happen very rapidly. I don't think we had any idea when we started what was going to be involved in the process to get this building built. No idea of the level of detail, the kinds of decisions that were going to have to be made. There were a lot of people who were brought into the process. Many Archives people spent hours and hours of their time helping us define the various parts of the building and how they should be laid out and the functions and so forth. And archivists that have visited us either from the states or from various countries that have come and looked at this building and after they've gone through the tour and they've seen how the building is laid out and where the various functions occur and so forth. Their one universal comment is I can tell that archivists had a great deal to say about how this building was designed because it does work the way an archive works. What we tried to do with Archives 2 was build today the best archives building that we possibly could. A building that would solve all of the problems that we had experienced over the 50 years of living in the first archives building downtown. We had 33 acres of densely wooded land in the middle of a residential neighborhood. There were two roads that provided access to the site, Metserot Road on the north and a Delphi on the south, both of which were two lane roads. We knew that the county had planned for some time to widen that last stretch of a Delphi road but once they knew that we were coming to College Park, it became a higher priority. The other areas of the property that gave us some cause for concern had to do with the fact that we had surveyed the property as required by federal law to determine if there were any locations of archaeological significance and as a result of that survey, yes, they did find one particular area of significance. We opted not to disturb the site. That was the simplest and least expensive thing to do and that meant that the architects would then have to site the building in a way that we wouldn't have a problem there. Complicating the siting of the building was also the fact that there was a wetland located at the north end of the site. That was also the location they chose for the stormwater detention pond in order to collect all of the runoff from the site so that it didn't discharge onto neighboring properties. The third thing that dictated the siting of the building was the tree preservation effort. We hired an urban forester to do a survey of the entire site and identify all the stands of significant hardwood trees and help us decide where best to locate the building so that we could preserve the best trees on the property. By the time all that was taken into consideration, there was only one place to put the building and that's where it ultimately went. And it starts pretty much at the top of the hill as you come up the drive from Adelphi Road and then stretches out gracefully down the hill toward Messerrod Road. The public was interested in this project from the very beginning and I was asked to go to a meeting of a local citizens association in April of 1988 which was 18 months before groundbreaking and I think that worked out well because we were able to consider a number of their suggestions. They mainly were concerned about three things. The height of the building was very important to them. This was a residential community. They knew we were talking about a building that was half the size of the Pentagon. They were very concerned about what it was going to look like and what it was going to do to the image of their residential community. So we talked through that with them and ultimately decided on a building that's no more than six stories at its highest point which brings it just about to the same height as the trees and the trees do a good job of screening it from the surrounding area. It was at one of those meetings that a member of the community recommended that we build a parking structure. At that time the project was only considering using surface parking and they said in order to save more trees why don't you build a parking garage? We did go back and passed the architects and engineers with looking at how we could build a structure that would enable us to greatly reduce the area taken for parking and still stay within the budget for the project and they did accomplish that and found a wonderful solution that puts the structure right into the side of the hill so that all you see is the top deck of the parking structure. I know every time I've ever walked by a construction site I like to stop and look and see what's going on and I knew that the community felt the same way so I thought why not invite them in and show them around and that way they'll know exactly what's going on and they'll know that we're doing what we promised them that we would do. I met with a number of people after the building was constructed who had been involved in those early community meetings and everyone that I spoke through was very pleased with how it turned out. We had told them that once the building was completed that they were certainly welcome to come. The cafeteria is open to the public. There are film presentations at the new archives building that people can attend free of charge and once they started doing that I think that they realized this was a pretty nice addition to the neighborhood. It didn't turn out to be a horrible thing that people predicted it would be and it added something. Because this was such a unique facility we had to do something different to ensure that both the quality was built into the facility and that we were able to complete it on the schedule that we originally mapped out as well as within the funds that we had available to us. The only direction that I provided to the architect engineer was to provide me with a facility that was functional and that met the needs of the National Archives. We tried to be very proactive in our approach to the design and construction and anticipate what was going to happen. I decided to break the total contract up into multiple bid packages such that we could put out the first bid package for clearing and grading long before the completed design of the facility was available to me. The reason we decided to go out on the street before the completed design was available was to take advantage of the economic climate that was in existence at the time due to the recession where everybody was hungry for work. The packages were structured such that the scopes of work in each of the bid packages were either let at a time when there'd only be one contractor on the site or if we had two or more contractors they were working in basically different areas of the site so they couldn't interfere with each other's work or delay each other. The first activity required on the site was to clear and grade the area of the site that was going to be consumed by both the garage and by the building. The garage had to be constructed first to provide the temporary parking that I was going to need for at one time five to six hundred workers who were on the site building the main building and that became our second construction package which combined both the garage as well as site utilities. The mobile shelving contract had to be awarded early in the process in order to ensure that the rails that were going to be installed by the general contractor would be available at the appropriate time in the project schedule. Because the rails had to go down on the structural slab the building had to be open where the shelving was going down in order for the concrete pumpers to be able to have access to place the concrete. The structural design for the slabs resulted in a waffle slab design which allowed us to achieve two main objectives that is provide a structure that would support the anticipated loading of 350 pounds per square foot as well as minimal deflection. The employees and the workforce had some degree of self pride in the work they did out here as well as the knowledge that they were contributing to a building that would truly stand a test of time and that would house the records for not only this generation but for generations to come. And one of the things we did to instill that pride is when we had our topping out ceremony for the building each of the workforce signed a name on the back of a precast panel that was the last panel lifted into place on the building. Although it looks easy when the project comes out on time and on schedule there's a lot of work that goes into these projects and I'm not sure everybody fully appreciates it. I know I do and I certainly appreciate all the effort that everybody has put into this project from the laborer who was knee deep in concrete to the people in archive staff who provided the assistance to tell us who are dumb engineers what an archives building is and what they need to function in an archive building. This building is one in which there is no other building like this in the world. We did go look at several archives facilities in Europe but the technology that they were using was not what we expected to do here. There are two things that drove the design. One was the site. The site is a very long narrow one and we were charged with fitting a two million square foot building on that site. The other was the program that the National Archives gave us and a program is a list of requirements what sort of spaces would go in the building how those spaces work and how they relate to each other in a way that makes the building function easily. Priority as far as the archives were concerned was flow of materials, preservation of materials accessibility to the public. Security and lack of visible security was a consideration that we had to deal with and it did influence the flow and circulation of the building. There are basically three levels of security in this building. One, the general public is allowed to go into the auditorium in the cafeteria. Second level is the space where materials are brought in from the stack areas for those researchers to use. The third level of security is where the materials themselves are kept, the stack areas and within those stack areas there are spaces that are a little bit more sensitive than others. We designed a building that was of three materials on the outside, green glass, stainless steel and white precast concrete. Then the decision comes in to treat the interior. We built landmark atriums in the building as you go through. The atrium areas not only function as orientation spaces and circulation spaces but bring some light into this very wide building. It's site related in that public spaces are located on one side, stack areas are located on the other people circulate down the center to the research room. We had a very large team and a very tight knit team working with the architects were interior designers and we had outside consultants basically from all over the country and everyone had the mission in mind all the time. Everyone was very cooperative, mechanical, electrical, structural engineers had to have the same image in mind. As architects we look for opportunities to take the design of the building a step further rather than just being a functional piece of work we try to do something that is more aesthetically pleasing. In this case we had the opportunity to design a research, five story research room which we built in a large curved shape. We have circulation devices in this building that we used as design opportunities. At the very end of the building we have a three story spiral staircase that's clad in stainless steel and plaster. We gave ourselves time and spent lots of energy on those sorts of things. Which I think lends a different spirit to the building. Something that is not only a functional building but has a spirit to it and a sculptural and artful quality to it. The mission of the National Archives is to preserve what are considered to be the historically significant documents produced by the United States government. The building that was constructed Archives 2 meets that mission by providing an environmentally controlled stack areas that will ensure the long-term preservation of the document store there. What we achieved here at Archives 2 is significant because of the mammoth size of the undertaking here in the building. The space devoted to archival storage represents roughly a half the total size of this building and when you consider that the air quality in half the size of this building is comparable to what normally is achieved in a 20 to 30 thousand square foot computed chip facility I believe that's what makes the difference between what was achieved here at Archives 2 versus conventional technology. The two significant mechanical systems in the building deal with the HVAC systems for the record storage areas and the DINI's water systems devoted to laboratories in the building. The stack areas are designed to accommodate the media stored within them. For example, the textural records are designed to accommodate paper-based records and are stored in an environment requiring 70 degree temperature and 45% relative humidity. At the other extreme, we have cold storage faults which are designed to accommodate color film and are designed for 25 degrees and 30% relative humidity. From a preservation standpoint, the two most damaging elements to the preservation of documents relates to the stability of temperature and relative humidity and the removal of gaseous and particulate pollutants. There are four main water-cooled chillers located in the central plant which generate chilled water for air conditioning in the stack areas. The chilled water is fed through cooling coils in each of the air handling units feeding the stack areas in order to achieve the required temperature within the stack area. In addition, each air handling unit also includes a glycol cooling coil to control relative humidity. Once the air passes through both the chilled water coils and the cooling coils, it is then passed over particulate and gaseous filters to remove the detrimental particulates and gases that produce deleterious effects on the wreckage stored in the stack areas. The temperature and relative humidity of each stack area is monitored continuously and adjustments made by the building automation system located in the central plant. Each stack has its own air handling unit but there is also a redundancy provided such that if one air handling unit goes down, the other air handling unit located in the same mechanical equipment room is capable of providing the same quality of air to both stack areas. Another critical mechanical system in Archives 2 is a deionized water system whereby water passes through reverse osmosis filters as well as through ultraviolet lights to eliminate all bacteria in order to provide deionized water to the labs via a central system. That water is used in the laboratories for a variety of conservation techniques. This building was designed for a 100-year useful life. The design incorporates state-of-the-art technology as currently exists and also provides for the accommodation of future technology as it develops in the preservation arena. Over 50% of the Archives 2 facility is devoted to record storage that equates to over 690,000 square feet of record storage. That includes textual records, film, photographs, oversized materials like maps and architectural drawings, electronic records. We started the move of records in December 1993 and we will finish the move in November 1996. It's the largest move of records ever in the world and it's not just a move of boxes. It's more complicated than that. We're moving very, very fragile items like glass plate negatives and then of course we're moving all the priceless archival materials, one of a kind, as well as security-classified materials. What was clear from the beginning of the design efforts of Archives 2 was to restore these records on traditional stationary shelving. If we were going to do that we found that we were going to need a building that was going to be 2.7 million square feet or a million square feet larger than the building that exists today. So we immediately focused our design effort on a high-density mobile storage system or compact mobile shelving. We looked at a variety of systems and decided on an electric mobile shelving system. That's because it allows you more efficient storage of records. You can have much longer carriages, more carriages per module, thus store more records per square foot. Having an electric system also allowed us to tie it into our building system. We can tie the shelving into our fire safety system which became very important as well as our lighting system. This is the largest mobile shelving system in the world. We've got 15 miles of rails. We've got 2,000 carriages. And on those carriages we have 520 miles of shelving. The first consideration in design that we had to take once we made the decision to go to the high-density mobile storage system was how are we going to fight fires? When you have a series of records compacted up tightly, we knew that fires could smolder and it takes a longer time, a much more of a challenge to fight the fire. The fire safety system in our storage area is a wet-pipe sprinkler system. We accomplished this through one, a rapid response sprinkler head that goes off at a lower temperature. We also are able to using the electric system create what we call a flue space. And that's space of at least 4 inches between each of the carriages that allows the smoke to get to the smoke to detectors and the water from the sprinklers to get to any fire that might break. The third thing that we did was put in smoke detectors in all the record storage areas. We spent a lot of design time trying to figure out what materials could not be used in a record storage area. We are primarily concerned with materials that off-gas harmful substances that then deteriorate the records. But we didn't know what the shelving manufacturer was using, the lighting manufacturer. So we required these vendors to test their products, and our lab tested them as well to make sure that all the materials in the shelving system and the lighting system were inert, odorless, non-solvent-based substances. We accomplished this using a electrostatically heat cured epoxy polyester paint. We spent a few years investigating floor coverings to cover the concrete floor. We worked with one manufacturer to come up with a floor coating that removed the harmful substances. The lights in the stack areas are a raw aluminum lighting fixture because we could not find a lighting manufacturer that had a coating that was acceptable. We were able to achieve through design using 1990s technology, very strict temperature and relative humidity standards. We have a wide range of media that we store in the records storage areas, and each of those media types require a different temperature and relative humidity. We are also achieving a very fine filtration system that is filtering out very harmful gases. One of the important things to the environment of the records storage area is that we not have people working in the stacks. Here at Archives 2, we were able to design in what we call processing offices. These are areas where staff preserve and work on the records. They prepare inventories, they prepare databases, they prepare guides. The goal here was to balance the best storage conditions for the records against the fact that researchers need to use these records. In a perfect world we would freeze all the records, but these records need to be used daily. So, working with our conservators and the scientists, we came up with what was the best environment for each of these different records types. All total laboratories take up 104,000 square feet and basically we divide them into three areas. We have a research and testing laboratory, we have document conservation laboratories, and we have special media laboratories. The research and testing laboratory mainly devotes itself to that. It is responsible for monitoring and testing all archival products that are used in records storage areas. They are also responsible for making sure that any products we buy to use in the records storage areas meet our very strict specifications. The research and testing lab is also responsible for monitoring the temperature relative humidity and gaseous pollutants in all the records storage areas. The conservation laboratories primarily dedicate themselves to the preservation conservation of our paper materials, both our textual records, photographs and our many many bound volumes. We de-acidify documents, we repair the structures of our bound volumes. We also treat photographic materials. We will do things like rehouse, glass plate negatives that are very fragile. Some of them are broken, but still need to be preserved. The special media labs are responsible for the preservation of all of our different types of media. That includes films and photographs. One of the significant things that they do is prepare documents for the microfilming process and actually do the microfilming here in-house. We both create preservation copies of microfilm as well as copies to sell to the public. We have a deionized water system which we use both in the conservation laboratories and special media laboratories. It's a built-in system. Many systems around the country use local point of use systems and it was a challenge for all of us to both research it and design it. These labs are as state as the artist we could make them with 1990s technology and we are adapting them and we new things have been developed and we are able so far to accommodate them without major innovation or a massive kind of undertaking. In addition to the flexibility aspect of the laboratories another thing we're striving to do here is build laboratories that will last through the ages. We used Korean countertops in the conservation laboratory. We wanted a white countertop but we wanted something that was tough and durable. We used typical black epoxy other laboratories again for the same properties that it would last a long time. The laboratories are a crucial piece of our mission. Not only for the hands-on work that they do daily in preserving records but our staff of conservators and specialists also monitor the other work being done in the National Archives to preserve the records and they also play a hand in how the documents were used in research and give advice. I'm extremely proud of the way the researchers and not often as an archivist have the opportunity to work with architects and design a building that will accomplish your mission. Our purpose was to provide an environment where the records could be made available to researchers where they could obtain the information they needed and go home with a decent product or a decent result. The piece of information they came here for their experience here, they began the process knowing exactly where to go. It's very self-apparent. You walk into the building and there's the researcher registration office and the consultation office directly off to your right in the lobby area. Good morning, welcome to the National Archives. Are you here to do research today? From that point they speak to a consultant who addresses their research topic. The researcher and the archivist will talk back and forth and the archivist will try to identify records in the archives that relate to the researcher's topic. There are seven research rooms located on five floors in this complex. We wanted the research rooms co-located in order to provide researchers easy access from one research room to another. It meant that if you're down in the textual research room examining a record about World War II, maybe you're looking at records on the D-Day invasion with a better picture, you can go up to the cartographic research room located on the third floor and relate that to the records that you've just looked at. We had the whole area placed adjacent to the research room in this building. Here the records are brought from the stacks delivered to a whole area. Staff steps right into the whole area, pulls the records, brings them out, hands them over to the researcher. The researcher takes them to his or her table to do. We're sitting in the textual research room. It accommodates about 140 researchers. The whole complex will hold close to 400 researchers. The first balcony that is in the room is the library and behind the library is the cartographic research room. There researchers look at cartographic materials, maps, aerial photographs, large items because there are specially designed tables in that room that allow researchers to use a large item without it overhanging the edge. There aren't any boundaries. There are no dividers on those tables so that makes it simpler to use large items. We even had special carts constructed to contain those items. They will support the large oversize item and it can be brought from the whole area into the research room. The motion picture research room is located above the library. You can't use motion pictures, sound recordings and video without specialized equipment. So in that room, we had to design special workstations to contain the equipment, the video recorders and you had to have half inch and three quarter inch. The sound machines for either tape or cassette or reel to reel, we had to provide equipment for viewing film. Above the motion picture research room is still pictures and that room was designed to hold a large self-service collection. These are collections researchers can directly access themselves without a lot of archival assistance. The fifth floor of the complex houses the electronic records research room and also the classified records research room. Every table in the research room is wired with a data line and an electrical outlet. That means that researchers can bring their computers from home, plug directly into our system, download information that they need for their research and take it home with them. We wanted the security in the complex to be there but not to be an intrusion on the researchers. We didn't want to have armed guards in the research room but we do need to protect the materials that we have. We have video and electronic surveillance. So there's only one guard that a researcher passes and that's at the entrance to the complex. Once in the complex, they're able to move freely around without going through a lot of security checkpoints. The design of our research room tables where there are four people sitting in a table two across from one another. That's a form of security as one citizen is sitting across from another citizen. It's a fine line that monitors in this research room walk between providing assistance to the researcher, getting the researcher what they want and ensuring the protection of the records that we hold in our care and custody. I find that researchers working here are much more relaxed. They find that it's efficient, that it's attractive and they enjoy this day. It is a great honor and a privilege for me as president of the International Council of Archives to bring greetings and congratulations of the international archival community to such a distinguished gathering to celebrate the official opening of the jewel, I think, of archival buildings in the world, archives too. Why such an investment in archives? Because in a capsule archives makes us civilized. That is rooted, thoughtful, knowledgeable. Ultimately, without archive there are no George Washington, no Abraham Lincoln, no specific remembrance of country, only amnesia and sometimes in facility. Right at this point in time, this is the building to visit, to learn from and they've come, they've continued to come and I think they're going to come even more to look at this building as an example of what can be done. I think the one thing I see now is the fact that it's a building that's pleasant to look at, that works well internally, that the staff are pleased to be able to work in an environment like this. I think it's met my goals, my needs and hopefully the needs of the community that's using it. You know, you can't help but take better pride in what you do when you work in a room that is as nice as this. As carefully designed as it is the care and thought that went into the materials in the room, the overall design of the complex, the location, all of these things add up to making a very pleasant working environment. What we've achieved here is why we built archives too. One, to store and preserve the records and then the second piece is to actually share them with the citizens of the United States and I think we've accomplished that very well. I'm very proud of this building. In my short career it is the most satisfying piece of architecture that I had the opportunity to take part in. I think we have built a building that is a good contribution to the neighborhood and to the country. Building archives too was the single most important thing that we could have done at this point in time to ensure that the records would be preserved well into the 21st century. As long as we have an archive we can ensure that the records will be preserved. It's a very important institution in this country because democracies depend on the people's access to the records of the nation. It's so personally satisfying to be able to say, that was my project, to see something really come to fruition and be able to point to it and say thank you very much. Thank you.