Home About ANICA Search News Contributions Contact Us Members' Corner

ANICA Home > Storage > Cold storage in Australia


Cold storage in Australia

Information about cool storage facilities in Australia is presented in Appendix 1. It is intended that the information provided will assist institutions in setting up cooperative storage arrangements with others.

The storage space required for different formats can be calculated using storage density data. In “Cost-Benefit Analysis for B/W Acetate: Cool/Cold Storage vs Duplication” (available online at http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/abbey/an/an19/an19-4/an19-410.html ) Puglia provides information on storage densities for the different formats:

Table 1: Storage densities of various formats

    Imperial Metric
Still photos 4” x 5” 0.0009 cu. ft/neg 25.4 cu. cm./negative
  5” x 7” 0.003 cu. ft./neg 84.9 cu. cm./negative
8” x 10” 0.003 cu ft./neg 84.9 cu. cm./negative
Microfilm 16 mm, 100’ roll 0.02 cu.ft./roll 566.4 cu. cm./roll
35 mm 0.04 cu.ft./roll 1132.8 cu. cm./roll
Motion Pictures 16 mm, 1000’ roll 0.07 cu.ft./roll 1982.4 cu. cm./roll
35 mm, 1000’ roll 0.14 cu.ft./roll 3964.8 cu. cm./roll
Aerial 5”, 200’ roll 0.06 cu.ft./roll 1692.2 cu. cm./roll
5”, 500’ roll 0.16 cu.ft./roll 4531.2 cu. cm./roll
9.5”, 500’ roll 0.33 cu.ft./roll 9345.6 cu. cm./roll
X-ray 14” x 17” 0.006 cu.ft./roll 169.9 cu. cm./roll

While data collected in the Cellulose Acetate Survey (2000)11 does not allow us to determine if there is a shortage of cold storage space in Australia, we do know that:

  • In libraries and archives, acetate competes with polyester, as well as other materials, for cold storage space. Collections on polyester are growing, and will continue to do so.

  • Copying projects are unlikely to significantly decrease the total cold storage space required in Australia. This is because many institutions are wary of discarding original material, and want to keep it, ‘just in case’. In view of the possibility of unforeseen problems in terms of image quality or deterioration of the copy being discovered years later, this may be prudent. Materials being retained because of their intrinsic value will also require cold storage space.

  • Deteriorated acetate cannot be stored alongside other materials without being sealed, and packaging large amounts of material is costly.

  • There are no large cold stores in Australia today which are cold enough to arrest further decay in materials which are already deteriorated.

  • Low temperature (freezer) storage will substantially increase the stability of cellulose triacetate base.

(11) Available from http://www.nla.gov.au/anica/about-anica.html


previous / next / Back to Contents page

Home About ANICA Search News Contributions Contact Us Members' Corner