Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 39. (1986)
Archive Buildings and the Conservation of Archival Material. An Expert Meeting, held in Vienna, Austria October 30 - November 1, 1985 - THOMAS, David: Architectural Design and Technical Equipment for the Physical Protection and Conservation of Documents
Architectural Design and Technical Equipment 245 an admitted member of the communist party. The thief later said that he had taken them to protect the individual concerned59). Architectural design can help greatly to reduce the danger of crime. The most important area to protect is the exterior of the building. Ideally, the building should be on an island site with free access round the whole perimeter, which should be clearly lighted in the hours of darkness. The grounds round the site should be fenced. There should be no trees, drainpipes or cables which would allow an intruder to climb onto the building. The structure should have a smooth shape with no recessed windows or doors, dark comers, overhangs or niches which cannot be directly observed60). The windows should be small both to reduce the risk from sunlight and to improve security. Those on the ground floor should have the moulding on the inside and the glazing should be protected. This can be achieved by the use of toughened glass or by fitting metal bars or grilles. Ideally, these should be fitted internally, but if this is not possible, then adequate precautions should be taken to ensure that they cannot be removed. It may be necessary to extend these precautions to windows on upper floors; this will depend on their size and location61). The number of exterior doors should be kept to the minimum that conforms to the need for an adequate provision of fire escapes. All doors should be reinforced with a steel plate, the hinges should be on the inside and the frames should resist bending. The hinges and locks should be of a suitably high quality. Fire exits should only be capable of opening from the inside and should be protected by intruder alarms. No door should open directly into the record storage area62). The roof should be examined to see if it is vulnerable to attack from an adjoining building. Roof entrances should be locked. Skylights and other roof lights should be protected by toughened glass or bars63). Inside the building, the most important security measure is to separate the record storage area from the rooms to which the public has access. In an ideal building this could be achieved by storing records on different floors from those used by the public. As an alternative, no doors into the repository should open into places used by the public and record storage accommodation should not be used as a corridor or emergency exit. All access points between the two zones should by controlled by staff. Engineers’ controls for air-conditioning, heating, ventilation, electricity, etc. should be located outside the record storage area. The division of a building into a security area and a public zone is very difficult to achieve in shared premises. The only way to deal with this 59) Mason Archival Security 480. 60) Museum Security ed. R. G. Tillotson (Paris, International Council of Museums 1977) 80, 160-168. 61) Museum Security (London, Museums Association Information Sheet 1981) section 5.1. 62) Tillotson Museum Security 82; BS section 6.2.2. 63) Museum Security section 5.1.
