The State Records Center
The
State Records Center is a facility designed for the low-cost temporary storage and servicing of inactive records for state agencies pending their disposal or transfer to the South Carolina Archives and History Center for permanent retention. The State Records Center has the capacity to store 96,242 cubic feet of records. Each year the Records Center takes in 10,000-11,000 cubic feet of records, conducts 12,000 reference requests, and destroys 10,000-11,000 cubic feet of records.
No. Any record sent to the State Records Center must have an approved records retention schedule specifying when the record should come to the Records Center and how long it should remain there. Only records with demonstrated legal, fiscal, administrative or historical values are scheduled for State Records Center storage. The Records Center is designed for inactive records, not records that are receiving high reference by the office. Records are usually considered inactive if they are referred to less than once a month per cubic foot. Also, records sent to the State Records Center need to have relatively short retention periods.
No. While the State Records Center maintains physical custody of the records, legal custody and ownership still resides with the agency
No. State Records Center staff will only release information or the actual files to designated employees of the agency that owns the records. If your agency needs to release information in files to employees of other agencies or to private citizens, you must request the files and release the information from your agency. This includes Freedom of Information requests, which your agency must handle according to your own procedures.
Many offices maintain records in four-drawer letter size file cabinets. These file cabinets require approximately 1 square foot of floor space for each cubic foot of records stored. At the State Records Center the height of the shelving allows for 3.7 cubic foot storage per each square foot of floor space. In addition, the cost of state agency office space in FY 2004-05 was $11.46 while the square foot cost of space at the State Records Center was $3.40. The 1:1 ratio of cubic foot stored to square foot of space means a cost of $11.46 per cubic foot maintained in offices. The 3.7:1 ratio at the State Records Center results in a storage costs of $.92 per cubic foot stored. At the end of FY 2004-05 the State Records Center was storing 69,133 cubic feet of records. Had these records been maintained in office space, the storage cost would have been $792,264 compared to a storage cost at the State Records Center of $63,602.
While all records are not good candidates for Records Center storage, neither is it cost effective to microfilm or scan all records. The cost to microfilm can range from $50 to $200 per cubic foot. Optical imaging can cost $500 per cubic foot. The cost to microfilm the 69,133 cubic feet of records stored at the State Records Center in FY 2004-05 would range from $3,456,650 to $13,826,600. The cost to convert these records to optical imaging would be approximately $34,566,500. Microfilming or scanning and disposing of the paper might be better methods of retaining records with high reference and/or long term retentions. However, for short-term, inactive records, storage at the State Records Center is most efficient.