Dear All,
Just following up on my query regarding commercial storage liability.
Thanks to all those who responded to me - all the comments were very useful indeed and I post a mini-summary below.
Given the nature of stored records, its impossible to come up with a generalised average monetary value for the contents of boxes. Also when it comes to archives you can't insure for replacement, only recovery. Storage companies leave it to individual storers to insure their own records. The standard £1 is just to cover the box (which is interesting in itself since the storage company we are using offered us the "very reasonable" price of £1.80 per 1.1 cu ft box).
One large archive assumes that if disaster strikes, not everything will need to be recovered and therefore covers 10-15% of the records for full conservation treatment. Another place makes a good estimate of the amount of insurance needed and then doubles it for good measure and another is seeking an exciting sounding collaborative venture.
A few people including a couple of our transatlantic colleagues advised me to push for them to increase the £1 liability and pointed out the issue of Diversified Records where Mobil sued (I think) the storage company, the architect and the fire supression installation firm and ended up with over $20 million! I think this is a slightly different issue as the case was to do with negligence and if the warehouse where our records are is razed to the ground due to negligence, as was the case with Diversified, we can sue our storage company in the same way.
Erm, I think that's it - have a nice day y'all.
Cheers
Matt
-----Original Message-----
From: Emmerson, Sarah [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 03 September 2003 09:54
To: Stephenson,M
Subject: Comercial storage liability
Hi Matt
We are currently looking into the disaster recovery possibilities for our records at commercial storage. Assuming that when catastrophe hits they are going to be primarily concerned with sorting their own records out, we want to put in place some kind of agreement that will allow our records to be treated onsite as quickly as possible, probably by the same company they use, but paid for by us. This will hopefully minimise the damage to our stuff. This is our plan but we don't know yet whether it will happen - we're meeting in October to discuss it.
But bottom line is we have to pay for the recovery, storage company only do the box.
You are not alone!
Sarah
Assistant Records Manager
Diageo Records Management Team
020 7927 4431
________________________________________________________________________
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed.
If you have received this email in error please notify the Diageo Servicedesk on +44 (0) 131 319 6000
This footnote also confirms that this email has been scanned for all viruses by the Messagelabs SkyScan service.
http://www.diageo.com
________________________________________________________________________
|