Episode 617: In the Warehouse District

Not alphabetical.

Nope.

Come on.

Autobiographical.

No [BLEEP] way.

Yeah. I can tell you how I got from Deep Purple to Howlin' Wolf in just 25 moves. And if I want to find the song "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the fall of 1983 pile but didn't give it to them for personal reasons.

That sounds--

Comforting.

Yes, it is. I can stick around if you want me to help out. But you really shouldn't keep them piled like this because it gets really pressured.

See you tomorrow.

Oh, OK.

You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. Please don't put pressure on your records. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with Fred Rascoe, Marlee Givens, Cody Turner, and a guest to be named in a moment. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you tune in for, we hope you dig it.

Our show today is called "In the Warehouse District."

Are we talking about urban development? Arts in Atlanta maybe?

Well, the warehouse district in this case is actually a warehouse district. It's still mostly working warehouses. Although now that I think about it, development over on Marietta Boulevard seems to be increasing. CHARLIE BENNETT: It is coming fast. MARLEE GIVENS: And our site today might be surrounded by lofts and shops tomorrow.

Site. Gentrification is real.

This is a GT library guidebook episode.

That's right. On the first Friday of each month, we visit a site in the guidebook and talk about a space or service in the Georgia Tech Library or in this case, the Georgia Tech Library service, in a space close by.

We are talking about the Library Records Center, a 35,000-square foot warehouse facility in a undisclosed location near the Georgia Tech campus. This is the site where official Georgia Tech records are kept for their legally required retention period, and I pulled that from a website.

And our guest, Nic Fann, is someone who knows what's in the record center and why.

Records management for the win.

And our songs today are about working alone the records management environment and, of course, records. And because Nic works in a warehouse, our first song today, we're pulling a track from the classic Hüsker Dü album, Warehouse Songs and Stories.

This is full on free association, Fred.

It's a track about someone who's just hanging out with us for a short time before going back somewhere, possibly to a warehouse.

All right, I'll accept it.

Just associating some things here. This is "Back From Somewhere" by Hüsker Dü right here on Lost in the Stacks.

"Back From Somewhere" by Hüsker Dü. And our show today is called "In the Warehouse District." It's all about the library records center. This is the third in our GT library guidebook series.

On the first Friday of each month, we visit a site from the guidebook featuring a space or service in the Georgia Tech Library.

And our guide today is Nic Fann, records administrator in the archives, records management, and digital curation department at the Georgia Tech Library. Nic, I'm so excited. Records administrator, so you're in charge of a really large vinyl collection that we keep in the warehouse-- Beatles, Rolling Stones-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Fred's been waiting-- Bob Dylan.

Years to ask this question.

I really-- this sounds great, right?

Yeah, that's not it at all.

No.

We did recently have a collection of records in there from LMC while they were dealing with all the different water issues on campus and stuff.

Oh, yes. Skiles had a flood to go with our HVAC problem.

You did have--

Yes, we did.

A few vinyl, actual -

We had two pallets worth of records from I forget who the professor was, but it was a collection. And-- FRED RASCOE For a, quote, research purposes. Yes, exactly.

Oh, OK. All right. So it's not--

It's media.

It's not a big record storage... What is it then I guess I should say?

It is a giant warehouse full of paper. So basically we handle-- we house all of the inactive business records for all of the various business units, departments, colleges, everything. So we've got-- we've got accounting files. We've got your permanent record that everybody worries about. That's located in our warehouse. CHARLIE BENNETT: All the stuff that went down on my permanent record is in there? We have transcripts going back since the opening of the school.

Oh my gosh.

So Charlie was a student here.

We can probably find his stuff pretty easy.

No, you can't.

I won't allow it. When you're trying to describe all these things-- I have been in the Library Record Center a few times, and I have peeked around the corner from the offices and looked back into the warehouse. It's just boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes, right?

Yeah.

And how do you know-- I know you know, but how do you know what's in those boxes? Are they labeled? Do you have a big Excel spreadsheet somewhere? What's the deal?

So we use a MySQL, S-Q-L-- whatever it's is called-- database to keep track of everything. They're labels on the boxes. They're not labeled well. The labels fall off because we hold on to some things for 30, 40 years. But for the most part, we just track it in our database and hope everything's right. Doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes things get misplaced, and then you have to take a manual approach and go through.

Do you have to walk the warehouse regularly? Do you have to check on everything?

Definitely we have to-- every morning, I go in, and I check and make sure that we don't have any leaks or anything with the big hurricane that came through recently.

Yeah, I'm worried about you then.

Yeah. I came in, and, yeah, sure enough, we had a drop just dripping down right on top of a couple of boxes on the top shelf. So I had to go in and remove all those, throw some plastic over it and get the roofers to come out and take a look. Turns out it was an issue with our HVAC system and not actually the roof itself so we were able to get that plugged up. But I have to keep an eye out for things like that. No food or anything back there.

Oh my gosh. And you-- well, you straight up said sometimes the labeling was not good. And I don't think you were telling on yourself. Where are all these boxes coming from? Where are all these labels coming from?

So they come from various units, just some-- more often than not, what happens is that somebody's office is getting a little bit too crowded. They're running out of space, and they're like, hey, I think we have a place we can send this stuff. And so then they just pack everything up, and they'll give me a call and ask for some help. And we'll stuff stuff in there, and they'll try and label it the best they can. And some folks do better than others.

Yeah. So you have a job that really does require that lifting 25 pounds requirement that's in job descriptions. I don't think I've had to lift 25 pounds since I started working at the library.

I think that I did when we had to move some stuff because of the chilled water issue, and I had to move some boxes around because we had to-- CHARLIE BENNETT: I vacuumed boxes. I did not lift them. OK. Yeah, I was on the lifting team.

But that was a volunteer.

That's true. That was not in my job description.

Volunteer gig.

So that's why I lifted with my back and not with my legs.

But the lifting-- oh.

But the lifting question makes me think of archives. So what is the relationship between the Library Records Center and the Georgia Tech Archives.

We do hold a great deal of unprocessed collections for the archives out there. We've got a lot of the artifacts and things that are used in the exhibits, stuff like that out there. I always-- people often get records management archives mixed up. They don't-- I like to say that the difference is that archives is all about preserving your history, and all I want to do is shred your papers.

So my focus is on destruction.

Oh, that's right up Charlie's alley. Yeah. You ever wanted to just burn it all down?

We have to finish the segment, but I do want to just make sure that we follow that shredding thing to the end. You have to keep records for a certain amount of time, and then you're the one who gets rid of them when they don't have to be kept.

Yes. The USG requires the-- us to hold everything for prescribed amount of time, depending on what it is, and their policy is we will keep no records longer than we have to. CHARLIE BENNETT: Not a second more.

This is Lost in the Stacks, and we will be back with more from Nic Fann, records administrator, after a music set.

File this set under HD 8036.W66.

"Me, Myself, and I" by De La Soul. And before that, we heard "In the Garage" by Weezer, which was the live at the BBC studio version for those keeping track. Those are songs about being comfortable with being on your own.

This is Lost in the Stacks, and today's show is called "In the Warehouse District." It's another episode for our Georgia Tech Library guidebook.

Our guest is Nic Fann, records administrator, and the only person I know who has an office in the Library Records Center. You are on your own out there and thus the set just happened. Off air, we said do you ever get lonely, and the answer is--

No, not-- not at all.

Yeah.

Is it weird, though, to be one person in, what is it, 35,000 square feet of paper?

It can be weird at times. It was definitely a lot weirder before they built out the office spaces for the technical services when they moved out there because it used to be I'd just walk out and there's just a big wide open warehouse space, and you'd have to go out there, it was completely dark, and cut the lights on.

Oh, man.

At one point, we were storing-- it was a giant Buzz statue that we had just tucked away off on a pallet somewhere. And a lot of times when I'd come in the morning and I'd go in there, it's dark, and you flip on the light and you just catch it out of the corner of your eye, it's like, oh my goodness, what is that. And then you're like, oh, yeah, that's Buzz. It's OK.

Did that end up-- Buzz being the Georgia Tech mascot for people outside--

A life-sized yellow jacket.

The real life Buzz has done that to me before.

The student in a suit. But did that statue end up on campus, or is it still--

I don't know where it ended up at. It's not with us anymore. They took it back. I can't remember which school it belonged to. But, yeah.

But it's somewhere now?

It's been gone for many years now. CHARLIE BENNETT: So we were talking about what the purpose of the Library Records Center is, and you did mention one regular activity you have to do, which is check to make sure there are no mice and no water. What else do you-- what do you do with a day or with a week at their Library Records Center? So it could be any number of things that I might do throughout the day.

What kind of demand for access is there? Like you say, you get requests for things. How often does a request come in, and usually what do they tend to be for?

So most of the requests I get now are going to be from HR or from the registrar's office. One of the things that we get a lot is former students or grandchildren of former students, things like that, contacting the registrar, wanting to learn about their-- who their--

Their ancestors.

Exactly. And so I'll go in and pull their old transcripts to send it to the registrar's office. A lot of those are on microfiche, and so what I'll have to do is go locate the microfiche and scan, make copies, and send that off so that they can share it with whoever they need to share it with.

So it's a service job and an administrative job and a facilities job all at once?

Yeah.

Does that work for you, or did you get pushed into it? Did you take this on willingly?

Well, I went to school because I wanted to be an archivist, and coming out, the first job I was able to get was a records management job with a pharma company. And then I left there, came here, and it's just archives adjacent. That's how I got into it, but then once I got here and I saw what the archivists do and all the work that they have to do that's not actually processing collections and doing stuff, I was like that is not for me. And so where I'm at actually works out great.

You fell into the niche where you belong.

Yeah. And I can just be out there. I'm left to my own devices and just get on with the job.

You get to bring in the collection. You also get to destroy the collection.

That's my favorite part.

Tell us about-- tell us about the shredding because I don't think I have a clear sense of just how long some of that stuff has been there and just how short of a time some of it's there.

Yeah. So anything-- the records can be kept-- some are as short as six months. Some stuff is 50 years. Some things are permanent. Anything having to do with chemicals and stuff like that they might use in research, that's going to be 30 years that you have to keep it, radiation records, things like that. Most of your employee files are seven years.

It sounds like student records are kept a really long time.

Student records are kept. Your transcripts are always kept permanently. A lot of other stuff, we keep it three to five years after you graduate, things like that. But once something has reached the end of its retention period, the idea is that we will get rid of it, we'll shred it, and you have to destroy it in a way that it cannot be put back together.

Yeah.

So I was lucky enough a couple of years ago, we had some extra money, and I said I could really use my own shredder because I don't really like contracting out because they were shipping our stuff off and leaving it on a dock somewhere and just didn't feel secure to me. And so I was able to get this nice cross-cut shredder which cuts everything up into tiny little 1-inch strips. And so if you want to put that back together, you're going to have to be a master puzzle person because it's a mess.

But a lot of the records that people are creating these days are not paper records. Do you get things that are not paper?

We don't get things that are paper-- I mean that are not paper right now. The general advice that we give to people is that when you have records that are digital, you still need to adhere to the retention schedule, but it's more of a manage in place kind of thing because-- and digital records is still a thing that USG is trying to work out, that we're trying to work out. It's a big mess, but it's also where we're going. We're getting less and less paper every year. So it's--

This is a piggyback on our interview with Cliff last week.

Totally.

Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: Do you ever just wish you could shred a hard drive though?

I wouldn't put it in my shredder, but I'd just take a drill to it. I think is what the general consensus is is just put a few holes into it. But I think I-- I was told something like secure deletion requires seven or eight passes if you're just going to delete something. And that's the big thing I have to tell people is just because you take something and put it in your-- delete it or put it in your trash bin doesn't mean that it's gone.

We have so many things to talk about, but we do have to take a couple of breaks here.

You're listening to Lost in the Stacks, and we will hear more about the Library Records Center and records management, which doesn't mean vinyl.

Well, it's mostly shredding is what it is.

But-- yeah, shredding;s cool.

Which is sometimes on vinyl records, shredding.

If it's Yngwie Malmsteen, I guess maybe--

We could do this all show.

We'll be back on the left side of the hour.

Hi, this is Mandy Shepp, the loud mouth librarian, and you're listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta.

Today's show is called "In the Warehouse District." The particular warehouse we're talking about is the Library Records Center. I'm just going to talk for a minute. Human beings in some primal way resist paperwork.

That was "My Records" by the Tea Makers and before that "Missing Records" by the Neutrals. And we started with "I Need That Record" by the Tweeds. That's all the stuff in my head all the time including the Tweeds. Songs about taking care of a collection of records.

This is Lost in the Stacks, and today we're speaking with records administrator Nic Fann about the library's records-- Library Records Center and records management. I've said records too many times. I'm going to have to find another word. So, Nic, we've been talking a lot about being in the warehouse, doing stuff, destroying things, and all that. But as everyone heard me during the Amen Break, there's an ethic to records management also. There's a certain value understood there.

So what really folks are asking more than is for me to basically manage the retention of stuff that they are no longer using. We tell folks once a record is ended its useful life, which means you're not referencing it on a regular basis, it's OK to pack it up and send it off, and we'll store it so that you don't have to, which will free up some space.

Yeah.

And there's a record of it and so that when your records come to us, they're safe and they have not been altered. They're exactly as you sent them to us.

This is why digital records management is so fuzzy because it's real easy to change something.

Very easy.

Yeah. So we also talked a little bit about a story off air about a certain kind of records that you told us is hidden in this building. Will you tell us about the time capsules

So apparently when they were doing-- I can't remember if they found it while they were doing renovation for this building or if it might have been somewhere else-- FRED RASCOE It was maybe the student center. The student center.

Where we actually are in.

They tore up the ground in multiple places.

It might have been out by the Campanile buried there. I'm not sure. But apparently in 1985, there was a-- they did a time capsule, and they buried it. And everybody apparently forgot about it because they dug it up during construction.

How do you forget about a time capsule?

Yeah, label it.

Did someone shred the record?

I have no idea, and I think this might predate the records management program. CHARLIE BENNETT: Undoubtedly, yeah. But-- so, yeah, they dug it up, and they needed a place to store it. And that's one of the things that we get a lot is other departments on campus when they have just big things because there's lots of warehouses around campus, but they're all full. And folks always want to get into ours, and I'm trying to keep them out for the most part.

But when you say things, you mean objects like the statue?

Object, large furniture, any number of things. I currently have a bunch of furniture from the Paper Tricentennial Building--

Oh, yeah.

From a few years ago. But, yeah, so they found this time capsule, which was a giant coffin sarcophagus-type situation. CHARLIE BENNETT: Whoa, no-- whoa. Whoa.

Have you looked inside? No, there's no getting inside of it. It's not due to be opened for another-- I can't remember how long.

Tell me it's not coffin shaped.

Oh, it's definitely coffin shaped. They--

OK, so here-- so the reason that we don't have a record of this time capsule is because it's actually a body that someone hid?

That's always a possibility.

The perfect crime. "Do not open for 100 years".

I believe that might have been the initial shock people found when they dug it up was like, oh my goodness, is there a body in here. But there was a plate on it that is hard to read, but it did say that it was a time capsule.

Holy cow.

We had to get a rigging crew and a giant forklift just to get it in the building kind of thing.

To go through all the effort of digging up a time capsule and then not opening it not just because the plaque says not to.

You got to follow the retention plan.

I guess so.

So you had it, but it's not there anymore?

No they came and got it when they were finishing up this building, and it is now I believe interred underneath the stairs, the main stairway.

Of the student center that we're in now.

On the bottom floor, yeah.

Wow. What is the record of that in terms of going to the record center? Is there now a paper trail for this time capsule that someone might come and say, hey, we found this coffin in the student center. We think what it is.

So sadly that's mostly the record of that is going to be carried out through emails, which is also another often a problem that we have. But, yeah, I don't recall who all was involved in it at the time. This was quite some time ago, and, yeah, like I said, we had it so every time you opened our big roll up doors and you looked in, there's just a giant coffin sitting there in front of the fence. It was right outside actually where you're working on those books.

OK. I've always gotten a chill if I go through those doors. That makes sense. Well, Nic, clearly there's several more episodes in this conversation that we'll have to do in the future.

This is Lost in the Stacks, and today we visited the Library Records Center down in the warehouse district for the GT library guidebook. And our guest today was Nic Fann, records administrator in the archives records management and digital curation department at the Georgia Tech Library. Nic, thank you for being on the show.

Thank you for having me.

File this set under TS 189.61.U55.

That was "The Cage" by Elton John and before that, "Garden Walls" by Warehouse. Songs about the environments where we keep things secure.

Today's show is called "In the Warehouse District," and on our way to the credits, I do want to ask everyone where are your records. Do you have a quality records management plan? And the reason I ask that is that this show has made me think I do not. I've got some boxes that have some stuff in them. I don't even know what they are, and I think some of that stuff is old roleplaying games from when I was in high school. So I have no records management plan.

So we do have a filing cabinet and stuff makes it there, but far too often things just stay piled on top of the microwave in the kitchen for months before anything happens to them. How about you, Cody?

I do have a box where I keep a lot of sentimental records, old love letters, things like that. But when it comes to the stuff like social security card, house deed, I know there's a room that it's in, but I know if I had to find it, I could probably find it. Marlee, what about your records? MARLEE GIVENS: Yeah, I did actually get a wild hair at some point, and I bought a safe and I bought an expanding file folder kind of thing. And so I do keep some things in those places.

On that note, I don't know what to do except just let's roll the credits and get away from this question.

Today's show-- no, that's not my script. Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library written and produced by Alex McGee, me, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens. And I've stolen Marlee's line because I got so confused.

That's all right. Legal counsel and a coffin-shaped box.

We don't know what that is.

Definitely not a coffin.

Right. Right. Just shaped.

Just shaped like a coffin.

Exactly. Hints of a coffin were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.

Special thanks to Nic for being on the show. Thanks to everyone who retains and maintains the records of civilization-- CHARLIE BENNETT: And bureaucracy. And thanks as always to each and every one of you for listening.

Our web page is Library.GATech.e du/LostInTheStacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us.

Next week, artificial intelligence and academic publishing. That sounds like a Fred show.

Yeah, guilty.

Fred--

Time for our last song today. And I don't think that we mentioned it today, but as you might guess from the helmet that's stashed over there, Nic is an avid motorcycle rider.

That's so cool. And as every non motorcycle rider to every motorcycle rider, what are you riding there, dude?

It's a Harley Davidson Street Bob.

I wish I knew what that meant.

Sounds impressive though. So let's close with the ultimate song about riding a motorcycle, "Born to be Wild," but I think since our guest mostly works alone at the record center, we should play a version recorded by someone who also primarily worked alone. This is "Born to be Wild" as recorded by the street musician known as the Space Lady. CHARLIE BENNETT: What is happening? Right here on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend, everybody. Get your motor running.