Introducing Big Bertha

Like any heritage institution, the Ballets Russes Archive is constantly thinking about the storage needs of the collections.  No one has enough storage, and everyone is hoping to have newer and better facilities.  This Archive is no exception.

When the Archive began, there was no specific place designated for the collections.  The Archive moved into a space designated for storage and preparation used by the School of Dance.  Our space features a refrigerator, a sink, and lots of decorations for special events.  The cabinets that lined the walls held lights for performances, old posters and programs from the School, and serving items for gatherings and fundraisers.

To save money, the Archive shifted these items out of the file cabinets and moved in the archival boxes. The problem with this was archival boxes just fit exactly into the drawers and were difficult to move in and out.  Each of these boxes had to be removed carefully, yet over time, the edges would catch leaving the corners torn or the flaps looking ragged.  In addition, the higher boxes were harder to remove if they were heavy because they were higher than the normal range of motion used.

Old Storage System

Removal was often awkward and
there was a risk of damage to the material.

Luckily, the School of Dance is eligible for money from the Restricted Fund for Building Maintenance that was part of the grant bestowed on the University by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.  This fund allows the School to make changes to the physical assets of the Donald W. Reynolds Performing Art Center, which houses the Archive.  This year, the Fund allowed us to replace our old file cabinets with custom storage cabinets for our archival collections.  A former graduate assistant, Tara Davis, designed the layout of these cabinets and started sourcing vendors for us.  In the end, we got our cabinets from Delta Designs.  They were easy to work with and were able to make these large cabinets for us in a relatively short amount of time.

Big Bertha 1 and Big Bertha 2

To prepare for the move, we planned out where the various collections should go and made slightly bad drawings of drawer and shelf layouts.  Our Dance Fellow, Sierra Codalata, made a layout for where all of the materials would go before the move.  We had to take all of our collections out of the old cabinets and lay them out on tables in another room.

On moving day, the guys from Shipping and Receiving came in with our shiny new cabinets, they referred to them as Big Bertha.  We were so delighted by the term that that became the official name. We use it as the location within the Archive, referring to them as Big Bertha 1 (BB1) and Big Bertha 2 (BB2).

BB1 allows for storage of the few textiles we have (seen at bottom)

BB2 is where most of our books, scores, and scrapbooks are stored 

Retrieving materials from these cabinets is so much easier, even from the higher shelves.  The only issue we've had is that the drawers can't be pulled out too far or they fall.  We did have to do some hands-on construction as the shelves were a little too close together for the boxes, so we had to move them to fit.

Easier access to material!

Thanks to the Reynolds Fund for making this upgrade possible! Our only wish is that we had more of them in preparation for future collections.