Facility Design, Infrastructure, Storage, Location, and Access
Requirements, quality, and funding for repository facilities can vary widely. These facilities range from environmentally controlled facilities such as the National Science Foundation - Ice Core Facility, to the non-climate controlled sample storage facilities similar to the one operated by the Florida Geological Survey, both of which serve clients and protect holdings in an appropriate manner suited to the materials they are preserving.
Facilities Costs
Renting or Owning
Facilities costs related to property acquisition or rent may be a large item in repository budgets. In cases where facilities are rented a repository may experience continual pressure to cut costs by physically contracting, or by deaccessing portions of holdings to save space. If land or warehouse space for physical facilities is owned outright by a repository or its parent organization, such pressures may be eliminated or successfully resisted. In some parts of the country, land for repositories may be acquired by state agencies by means of federal-to-state land grants. The Alaska Geological Materials Center used storage containers for housing rock cores on land owned by the organization. Collections have been relocated to a repurposed large box store in Anchorage. Although budget constraints have been a long term consideration, the holdings of the Alaska Geological Materials Center have not contracted, and organizational stability, known to clients, has been a bargaining point in acquiring donations of new holdings.
In the federal government, the NSF-ICF and the Core Research Center (CRC) are obligated to pay rents, based on area and use classification, to the General Services Administration. Rates are nominally in line with local commercial rates, and the rent component of total budgets is substantial. In Colorado, high demand exists for warehouse facilities and facility costs for the CRC and NSF-ICF have risen substantially. High fractional overhead rates levied by university repositories on funds from supporting agencies may effectively elevate the nominally-low space or rental charges that are listed for such facilities.
Keeping the Lights On
Some technological modifications to facilities may be absolute improvements and of financial benefit. LED or high-efficiency fluorescent lighting systems, to replace incandescent bulbs, may pay substantial benefits in electric power consumption for both lighting and air conditioning, important in the modern context of high energy costs and pressures for conservation. Lighting has been reduced in the CRC warehouse, every other lighting fixture has been turned off, reducing energy costs in the infrequently accessed areas.
Accomodating Growing Collections
Expansion plans for repository facilities are constrained to very different degrees, according to the funding needs of new facilities and advanced knowledge of growing collections. Facilities such as the NICL are required to plan and present expansion plans and solutions often years in advance, because of both magnitude of funding and complexity of contracting and planning for the construction of specialized new facilities that are required to preserve their collections. Dry rock cores might be accommodated in much less specialized facilities, usually requiring less advanced planning.