Over the years the company has also opened aboveground storage facilities in Hutchinson, Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City. But the original salt mine continues to be the favorite of many national companies, including Turner Broadcasting Company, which stores the original negatives of hundreds of movies, like Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz . When material arrives at a storage site, each box is assigned a unique number and location. When an owner needs access to stored material, a clerk retrieves it. In many cases, clerks photocopy the material and immediately return the original to its proper location.
Clerks also carry out owners' instructions to destroy outdated records that are no longer needed.
In addition to paying a fee for archival space, clients are charged on a per-transaction basis for handling materials. Until recently, the storage and retrieval process was strictly manual. Boxes arriving at the mine or a warehouse would be logged-in on paper and handling instructions would be conveyed via handwritten forms. Retrieval, photocopying and destruction orders are relayed electronically to computers at scattered workstations, and customers' accounts are automatically charged. The computers communicate with each other using local area networks.