The major enemy of paper records is a poor environment, such as excessive light, uncontrollable dust, severe temperature and humidity variations, and wretched storage conditions. The lower the temperature, the longer archival materials will last. Humidity must be controlled to prevent mold at one extreme and dehydration at the other. The Records Center is not heated and depends on evaporative coolers, so its climate fluctuates even more dramatically than that in the State Archives. Light and air quality must also be controlled.
All light damages archival materials to some degree.
The Archives Storage Area is kept dark, but lights must be on continuously at the Records Center. The Archives staff cleans the storage area annually, but the dust returns within a month. The Records Center was not designed to house permanently valuable items, so only normal dust control is maintained there. Eleven states have moved into new buildings in the last ten years. These include Nevada, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, and California.