Archive and warehouse shelving

Archive and warehouse shelving

Working archive, final archive or warehouse?

A working archive (närarkiv) is the one you visit every week. Access governs here: open shelves at walking height, and room to stand with a binder in your hand. A final archive (slutarkiv) is the opposite. Someone goes there perhaps once a year, and then floor area is what costs money, not how quickly you reach the top shelf.

In a warehouse or workshop it is weight that decides. Crates, tools and packaging weigh more per level than binders do, and then load capacity is the first thing to look at, not the dimensions.

An archive room has its own clearances

Shelving in an archive room should not stand tight against the wall. The Swedish National Archives recommend a gap of about 200 mm, and the reason is moisture: an external wall is colder than the rest of the room, and without air movement in that gap the records can be damaged.

The other clearances they recommend:

• at least 500 mm between the top of the shelving and the ceiling
• the lowest shelf about 150 mm above the floor
• main aisles at least 1 200 mm wide, so records can be moved without being damaged

Allow for these before you measure the room. Four shelving bays in a row become half a metre longer once the wall gaps are counted, and a 1 200 mm aisle is wider than most people expect.

Who the rules apply to

The regulations on archive rooms, RA-FS 2013:4, bind Swedish central government authorities and certain bodies that hold public records. Municipalities and regions follow the Swedish Archives Act (arkivlagen) and their own archive rules (arkivreglemente), which often refer to the same regulations. Private companies are not covered at all.

The clearances above are worth following regardless. They are about moisture, access and not damaging the records, and that applies to paper in a company archive exactly as it does in a public one.

Fire protection is in the room, not in the shelving

Archive shelving is not fire protection. It is steel and does not burn, but it does not protect the binders standing on it. In the Swedish regulations it is walls, floors and doors that carry the fire requirement, in classes such as EI 120, and the shelving is mentioned only so that the room can withstand it collapsing.

If individual records need protection from fire, that is a fire cabinet or a document cabinet, not an open shelf. Many places have both: shelving for the volume, cabinets for what must not burn.

When floor area runs out

Compact shelving removes the aisles. The bays run on rails and are rolled apart only where you are standing, which roughly doubles what fits in the same area. It is the usual answer for a final archive where floor space costs more than access does.

See compact and mobile shelving. Note one specific requirement for mobile shelving in archive rooms: the power supply must be possible to switch off from outside the room when nobody is inside.

Used shelving and Lundqvist

Steel shelving barely wears out. Buying used is therefore often a better deal than new, particularly for a final archive where appearance matters less. We sell used shelving systems continuously, and Lundqvist is the make most often in stock.

Lundqvist made wooden shelving for offices and archives, and it can be extended with end frames, shelves and cross bracing within the same system. What is in stock varies with what we buy in, so have a look at used shelving systems.

Build the shelving around the room

If no ready-made unit fits, you can work out your own from the room's measurements in our shelving configurator. You get the parts list straight away, which makes it easy to add the wall gap before ordering.