Town of Westford, MA - Discussion and Recommendations Continued

archivist, Lisa Plato, who would be happy to arrange a visit to Burlington's Town Archive. Burlington is of comparable size to Westford, with a population of approx. 20,000.)

2) Because this will naturally take some time to accomplish, a short-term storage space should be sought for the at-risk collections defined below.

At Risk Collections:

While all collections in the Town Hall must be considered at risk because it is a wood frame building and there is no fireproof storage, the following are particularly endangered because of their present storage conditions. Historic records in the following locations are endangered:

1) The Town Hall basement vault;

2) The wooden shelving in the basement of the Town Hall;

2) Records stored in the attic/balcony area of the Town Hall;

3) Records in the safe and the second story of the Water Department's Pumping station.

Other collections in Town are endangered because they are stored in basements and cupboards and could be discarded by someone who might be cleaning a space and not recognize their value. These include:

4) the plans stored in the basement of the Cameron Senior center;

5) the plans stored in the Rodenbush Community Center; and

6) the maps stored in the Fairview Cemetery office.

II. Records Kept by Individuals, and Organizations

Only 10 organizations returned the preliminary survey Ginny Moore sent and when I made calls to set up appointments to see these collections, it became apparent why this was so. Most of these organizations and individuals simply do not understand that their records are or will be historically important. This is particularly true of records created from the period of the late 1960s through the present.

Another reason for the lack of response is that records have been lost or destroyed. Fire and flood have both taken their toll. The Fletcher Granite Quarry had a flood in its basement about 10 years ago which destroyed many records, and the original building of the Franco American Club burned to the ground 7 years ago, destroying all its records.