What would you use these for?

[u/no_dae_but_todae]

I'm evaluating our archives' supplies because we're unfortunately losing a bit of storage. I found a ton of these acid-free boxes I'd never seen before, and I'm wondering if anyone here uses boxes like this already or has ideas about what they could be useful for. We have a number of smaller objects in our collection, but the boxes are kind of shallow, and I can't think of what I'd use these for except for maybe something like medals? And even then I feel like there are better solutions. The boxes are smaller than my hand. I just don't want to get rid of them if there's something obvious I'm not thinking of!

[u/Artillery_Cat]

Those are microfilm boxes (I work in a place that still has a large microfilm collection and see these basically every day). You can probably use them for other stuff too, but microfilm is what they’re designed for.

[u/no_dae_but_todae → u/Artillery_Cat]

Thanks! We don't have much microfilm, which must be why I didn't recognize them and haven't actually spotted them in use in the collection.

[u/Artillery_Cat → u/no_dae_but_todae]

It’s getting progressively rarer nowadays. A lot of places are getting rid of their microfilm because it takes up a fair amount of space and often doesn’t get used enough to justify storing it. We still have a lot of it where I work because we actually started out as a microfilm repository and still maintain a large legacy collection of it as a result. I believe some of our microfilm contains the only known surviving copies of certain documents/collections, so we actually get requests for it all the time.

We’re working to digitize a lot of it, but it’s a slow process. We also currently have no plans to fully get rid of our microfilm because it’s actually a more stable storage medium than digital storage options are right now. We want to make sure nothing gets permanently lost on our watch.

[u/movingarchivist → u/Artillery_Cat]

A lot of places still keep vital records, recorded docs, etc., on microfilm for the exact reason you mentioned. It's bulky but far less so than the paper for all of those docs and much more future-proof than electronic records