[BKARTS] Efforts to save city documents stymied

[Duncan <duncan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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<http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050905/APN/509050962>


Efforts to save city documents stymied

The Associated Press
September 05. 2005 7:02PM

Specialists working for the New Orleans Notorial Archives have been 
stymied while trying to get downtown to rescue some of the most 
historic documents in the city's history, from original land grants 
to slave sale records and title records.
Federal troops have refused to let them through checkpoints into the city.
The Notorial Archives hired Munters Corp., a Swedish document salvage 
firm that freezes and then freeze-dries records to slowly remove 
moisture from them, to rescue the documents. But Munters refrigerated 
trucks were turned away by uniformed troops as they tried to enter 
the city, said Stephen Bruno, custodian of the archives.
The trucks were headed to the Civil District Courthouse on Poydras 
Street, where many of the city's real estate documents are housed, 
and to the former Amoco building also on Poydras Street, which houses 
historic documents such as a letter from Jean Lafitte to Washington 
demanding payment for his expenditures during the Battle of New 
Orleans.
Eddy Pokluda, head of national sales for Munters in Dallas, said the 
company tried to get one person in to make an assessment of the 
damage but was turned away, even though days earlier they had 
coordinated with New Orleans police to have an escort into the city.
"I don't think people realize the importance of these records," 
Pokluda said. "It's imperative we get in there and see if these can 
be saved."
Most governments have digitized their real estate records, and Bruno 
was just about to hire a firm to transfer many of the documents in 
the archive to the computer. But at the Notorial Archives, most 
abstractors still do hand searches of the 12 million stored documents.
"We're still in the horse and buggy days," Bruno said.
---
Information from: The Times-Picayune,

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