For Immediate Release: Friday, October 17, 2014
Montgomery County Council President Craig Rice, Council Vice President George Leventhal and Councilmember Nancy Navarro at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 22, will be among those celebrating the re-opening of the Montgomery County Archives at its new location in Gaithersburg.
The new Montgomery County Records Center is located at 8536 Anniversary Circle in Gaithersburg.
Councilmembers Rice, Leventhal and Navarro will be joined by members of the Montgomery County Historical Society, as well as staff and students from Richard Montgomery and Rockville high schools. The students are part of the Montgomery County Public Schools Middle Years Programme and will be among the first students to access material in the new archives to supplement their research.
The re-opening coincides with the national recognition of October as American Archives Month.
The archives, which was established on July 29, 1985, serve as the institutional memory of the County government and contain the government’s official records. It has been closed since 2010 due to a structural renovation project. The County Government has actively supported creating a renovated archives facility that meets the County’s needs and standards.
In 2012 Councilmember Leventhal tasked County staff to develop options to improve the unworkable archives situation. At that time, valuable County documents were being shuttled between the basement of the historic Red Brick Courthouse in downtown Rockville and a small storage space at the former Broome School in Rockville. Neither location offered public access for study, examination or research.
The Council’s Health and Human Service Committee then recommended, and the Council approved, an allocation of $140,000 in the Fiscal Year 2014 budget that included $95,000 in the Department of General Services budget to build a climate controlled facility within the Records Center to house the archives. The additional $45,000 in the allocation was to hire a part-time archivist and to also support expenses related to archives management.
“Preserving this County’s history is something that we must do for our residents of today who need to be able to access that information and for a long time, have not been able to do that,” said Council Vice President Leventhal. “More importantly, we must preserve this information for our future generations that want to learn about—and learn from—our County’s past.”
The Montgomery County Historical Society is again administering the operation of the archives. Research hours are Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Thursdays from 12 noon to 4 p.m., and by appointment. For more information about the archives, call 301-926-5002 or 301-340-2825.
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Release ID: 14-306
Media Contact: Neil Greenberger 240-777-7939, Delphine Harriston 240-777-7931