- The history contained within The Public Vaults Exhibit encompasses every phase of the Unites States' growth. Records maintained at the exhibit include parchment paper with hand-written events chronicled with a quill and ink, to photographs and glass negatives taken by 19th century cameras, to computer punch cards produced by mainframe computers from the 1960s, to today's digital media.
""There's a connection between nearly every American family and the National Archives, somewhere, somebody is here."
Building the Vault
- During a decade long, multimillion-dollar renovation of the entire building, it was decided to create a new public space within the National Archives Building in Washington, DC. This new public space became the National Archives Experience. The Public Vault occupies 9,500 square feet of space within the National Archives Experience.
- The Public Vaults cost about $7 million, about one-third the total cost of the National Archive Experience, which was about $21 million.
Achieving the Goal
- The goal, Sandoval said, was to raise the public's awareness of the National Archive and to turn one- or two-time visitors into more frequent archive-goers.
- "Most people come here twice - once as a kid with their school group or parents, and once with their own kids," Sandoval said. "We wanted the renovation to bring a higher awareness to the general populace of the breadth and depth of Archive holdings."
- Construction of The Public Vaults became the responsibility of four main contractors. Sandoval said the contract bidding process was different from typical government procedures because a nonprofit group issued the request for proposals.
Bringing it Together
- Design and Production Inc., of Lorton, Va., brought together all the elements contributed by the other three contractors. D&P took the empty shell of the space to make The Public Vaults a reality. With 55 years of exhibit and museum construction experience, D&P provides turnkey museum solutions for implementation, systems development, fabrication and construction services necessary for public display environments.
- "We were on the project for 14 months," said Sue Lepp, Senior Vice President of D&P and The Public Vaults Project Manager. "We came in before the design was complete, and we basically retrofit existing space and prepared the new space. During pre-construction services we worked closely with the exhibit designers, Gallagher and Associates, and the museum staff to engineer, detail and produce all the exhibits within the space."
History Comes Alive
- AMX's control system technology touches every inch of the 9,500-square-foot The Public Vaults. D&P installed three AMX NetLinx NXF Cardframes integrated with the lighting controller and administrative computer server in a central rack location housed in five racks of A/V processing and monitoring equipment. The intent was for the museum's staff to control lighting, power to displays and audio/visual presentations from one location.
- The touch panel is configured to enable facility staff to orchestrate the facility's entire lighting system and to monitor the various system components in the gallery space. One touch panel page indicates, via real-time feedback, the operating status of the 23 liquid-crystal display and plasma screens throughout The Public Vaults.
- Another screen provides adjustments for motion detectors, which are used to begin a presentation feature when visitors arrive in a particular display area. It also powers up or down all the lighting and equipment in the museum at the beginning and end of each business day. The flexibility programmed into a single page for special events provides another layer of ease. For example, staff may want all program displays looping, but the audio muted, for a scheduled reception.
