Montgomery County’s New Records Center Opens Today (PHOTOS & VIDEO)
Montgomery County Council Vice President George Leventhal cuts the ribbon on Oct. 22 to celebrate the official re-opening of the Montgomery County Archives at its new location in Gaithersburg. Among those at the ceremonies were members of the Montgomery County Historical Society and staff and students from Richard Montgomery and Rockville high schools.
Montgomery County officials celebrated the re-opening of the Montgomery County Archives at its new location in Gaithersburg Wednesday.
The new Montgomery County Records Center is at 8536 Anniversary Circle. The re-opening coincides with the national recognition of October as American Archives Month.
The archives, which were 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, according to a county press release.
In 2012 Councilmember George 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 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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