We're working on two fronts. There are two broad baskets of investments we are currently making. You probably know that we just opened a nitrate film facility in Ottawa. It was an investment of $18 million. Now nitrate film and photographs are taken care of. The solution is there. The investment has been made. So we can turn to the next element.
What we're doing internally is looking at all the analog material. We have newspapers and everything. We're doing a very rigorous assessment of the quality of the materials and what we need to do to preserve them. We're doing it on a very systematic basis. The next investment—in fact, we're working on it and have the dollars—is a storage facility with compact shelving. It's going to be open probably next year. That's for the analog. We're being very rigorous, because it's a finite environment.
The other piece, which is more difficult, is the trusted digital repository. We're very careful. We're working in a network. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick, I think, now are heavily involved with us in trying to find a solution. We're going to also approach the vendors who create the software. We want to make sure that the software will have some archival function in it, because that's the problem, mainly.
We're very cautious. We're prudent. We're also working at the international level. You probably heard that the Americans, in fact, invested three-quarters of a billion dollars in their electronic records system, and it failed. It was too big. We need to go step by step. We're making the proper investments. It's something that will come up.
I like to give this example. If you look at the chemical formula for paper over the years, you will see that it has changed over time, because we didn't find the right one right away. It's the same with electronics. So we are making investments year after year to make sure we find the proper mechanisms for preserving the digital information.