Beijing Olympic records closed until 2038.

• Position: ARCHIVES - Brief article

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Hundreds of thousands of document files and electronic records documenting the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Paralympics have been transferred to the city's archives as "invaluable cultural heritage" items, but they likely won't be open to the public for 30 years.

Beijing Archives Bureau Director Chen Leren told the Chinese media that the facility had received more than 128,000 paper documents, 126,000 Olympic and Paralympic pictures, nearly 10,000 video and magnetic tapes, and 93 gigabytes of digital files from the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) as of the end of October 2008.

The items turned over to the archives include policies, regulations, technical handbooks, official letters, photos, and 4,165 videotapes and compact discs containing nearly 5,000 hours of video files of the two sports events, Chen said. More than 200,000 volumes of files of competitions held at venues outside the capital had been...