Changes, Challenges, and Strategies for Environmental Monitoring in Collecting Institutions and Conservation
Conservation professionals’ dedication to preserving precious archives and objects for future generations is as enduring as their cultural and historical legacy. As museum and preservation managers, your quest for sustainable management of collection environments to protect irreplaceable artifacts, documents, and other invaluable cultural heritage pieces remains your paramount priority; Yet, every day, you confront the relentless agents of deterioration that endanger them. And, depending on the size and budget of your institution, you may also face competing administrative tasks, limited staff or volunteer hours, and more. In this blog, we’re focusing our lens on the world of preservation management, its changes and challenges, and strategies to address contemporary environmental conditions standards with time-saving, smart solutions.
What are the agents of deterioration?
Covert Threats to Conservation Efforts
If you’re in the preservation world, the term 'agents of deterioration’ is old news. Whether you’re museum staff or an archives manager, you’re constantly aware of the need to monitor and mitigate the potentially damaging impacts of these usual environmental suspects:
Temperature:
One of the top parameters monitored, temperature plays a critical role in preservation. Extreme heat or cold can damage any valuable object, and guidelines are expanding to meet the more specific needs of each collection or exhibit objects.
Relative Humidity (RH):
You can’t mention temperature without RH when discussing preservation. Relative humidity ranges for conservation must take into account multiple factors, including weather, occupancy patterns, and proximity of visitors to exhibits.
UV exposure / Light intensity:
One of the greatest risks to objects is light damage…microfading. Monitoring light exposure can help determine the best choice for exhibit lighting and location as well as facility lighting.
Dust and Pollutants:
HVAC systems need to be monitored and maintained to mitigate dust and other airborne pollutants that can do damage over time.
Occupancy:
The degree of visitor traffic, room dimensions, exhibit setbacks, and other related considerations all impact condensation, CO2, temperature, and humidity levels.
Pests:
Certain objects like textiles can be vulnerable to pests like mites, carpet beetles or clothes moths, which can be introduced even from feather-heavy bird roosts on the exterior of buildings. Climate control plays a significant role in reducing pest risk.
Rounding out these top contenders for conservation risk factors are damage from physical force, fire, theft and vandalism, and dissociation (which is not a physical loss). In light of these ever-present threats, conservators must strive, through strategy and staffing, to maintain appropriate environmental conditions.
How has environmental monitoring in preservation management changed?
“Environment and environmental control are fundamental components of collections preservation; appropriate environmental conditions provide collections with chemical, biological, and mechanical stability to extend their life, making them available to future generations”
~ Smithsonian Institution, Declaration on the Collections Preservation Environment
[No pressure, preservation professionals!]
To accomplish this daunting goal framed by The Smithsonian, the reflective questions in collections and conservation circles are many, and have grown more complex due to developments in research, sustainability initiatives, staffing challenges, and more:
How can we achieve and maintain ideal environmental conditions to prevent damage and preserve the objects and collections under our team’s care?
How do we balance the competing demands of human comfort, energy use, and collection longevity?
How can we as an institution achieve long-term financial and environmental sustainability while addressing the preservation needs of our organization?
What is the best strategy to monitor and manage diverse objects and collections given staff, time, and resource limitations?
It’s clear that conservation professionals have experienced many changes in preservation practices, especially over the past 25 years. One of the greatest developments: Studies have revealed that the traditional practice of maintaining a standard, singular ideal temperature and humidity for all environments and objects…missed the mark.
The End of a Preservation Era
Traditionally, the guidance from conservation doctrine was to maintain a recommended “ideal” set of conditions across the board in buildings as the best practice to prevent damage. This was referred to as the 70/50 rule for temperature and relative humidity, (70°F/50% RH). However, ongoing research by The Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute and Institute of Image Permanence (IPI) at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the 1990s showed that, in fact, it’s less about an ideal “one size fits all” and more about preventing/avoiding the greatest threats (extreme heat or moisture events), timely interventions, and catering environmental conditions to meet the needs of specific objects’ materials.
As a result, the Museum Conservation Institute determined a new guideline of 37-53 percent RH and 66-74° Fahrenheit, supporting an inverse idea that a broader RH range can be tolerated by many objects, and, conversely, many objects experience greater mechanical damage due to excursions of high or low temperatures.
Expanded preservation recommendations encourage preservation professionals to factor in considerations like; climate, weather, exhibition spaces, objects’ materials, and the simultaneous need for visitor human comfort (AC or ambient room temperature). Even the protection of building structures are in the picture; In recent years, the Smithsonian Institution has actively pursued specifications that help to avoid condensation in building envelopes, adopting a “cooler and drier” methodology for environmental conditions overall.
“Cultural heritage institutions worldwide are under increasing pressure to operate in a more sustainable manner…The urgency of sustainable environmental management is motivated by increasing costs of energy, reduced institutional budgets, and governmental and regional mandates for reduced carbon footprints. There is also an expectation that museum operations will comply with standards and regulations that protect the natural environment and conserve resources for future generations.”
~ Getty Conservation Institute, Managing Collection Environments, 2013.
How can collections institutions manage standards, staffing AND sustainability?
In addition to evolving environmental standards, Getty Conservation Institute’s research captures the even broader scope of modern challenges that the conservation field faces: cost and energy efficiency, strains on staffing and resources, and keeping up with sustainability directives. Their Managing Collection Environments Technical Notes and Guidance outlines recommendations for organizations to address these ever-increasing demands.
Museum Multitasking: Navigating The Demands of Active Environmental Monitoring with IoT Solutions
It’s a given that library, archives, museum, and preservation specialists are always striving to perfect their collections stewardship practices. Yet, they juggle countless responsibilities–daily, monthly, and annually– that constantly compete for their precious time, from budget creation and oversight, to grant writing and program development.
Shifts in environmental monitoring standards. An increased complexity of variables considered and monitored for optimal environmental conditions. Administrative multi-tasking demands.
All of these factors combined and others have underscored the need for time-saving, adaptable monitoring solutions for busy collections professionals--systems and tools that are more nuanced and sophisticated to support preventive, pro-active conservation decision-making. Getty research confirms that preservation professionals require easy-to-use tools and systems that are capable of not only detecting the multifaceted agents of deterioration in diverse micro-monitoring environments in near real-time, but also able to:
- Automate the delivery of crucial data
- Integrate with industry platforms for visualization and analysis
- Create and share reports with stakeholders
- Send excursion alerts
- Empower proactive, better preservation decisions
What are the best monitoring IoT tools for museums and collections?
While conservation research organizations have been emphasizing the importance, and value of active environmental monitoring strategies and systems to promote the longevity of collections and objects, they also acknowledge there are some important considerations for preservation institutions when selecting and implementing new, or enhanced, monitoring systems.
“With an already brimming list of tasks and responsibilities, it can be daunting for users to devote the time necessary to gain familiarity and proficiency with the specific features of each tool.” ~ Getty, Tools for the Analysis of Collection Environments Lessons Learned and Future Development
Monitoring Tools That Are Easy to Set-up and Use
For busy preservation staff, Bluetooth-enabled data loggers for Temp/RH, light, CO2, and more simplify both the deployment and downloading of environmental data, allowing users to quickly access highly accurate data from loggers, without disturbing exhibits or objects.
"Setting up and reading out the loggers used to take an hour, but now we can finish this work in 15 minutes."
Read our recent use case from Idemitsu Museum of Arts
Need for Real-Time Environmental Data to Inform Decisions
“...objects composed of different materials that are used in different ways require near real-time collection systems and hands-free wireless data collection with gateways and cloud software.” ~ Getty Conservation Institute, Managing Collection Environments, 2013
The immense, complex responsibility that comes with the modern stewardship of collections for conservators demands a more scalable, real-time monitoring solutions that are adaptable to diverse building environments, exhibits, and applications. Also crucial is also ensuring monitoring tools have a reliable battery life and intuitive, time-saving functionality.
Integration with Preservation Industry Platforms
Information alone in museum monitoring, however, is not enough. Integrating data with industry platforms gives users an ability to visualize and analyze risks with proprietary tools and calculations that equip them with a deeper understanding they can use to make more informed decisions based on predictive information.
Monitoring Tools to Meet the Modern Challenges of Museum Preservation
HOBO monitoring solutions stand at the forefront of empowering conservators and museum professionals with real-time environmental data. Our accurate, user-friendly Bluetooth-enabled data loggers and gateways can push real-time data to HOBOlink cloud software, which can send alerts when user-set excursions occur and integrates seamlessly with powerful industry platforms for robust analysis.
Altogether, a powerful toolkit for detecting and visualizing risks to collections, and enabling conservators to make informed decisions based on myriad factors.
By leveraging the power of HOBO MX data loggers and gateway monitoring systems, conservation professionals gain access to timely insights that facilitate proactive intervention. Whether it's adjusting HVAC settings, implementing additional humidity controls, or relocating vulnerable artifacts, the ability to act swiftly is critical in safeguarding collections.
Empowering Informed Decision-Making: RIT/IPI eClimateNotebook
What sets HOBO solutions apart is its partnership with Rochester Institute of Technology’s Image Permanence Institute (IPI) and seamless integration with eClimateNotebook, a pioneering system developed by IPI. Compatible with HOBO dataloggers that can convert and produce data as a CSV file, eClimateNotebook is a powerful preservation tool that translates the nuanced environmental risks to cultural heritage collections into tangible data visualizations that allow users to track the preservation environment over time.
eClimateNotebook's Preservation Metrics quantify deterioration risks into actionable insights, allowing collections care professionals to visualize risks associated with biological decay as "mold," chemical decay as "natural aging" and "metal corrosion," and physical damage through dimensional change (DC) and equilibrium moisture content (EMC). This holistic approach equips collections staff to proactively address threats.
Tailored Preservation Monitoring Solutions
HOBO solutions also offer scalability and versatility, catering to the diverse needs of museums, galleries, and heritage institutions of all sizes. HOBOnet wireless sensor networks give managers incredible flexibility in the parameters they need to measure, from indoor conditions to outdoor factors using weather stations, connecting up to 50 sensors to a single remote station. Whether you're managing a small exhibit or a sprawling archival facility, there's a HOBO solution tailored to your needs.
In the ever-evolving landscape of museum preservation, monitoring solutions like HOBO’s emerge as indispensable allies in the preservation field’s mission to protect cultural heritage. By providing timely data insights and seamless integration with analysis platforms, HOBO solutions empower conservators and museum professionals to navigate the complexities of environmental monitoring with confidence and precision.
Together, we can uphold the legacy of your collections, ensuring they endure for generations to come.
Read More Museum Monitoring Use Cases
See Our Wireless MX1101 Temp/RH Data Loggers
Learn More About eClimateNotebook
Resources
Taylor, Joel, Michael C. Henry, Vincent Laudato Beltran, Walt Crimm, Matthew Eckelman, Jane Henderson, Jeremy Linden, Michał Łukomski, Bob Norris, Sarah Nunberg, and Cecilia Winter. "Managing Collection Environments: Technical Notes and Guidance". Guidelines. Edited by Joel Taylor and Vincent Laudato Beltran. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs_mce_technical_notes
Cosaert, Annelies, Vincent Laudato Beltran, Geert Bauwens, Melissa King, Rebecca Napolitano, Bhavesh Shah, and Joelle Wickens. 2022. Tools for the Analysis of Collection Environments: Lessons Learned and Future Development. Research Report. Edited by Annelies Cosaert and Vincent Laudato Beltran. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs_analysis_collection_environments.
Smithsonian Declaration on the Collections Preservation Environment