| Abstract: | SUMMARIES. Books, photographs, and other paper-based artifacts are vulnerable to damage from their environment. Heat, moisture, light, and pollutants produce destructive chemical reactions. Warmth and damp promote biological processes like mold and insect infestation. While some materials used to produce books, documents, and art on paper have proven quite durable, others (like ground wood pulp and acidic inks) deteriorate rapidly under adverse conditions. Museums, libraries, and historical societies are subject to the same phenomena as any other buildings, but have an extraordinary responsibility for preserving their collections for future generations. While we cannot eliminate all of the causes for decay of our cultural records without forfeiting access to our collections, we can greatly slow deterioration by moderating the environment. Control of some factors, such as light, is relatively easy and inexpensive. Controlling the climate (temperature and relative humidity) is a much more difficult task. Monitoring of temperature and relative humidity is essential to the success of climate control. Monitoring can have several purposes: to provide data showing that current climate control is inadequate; to document current conditions in preparation for making changes in equipment; to evaluate the effect of equipment changes that have been made; and/or to guard against any environmental extremes that might occur. |
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