More conference reports - the digital story

           Just got back from a three-day conference at the University of North Texas in Denton (near Ft. Worth for non-Texans.) The conference title was “Digital Frontiers” and it dealt with the most up-to-date digital projects at mostly university archives and libraries.  (http://disco.unt.edu/df13).  I think this is the second year that they have hosted this conference.  About 100 people were in attendance.  Most were from Texas, but there were presentations from universities and entities in other states.  The Portal to Texas History and the Digital Scholarship Cooperative at UNT as well as the UNT University Libraries sponsored the conference.

Goodies from the conference

            One of the most interesting presentations was by the Collin County (Texas) Historical Commission.  They have developed an interactive map of historic sites in Collin County.  They used national register standards to identify sites, mapped, photographed, and wrote up a description of the site and its place in history.  It was quite impressive. (http://gismaps.collincountytx.gov/historical.html).  You simply click on a circle and get a pop-up with links to directions to the site and to the description of the site and its historical significance.  Most of these sites are disappearing or have disappeared as the county grows so this is important historical preservation tool.  Hopefully other counties will consider this as an option to preserve their history as well.  It’s a great model.   

            In the same session which was by the way entitled “Communities and Societies: Preserving Local History for Future Access,”  the presenter was/is the web designer from the Dallas Genealogical Society and he talked about web design tricks to help web crawlers find your site. One site he mentions is schema.org/, which provides a controlled vocabulary that can be added to your metadata.  These words are machine-readable enabling crawlers to find you.  Build it and they will come does work, but a little help from a standardized vocabulary is most helpful. I think I’ll check it out.

            More on helpful websites next time.

Keys to Preservation - Steps to control temperature and humidity

          One of the facilities where I work has a mold problem every summer (actually two have mold problems and a third has a leaky roof.)  When you have older buildings you will have problems.  I once lived in a house built in 1790 with a rock wall basement.  The cement flooring in the basement has been poured with a drainage trough in the middle so that the water would flow out when it rained.  Mold in the summer was a nightmare.  All you could do was use a dehumidifier in the upstairs throughout the summer months, keep the outside cellar door open, and not use the cellar for storage of anything that would mold.  One part of it did work great as a root cellar for onions and such, but the mold was tough on the furniture.  I still have one chair that smells like mildew and it’s been re-covered twice.  Enough of happy reminiscences. 

            First step, which I mentioned several times in the last post, is to figure out if you have a problem and when.  If your heating and air-conditioning system draws air from outside as many do, chances are you will have to work at keeping your temperature and humidity stable. Why should you care? Well, high heat will dry paper and make it brittle, furniture too as well as other objects.  Moisture causes swelling and quite often mold.  Something you definitely want to avoid. 

            What can you do to fix the problem? Well, museums and archives need to call in experts who can address any problems with the HVAC system.  One of my libraries has taken a two-step approach.  The first was to install special devices on the HVAC system to keep the humidity at the target range.  The second was to bring in industrial de-humidifiers to pull moisture from the air when the HVAC system is not being effective.  The conditions in the archive have to be carefully monitored to prevent the de-humidifiers from removing too much water vapor or causing a rise in temperature from the heat they generate. Another step that helps is to change filters often, especially if you drawing in outside air.  Clean filters will help control the mold spores and other particles in the air.  The same is true at home.  Change filters often.  Cleaner air is better for you, your possessions, and the heating and air conditioning systems that you use.

Other dos and don’t for individuals and for museums and archives.  

1. As my story above suggests, don’t store things in a basement.  No paper for

sure.  Attics are terrible too because they can get too hot in the summer and

cold in winter with abrupt fluctuations in most places. Basements tend to

flood on occasion. Mine, the one I told you about always did since I lived at

the bottom of a hill although the worst flood I was in was in Lubbock, Texas

 where it rarely rains. Everything on the floor of my apartment experienced

 water damage.  I still have books with wrinkled pages.  I guess the moral of

that story is never store anything on the floor.  Always have it up one or two

shelves if you must store things in the basement or in my case on the first

floor of my apartment.  (Who knew semi-arid deserts would flood? It

shouldn’t have, but the city pumped water from one playa lake to save some

expensive homes to another lake near me.) One of my libraries has just

moved their archives to the basement. It hasn’t flooded but I have seen mold

on rugs and the coffee shop upstairs has had leaky pipes on occasion. 

Hopefully nothing bad will happen and they will remember to keep things off

the floor.  Of course, one of my other libraries has their archives on the

second floor.  In that case, the roof has been known to leak.  So far it has

leaked to the first floor with no damage to the second. In that instance no

 papers should be on the top shelf.  Be aware of the limitations of your facility

is the best advice I can give and be prepared for disasters.

2. Check your insulation to see if it is adequate and fix any leaky doors and

windows.   That will help stabilize the inside environment and take some of

the stress from the HVAC system.  Having insulated curtains can help.  Of course, archival storage should be in a room without windows anyway. Remember light is damaging.

3. Keeping objects impacted by temperature and humidity away from outside walls and windows is another suggestion.  A piano tuner told me that pianos should be on inside walls to protect them from the impacts of the outside environment. The same is true of other materials that are likely to swell if the humidity is high or get brittle and crack when it is cold and dry. 

Lots have been written about temperature and humidity.  Here are a few of the links that I have used as resources.

Northeast Document Conservation Centers  -

http://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/2.-the-environment/2.2-monitoring-temperature-and-relative-humidity

National Park Service –

            http://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/MHI/CHAPTER4.pdf

            (available if the Republican shutdown of government ever ends)

Canada Conservation Institute –

            http://www.cci-icc.gc.ca/caringfor-prendresoindes/articles/enviro/index-eng.aspx

Smithsonian (technical article) - http://www.si.edu/mci/downloads/reports/mecklenburg-part1-RH.pdf

Northern States Document Center –

http://www.collectioncare.org/cci/ccier.html

Keys to Preservation: Temperature and Humidity and Paper

            This morning it was 46 degrees here in Texas.  Less than 36 hours ago it was 98 degrees.  Now that’s a change that gets your attention and that kind of rapid change is bad for objects like paper and photographs.  If you remember nothing else about temperature and humidity remember that that abrupt fluctuations are bad.  Even if you or your archives have an HVAC system, the outside world can still negatively affect your collections if the fluctuations are not well controlled.

            Temperature: What is important to know is that paper likes it cooler than people.  Most objects are happier with the temperature at or below 68 degrees.  The International Museum Association states that 70 degrees is acceptable for museum objects including paper.  That temperature represents a balance between the comfort of people and promoting preservation of collections. The rule of thumb is not to let temperature fluctuate more than 2 degrees in a 24-hour period.  (Tough in West Texas even with an HVAC system.)  By the way, HVAC is the acronym for heating, ventilation and air conditioning.  These systems are designed to control the internal environment of a building.  Some work well at that task while others do not.  To tell if your system is working you need to monitor the temperature and relative humidity (RH) for a year to see if you have a fluctuation problem.  Numerous devices are designed to monitor buildings.  Simple and inexpensive ones, like the one pictured here, require the manual recording and graphing of the information at set times each day

Digital Hygrometer
Grainger Industrial Supply (http://www.grainger.com)
Cost around $14.00

The more old fashioned, but fancier ones graph the data throughout the day.  Graphs are collected and studied at set intervals.  Sometimes you will see these in the corner of a museum exhibit.  

Other computer compatible measuring devices known as data loggers save the information for download to a computer through a USB port. The data can be collected monthly or as needed.  There are million types (well probably not quite that many) pictured on line.  Data logger Hobo by Onset is the only one I know.  They cost $100 and up and consist of a small device that attaches to a shelf or whatever and a collector like a thumbdrive.  Whatever type you choose will monitor your environment and indicate when and if you have temperature and humidity problems.  Once you determine that you have problems and when those problems are occurring your archive can get the appropriate help to adjust your HVAC system or take other measures.

            Relative humidity: The other ingredient in all of this is humidity, relative humidity to be exact.  Relative humidity is the percent of water vapor in the air at a certain temperature.  To express this mathematically, relative humidity equals actual vapor density over the saturation vapor density times 100.  Saturation density is the dewpoint when the air has enough moisture to cause condensation.  The relationship between temperature and relative humidity is an inverse one.  In other words, the hotter it is the more water molecules it will take to saturate the air. Another way of saying that is that in a closed system when the temperature rises, the relative humidity goes down because the air can "hold" more water.  In winter when the temperature goes down, it takes less water molecules in the air to cause dew or condensation.   RH is different from absolute humidity, which is the actual amount of water vapor in a set amount of air regardless of temperature. Since that is all probably clear as mud, all you really need to know is that the relative humidity should be kept between 40-60% with a fluctuation of no more than 6% in a 24-hour period.

            What you need to take away from all of the above is what I said in the beginning – The goal is to keep your environment as stable as is possible.  More on how to achieve that next time.  

More About Record Managers

           I know I said that I would write about temperature and relative humidity and I will, but not quite yet.  First I want to comment on a note I received from a reader regarding records managers and archivists.  The writer apparently works for a records management storage company in Kentucky.  This is the website - http://www.kentuckyunderground.com/document_imaging.html  The comment was that records management "is not just about long-term storage, but rather end-to-end management of information from creation, operational usage, and storage to final disposition,"  Well said.  Their company apparently scans or preserves information digitally for its clients.  Digital preservation is, of course, the way of the future for most entities.  I don’t know anything about this particular company, but I do know that unless you have a strong IT department it is hard to keep up with the rapid changes in the technology necessary for long-term storage of records or preservation of archival collections.  The entities that I work for are considering farming out their digital preservation and accessibility tasks to a larger university just because of that.  Migration of material from one update to another or one program to another can be a real headache.  It’s very time consuming, often frustrating, and sometimes very expensive.  Without a good and extensive IT department it becomes a nightmare. Whether to do something in house or not must be up to the archives or library and will be determined by the support they have from their institution. Large institutions perhaps can handle the demands better than smaller ones.

Anyway records managers manage records from beginning to end by working with the records creators.  What I said was the following: “ A records manager is specifically tasked with the maintenance of records from creation to disposal for a specific entity, like a university, corporation, or other business or non-profit group.” Records managers do more than just maintenance.   Good records managers work closely with records creators to develop criteria or standards for record creation and usage throughout the life of those records.  That is one of the ways that record managers differ from archivists.  Archivists are usually not involved with collection creation or original usage although they ideally have the opportunity to work with donors in determining which records will eventually come to the archives.  Unfortunately the ideal doesn’t always happen.

Most of the good records management systems can be found in government record keeping. Corporations and large universities also have policies.  Most smaller universities or at least the ones where I have worked have not yet developed record management systems beyond the creation and storage of records required by law – employee records, student records, and so forth.  In the institutions that I know most about little or nothing has been standardized for the various university departments.  One of the individuals I work with swears that her university administration’s approach to record keeping and management is to periodically clean out files and store the information in the basement.  When the basement floods, as it always does, they get to throw it all away. The library staff has tried to institute policies or at least talk about records management, but so far the administration has showed little interest.  While the flooding approach is one option, perhaps policies would be better in the long run. In my opinion they need a good records manager. 

Anyway thanks John for the information about your firm and for the better wording.