Monitoring and Accessing Collections in Cold Storage

How To Monitor The Storage Environment

In this video conservator Theresa Voelenger shows how to monitor the collection.  It shows checking the humidity cars, and the use of remote monitoring systems to ensure that the collections are being maintained in a stable environment.

Presentation Transcript:
You may need to access your film-based collections after they have already been placed in cold storage. Before you remove any packages from cold storage, it is important to follow the procedures that ensure the safety of the collection.

On this box, as you can see, this humidity card is all pink. Meaning one of the bags or possibly both of the bags has been compromised. These bags will need to be replace.

You also may need to access the boxes because someone may need to access some of the film inside. You'll also notice as soon as you take the box out condensation will form on the outside of the box. It's helpful to have a towel to wipe this down, and also helpful to have a towel to collect droplets you may miss underneath the box. Boxes will need to sit out and come to room temperature before you can open up any of the packaging materials. We recommend the box sit out for approximately 8 hours or overnight. So you'll need to plan ahead if you need to retrieve a box from cold storage.

This image shows an example of Humidity Cards This image shows an example of Inside Data Loggers Continue to Monitoring and Accessing Collections in Cold Storage: Accessing the Collections