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IMLS Funds Emergency Response Research

IPI has been awarded a National Leadership Grant of $453,054 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for a three-year research project titled Evaluating the Potential for Freezing and Freeze Drying to Improve Water Emergency Outcomes for Inkjet Prints. The project aims to determine if freezing and freeze drying are safe and effective for the recovery of modern museum inkjet print collections affected by water emergencies. Daniel Burge, Senior Research Scientist, and principal investigator for the project notes, “Of course, the first action item for all institutions is to take steps to prevent wetting of their inkjet print collections, but disasters can and will still happen and salvage skills to ensure the greatest chance of recovery are absolutely necessary.”

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New Product: Environmental Monitoring Starter Kit

Environmental Monitoring Starter Kit

Routine environmental monitoring of collections spaces, coupled with data analysis and environmental management, informs and enhances long-term preservation planning in cultural institutions. This "starter kit" provides the fundamental tools needed to establish a preservation environmental monitoring program. It includes 5 PEM2® dataloggers for collecting environmental data, IPI’s Guide to Sustainable Preservation Practices for introducing the basics of environmental monitoring in cultural institutions, and a flash drive for downloading environmental data from a PEM2.

To help institutions starting, or enhancing, an environmental monitoring program, we've created this bundle that saves $300 off the retail value of the products, an $1800 value when sold individually.

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IPI awarded $544,198 from the National Endowment for the Humanities

IPI Receives NEH Education and Training Grant

Rochester Institute of Technology’s Image Permanence Institute has received $544,198 in grants from the Division of Preservation and Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support two major education and research initiatives. An education and training grant of $195,049 will fund a two-year project for workshops in libraries, archives and museums throughout the United States on the identification and long-term care of digitally printed materials. The project, titled Digital Print Preservation: Education and Training for Cultural Heritage Professionals, leverages more than a decade of research and education initiatives at IPI focused on digital print preservation. The research’s results in this area are accessible through the institute’s Digital Print Preservation Portal (DP3). Workshops are scheduled to begin in July and continue through December of next year. A research and development grant of $349,149 will support IPI’s three-year project focused on understanding the complex interactions between hygroscopic collection materials—defined as those materials that have a propensity to absorb moisture from the air—and their environment in response to temperature changes. The project, titled The Impact of Temperature Transitions, Short-term and Seasonal, on the Moisture Content of Library and Archive Collections, builds upon a legacy of IPI laboratory research and field experiments and will inform strategies for minimizing moisture content driven deterioration processes in both storage and access scenarios.

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Two short videos that introduce IPI’s approaches to sustainable management of collection storage environments

Two short videos that introduce IPI’s approaches to sustainable management of collection storage environmentsThese videos were created to supplement a series of webinars and workshops conducted from 2014 -2016 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Preservation and Access. The first video, Sustainable Management of Collection Environments—Dynamic Approaches (watch now), challenges the premise that the best and most sustainable preservation environment is always static and unchanging. A modern view, based on extensive research, is that for many collections a dynamic approach can be more effective and sustainable. The video explores the fundamental ways in which collections deteriorate and talks about balancing collection needs, costs and institutional capabilities. The second video, Sustainable Management of Collection Environments—IPI’s Perspectives (watch now), presents IPI's perspectives on the practice of environmental management. It talks about the role of data and data analysis in achieving a healthy collections environment and shows how to get started with blending sustainability with sound preservation methods.