Update on September and October Topics
Thanks to all of you who have provided input and helpful suggestions on the September and October blog topics – particularly Carl Stewart at the University of Colorado! I don’t think that Carl left any element of the site unturned, which is what we need. Unfortunately, only six out of fifteen of our research partners responded. We really need a better response than that. I know it takes time, but all of you did agree to provide your time in exchange for the free loggers and other elements of the project.
By now, all of you should have uploaded and imported data into all of your locations. Last time I checked (10/22), eight of you had not. If you are having difficulty with this function, let us know by email, and we will work with you to get the data into the system.
Feature Topic #1: Analysis using Preservation Metrics
We need more input from all of you regarding environmental risk analysis and the use of the environmental quality ratings (Good, OK, Risk), which are based on the Preservation Metrics (TWPI, MRF, %DC, EMC Max and Min, and Corrosion). These are the elements of IPI’s approach to environmental monitoring and analysis, which are unique, and we feel have a great deal of potential for helping users manage the storage environment for preservation.
Please read the following PDF document: An Evolution in Environmental Control. If you need more detail about the development of the Preservation Metrics, please re-read the “Understanding Preservation Metrics” handout provided at the workshop last March.
Revisit the Risk Summary page for various groups of locations that you choose to compare. Are the ratings of use to you? Does the page function in ways that are helpful? Please give us your feedback.
Feature Topic #2: Compare Locations
Review the Compare page for groups of selected locations. This page includes the risk ratings as well as average temperature, RH, and metrics. There are also links to graphs and detailed information about a location.
Consider how you can use the information provided on this page to analyze the preservation quality of storage and the capabilities of your mechanical system. Let us know what works, what does not, what improvements could be made.
Feature Topic #3: Storage Planning – Evaluate Locations and Explore Materials
Options within the Storage Planning section are designed to help you determine the best storage environment for long-term preservation of collections. Clicking this link, displays the Evaluate Locations, Explore Materials, and Environmental Risk Ratings options.
Evaluate Locations is designed as a search option for spaces that meet certain criteria based on environmental quality. The page displays search options as well as a list of materials entered for your institution and the ratings they require for long term preservation.
Explore Materials allows you to explore the match between the environmental quality that specific materials require and the environment being provided in the spaces that currently house the material. You can also search for monitored locations that would provide a better environment for the material.
The Environmental Risk Ratings page is provided as a quick reference to the explanation of the ratings used to analyze the preservation quality of the storage environment.
Please review these options and let us know your thoughts on the presentation of these options. Let us know how useful they are to you, how you would apply them, and how they could be improved.
Please respond with your comments by December 15, 2008.
December 3, 2008 at 12:27 pm |
Hi all-
I am doing my best to use MyClimateNotebook for all of my data analysis so that I can discover problems more quickly.
In viewing the Preservation Metrics graphs for data, I notice that the label states that it is showing data from 12-01-07 to 12-01-08, but the actual data is from late December 2007 only through the end of October 2008. I know that I have data through December 2008, so why is it not showing up in the temperature/ RH/ etc. graphs?
It appears that locations that have a lot of data (several years worth) cannot display a year’s worth of metrics at once.
It would also be helpful if we could narrow down how much of the graph we want to see, like you can do in Climate Notebook. For example, one of my staff wanted graphed data from a certain month only and I had to do that in Climate Notebook for her.
Is this a bug or something else needs to be tweaked that I am not aware of?
Thanks all!
Tara
December 12, 2008 at 4:19 pm |
For a larger institution with many seperate buildings it would be useful to look at env. risk and quality ratings for each building or even air handler unit. A search function?
The Evaluate Locations Page has env. risk ratings listed for all materials. Can this be limited to just the materials I’ve selected for my collections?
On the Risk Summary page I don’t particulary need to see the photo though the map may be helpful to others less familiar with the space.
At first I wasnt sure I needed the TWPI graph on the metrics page but as I took a closer look i realized i had never looked At TWPI over a time period. I now see its usefulness.
Neil
December 15, 2008 at 3:17 pm |
SInce we have 5 test locations, i asked for comments from each location. Here are comments from myself (Library) and our world heritage museum site (Spurlock Museum)
(Library)
Evaluate Collections: this is reasonably useful – though i still find it ironic that the space we have had an ongoing problem with mold is listed as “good” under mold risk. I think it’s important to fully explain that there are many other factors that affect mold germination than just RH an Temp – for instance air movement, darkness, dust build up. etc. We don’t want to give people a false sense of security when it comes to mold!
Explore Materials: would it be possible to also find area that would be ideal storage for, say, vellum, that don’t currently have vellum in their list of material types? this would help us to better evaluate the appropriateness of our storage areas for given collections. The best storage environment for a given material may be one where there is none of that material current stored. I also don’t fully understand the meaning of the chart on the right? the instructions say” On the right is a list of the materials that are within your collection and their ideal environment.” but i don’t know where the metrics are being drawn from?
Environmental Risk Ratings: i think the most useful thing here is the quick reference of the colors – this has gotten lots of compliments for it’s ability to be quickly and easily understood.
(Spurlock Museum)
The numerical guidelines for the various metrics are especially helpful; having used http://www.pemdata.com, it helps to know both the qualitative (Good, OK, Risk) and quantitative difference between what our environmental conditions are and what they ought to be. The TWPI is, in our experience, the most useful preservation metric. It is especially useful when talking with our administration about our needs for our storage spaces.
The ‘Material/Location Matchup’ on the ‘Risk’ page was particularly useful; it was easy to visually scan each material type and identify what environmental risks are affecting the collections in that location. In general, it would be more useful if the (Good, OK, Risk) categories were expanded to (Excellent, Good, OK, Low Risk, High Risk). It would particularly be helpful for people who have limited experience with determining the magnitude of an environmental risk. The Risk Summary page would be more useful if each material category displayed the (Good, OK, Risk) categories and associated colors, rather than “acceptable” or “not acceptable”.
Compare Locations:
This feature seemed to be good as is.
It would be a bit more pleasing to our data-focused personnel if there were three significant digits (00.0) for the temperature, RH, dew point, and TWPI metrics on this page (and throughout http://www.myclimatedata.com).
It would be useful if, in addition to the averages, the minimums and maximums were shown on the Compare Locations chart.
Storage Planning:
Explore Materials was useful; it was simple and self-explanatory. It was helpful to see the locations side-by-side relative to a particular material. It was not so with Evaluate Locations, which is more cumbersome than useful. The Risk Summary and Explore Materials more than sufficiently cover the data presented on the Evaluate Locations page. Evaluate Locations does not offer the option to show locations “at or below” the chosen options in the categories or “exactly match” the chosen options, which can be just as useful as knowing those “at or above” (the current way it is shown). It would be useful if each category could be selected to be “at or above”, “exact match”, or, “at or below” the selected option.
It would be good if the info on the right side of the Evaluate Locations page (material and ideal conditions) and all of the Environmental Risk Ratings page was moved to a more easily accessible and logical location, as they serve as reference info, and not actual analysis.
Other comments:
The ‘Upload Weather Data’ function had an error when attempting to upload weather data for Champaign-Urbana, IL, for 2008. The error generated was as follows:
Die error ‘80040000′
illegal urlname
/lib.asp, line 229
The Compare page fails to fully load, using Safari 3.1.2, but is fully functional in Mozilla Firefox 3.0.3.
The graphing capacities are incredibly useful for us; the only complaint we have is that the graphs are not yet scalable using automatic and/or user-entered limits. It would also be nice if the larger Graphs page was advertised as a link on the Metrics page.
December 16, 2008 at 2:40 pm |
I’m working on preparing year-end summaries of my storage spaces, as well as trying to make the case for improvements in storage conditions for our future planning (we have a move coming up). I’m most concerned about photographic materials, so for my purposes the Explore Materials link seems the most useful, because I can pinpoint items such as nitrate or acetate negatives. However, it is less useful when it comes to something like a furniture collection that is made of a variety of materials, because it only lets you look at one material type at a time.
I would really like to be able to print out a report of the results of both the Explore Materials and Evaluate Locations. I would also like the Evaluate Locations link to display the data specifics in addition to the risk analysis for each location, or at least data to back up why the material is deemed at risk. Perhaps this information could be added to the Risk page of each specific location? Or would it be possible to generate a report that enables one to add comments such as the explanation of the Environmental Risk Ratings. I would like to be able to give a report to my director that summarizes the metrics of each space, shows the related risk ratings and explains the red check marks for him. Perhaps the notes function can work this way and I just don’t know it yet, because I haven’t added any notes.
I do feel these evaluation links are a great improvement (or addition) to the Climate Notebook program’s features.
January 16, 2009 at 4:23 pm |
Our target conditions in our storage and galleries here at MoMA for paintings and sculpture are around 70F/50%RH. The values of TWPI for these conditions are arround 35 years, which puts us in the red zone when doing risk assessment.
February 2, 2009 at 5:24 pm |
Hi all-
One thing that I noted that might be really helpful is the ability to create a PDF for the risks AND metrics data in one document. I just noticed this now as I was trying to send this information to some of my colleagues and I thought I would mention it.
Sorry that this is off the subject that you wanted us to talk about here!
Tara