Establishing an Environmental Monitoring System

The short term/ongoing project created as a result of this grant is an environmental monitoring system for the Minnesota Masonic Historical Society & Museum. This target was achieved by purchasing and regularly using data loggers. Doing so has resulted in a verifiable log of environmental conditions and the creation of procedures for using, offloading, tracking, and storing data loggers and their readings.

The standards the historical society is trying to achieve are, mainly, a comfortable, sound environment with moderate light levels and little to no fluctuations in temperature and relative humidity (guidelines espoused by the National Park Service, Image Permanence Institute, etc.). Using data loggers is helping the historical society achieve these goals: tracking and offloading loggers has become a standard component of the organization's preservation procedures and has already led to changes/corrections in spaces where collections are stored and displayed (lights are now turned off, one programmable thermostat is now set at a constant temperature, humidifiers are being used, etc.). The MMHSM plans, in the long-term, to continue offloading data loggers every three months and using the data they provide to employ environmental controls as best as possible and within the confines of the organization's resources.