Creating a Sustainable Preservation Environment

Recording of webinar with Adrienne Bell, Dustin Humbert, and Jeremy Linden

Join us to discuss the lessons the Folger Shakespeare Library and its outside consultants learned through the course of a grant focusing on creating and maintaining sustainable preservation environments. The Folger and outside consultants examined key air handlers for optimization and renovation opportunities; developed seasonal setpoints allowing air handlers to utilize outside conditions to the greatest extent possible; established and maintained key working relationships between collections and facilities personnel; and implemented new policies based around discoveries made during the course of the grant.

As a result of the project, the team gained an understanding in how to:

Set reasonable expectations
Anticipate factors outside of the air handlers themselves that are going to majorly impact the outcomes
Communicate needs and concerns between two departments that have separate activities within a common goal, in order to keep momentum in a project while personnel changes are occur within the grant cycle

The Folger Shakespeare Library received a Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to partially fund this project.

Recorded on December 10, 2019

Adrienne Bell

Book Conservator, Folger Shakespeare Library

Dustin Humbert

Head of Facilities, Folger Shakespeare Library

Jeremy Linden

Principal, Linden Preservation Services, Inc.

Jeremy Linden has been the Principal of Linden Preservation Services, Inc., since 2017. He is an active educator and consultant, and works closely with colleagues in libraries, archives, and museums on issues of material preservation, mechanical system performance, energy-savings, and sustainability. From 2010 to 2015, while at the Image Permanence Institute, he served as the co-instructor for more than 30 workshops and webinars on sustainable preservation funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, specifically teaching sessions on the role of dew point and moisture control in preservation environments and environmental analysis, using environmental data for analyzing preservation, building, and system performance, and mechanical operation and energy optimization for cultural heritage settings. In 2017 he was an instructor for the “Preserving Collections in the Age of Sustainability” course as part of the Getty Conservation Institute’s MCE Initiative, teaching specifically on mechanical and environmental management strategies, operations, and commissioning. Over the course of the last several years he has taught workshops and webinars for the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), the Society of American Archivists (SAA), the American Institute for Conservation, the American Alliance of Museums, the Northeast Document Conservation Center, Lyrasis, and others on topics ranging from data analysis for preservation and mechanical operation, moisture management and control in mechanized and non-mechanized environments and disaster response situations, sustainable operation of preservation environments, and environmental design and construction practices for cultural heritage. Linden has served as a co-author on recent standards and guidelines from the ISO, ASHRAE, and SAA, and most recently has served as a member of the first Sustainability Task Force for the American Association of State and Local History. Jeremy earned an MLS in Information Studies and an MA in History from the University of Maryland, and a BA in History from Vassar College.