Environmental Monitoring Program for Collections Care at the Colorado Railroad Museum

FAIN: PG-252738-17

Colorado Railroad Historical Foundation (Golden, CO 80402-0010)
Stephanie Gilmore (Project Director: April 2016 to June 2019)

The purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for use in storage and exhibition areas of the Colorado Railroad Museum.  The museum’s collections include over 100 railroad cars and 3,500 artifacts, engineering maps, photographs, uniforms, tools, and other railroad equipment from the mid-19th century to the present.  The foundation also holds an archive of 10,000 railroad books, timetables, mechanical drawings, travel brochures, films, and other railroad ephemera.  A qualified preservation consultant would train museum staff and volunteers in the installation of the environmental monitoring equipment as well in the interpretation of the collected data.

This project entails the purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for the collections storage areas and the permanent galleries on site at the Colorado Railroad Museum. It will also include a consultant-led online training session for Museum staff and volunteers on how to set up the equipment and how to offload and interpret data collected from it.  The goals of this project are based upon recommendations from a Preservation Site Assessment conducted in 2013 through the Colorado Connecting to Collections IMLS program.  The Museum plans to develop an environmental monitoring system for areas throughout the Museum where collections are stored or exhibited. Dataloggers will be purchased to record temperature and humidity in collections areas. We will train staff and volunteers on the use and installation of the data loggers, as well as how to interpret the data through the web program eClimate Notebook.  Results from this project will inform future collections management decisions.