Protecting Our History: Environmental Monitoring of the Working Men's Institute

FAIN: PG-50391-08

New Harmony Working Men's Institute (New Harmony, IN 47631-7825)
Sherry Graves (Project Director: May 2007 to June 2008)

The purchase of environmental monitoring equipment to gauge humidity in the storage areas of the library, archives, and museum. This institution serves as the public library for New Harmony Township and is also a historic site of the intellectual and communal societies known as New Harmony (1814-27) and Athens on the Wabash (1828 to1900). The collections include rare books, folk art, textiles, historic artifacts, journals, photographs, manuscripts, and correspondence.

This project seeks funding for the purchase, installation and launch of HOBO Pro Series Dataloggers and training for a successful monitoring program by a professionl conservator. This project was recommended in 2006 by Ramona Duncan-Huse, the conservator who did the collection assessment for a CAP grant. The documents, manuscripts, books and artifacts housed in the archives and museum of the WMI are of extreme historical and cultural importance to our country. At this point, there is no accurate or systematic monitoring of our humidity issues. Therefore, it is of great importance for the future well-being of our holdings, that we begin a program of systematic monitoring in order to establish the baseline data on which we can plan either remedial steps or make educated choices in replacing our HVAC system.