Rare Books and New Jersey Documents: Environmental Monitoring and Rehousing Project

FAIN: PG-51179-11

New Jersey State Library (Trenton, NJ 08608-1001)
Deborah Mercer (Project Director: May 2010 to April 2013)

The purchase of environmental data loggers, staff training in the use of this equipment, and the purchase of storage files for oversized maps. The collection comprises over 4,000 rare books and 4,000 linear feet of archives and manuscripts documenting colonial settlement, immigration, slavery, industrial development, the labor movement, art and architecture, and government affairs in New Jersey from the 17th century to the present. Among the library's map holdings are New Jersey state and regional maps from 1828 and 1835 and an engraved atlas of Philadelphia from 1796.

In 2007 the New Jersey State Library was the recipient of a Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions which funded a preservation assessment of the Rare Books and New Jersey Documents collections by Laura Hortz Stanton of the CCAHA. This 2010 grant would allow the New Jersey State Library to implement recommendations of the preservation assessment by purchasing equipment for environmental monitoring and storage for re-housing overcrowded map files.