Planning: Upgrading Climate Control to Preserve Audiovisual Collections

FAIN: PF-50169-11

Stanford University (Stanford, CA 94305-2004)
Michael A. Keller (Project Director: December 2010 to March 2013)

A planning project to provide stable temperature and relative humidity to the storage areas of the Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound, which possesses over 350,000 music and spoken sound items with strengths in jazz, opera, symphonic chamber music, and oral histories.

The Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound proposes a project to plan for providing stable temperature and relative humidity in its collections storage areas and providing customized shelving to meet the storage needs of the archive's disc collection. The project will be an opportunity to re-imagine the space in terms of energy efficiency to find the best possible balance between stewardship of cultural heritage collections and stewardship of the environment. In the course of a year, the project team will evaluate factors contributing to the current collections environment, including the shelving, the storage area, the HVAC system, and the building envelope. Working in collaboration with library and campus staff, the consultants will provide specific recommendations for improvements. The resulting report will outline plans to optimize the storage space for preservation, systems performance, and space usage, and will lay the foundation for projects to implement these necessary changes.