Equipment Upgrade Proposal

FAIN: PG-50990-10

ACCESS (Dearborn, MI 48120-1556)
Stephen Williams (Project Director: May 2009 to October 2011)

The purchase of environmental monitoring equipment to help preserve a collection comprising approximately 5,000 items, including books, newspapers, archival materials, objects, and photographs related to Arab and Middle Eastern culture and civilization. The collection includes several cuneiform cylinder seals and a 15th-century astrolabe. However, most of the items date from 1880 to the present and document the history of Arab immigration to the United States.

The Arab American National Museum (AANM), a project of ACCESS, kindly requests a Preservation Assistance grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This grant would support the purchase of environmental monitoring equipment, including 18 dataloggers and a flood alarm, to upgrade the monitoring system already in place and expand it to include collections storage areas, temporary galleries and library spaces not currently monitored. The grant would also support the purchase of a HEPA-filtered vacuum unit dedicated to collections care.