The creation and testing of diagnostic tools to facilitate the identification of deteriorating audio and video formats in magnetic media collections that would enable collection managers to make informed preservation decisions.

documentation of Desano, an endangered Eastern Tukanoan language spoken in the northwestern Amazonian region of Colombia and Brazil. The project would create a corpus of recordings, transcriptions, and translations of the variety of Desano spoken in Colombia, and, ultimately, produce a dictionary and grammar of this language.

The Desano Collaborative Project (DCP) is a two-year, team-based project that will document Desano language and oral traditions, and support community members with training about language documentation. The focus of this documentation project will be the Desano communities in Colombia. Desano is spoken by 200-300 individuals in northwestern Amazonia, in Colombia and Brazil. It is a member of the Eastern branch of the Tukanoan family, a group of some 20 languages spoken in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Desano is one of the few languages in the family with speakers living in communities spread out in a wide geographical area comprising the three main rivers in the region: Vaupés, Papuri and Tiquié. It is in direct contact with other Eastern Tukanoan languages and with languages of other families (e.g., Makuan and Arawakan). Desano data will provide information that can be used by linguists to distinguish grammatical features inherited from Proto-Tukanoan from features acquired due to contact with other languages of the region. In addition, work on the language conducted during the past three years has revealed a number of typologically intriguing features that will be of broader linguistic interest. This collaborative project has three main documentation goals: (1) production of a high-quality textual and audio-visual corpus of Desano, with a focus on oral traditions; (2) the preparation of a Desano language database; and (3) provision of a collection of interlinearized texts and lexicon with English/Portuguese/Spanish translations. In addition, this project will actively support community efforts in language revitalization, by providing training to community members in aspects of language documentation, which is urgently needed in the Desano communities in Colombia. Meaningful collaborations with Desanos and Colombian linguists are an important part of this project. This will be the first language documentation project engaging the Desanos living in traditional communities in Colombia.

Nine workshops to train approximately 450 cultural heritage professionals in the identification, handling, and care of digital prints held in humanities collections.

Image Permanence Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology is seeking an NEH Preservation and Access Education and Training grant to educate and train cultural heritage professionals in the humanities on the proper identification and long-term care of modern digitally-printed materials. This project will have a wide and substantial impact on the field. Hundreds of attendees will benefit from a program of nine workshops offered over three days, along with short sessions at each location that will allow additional attendees a half-day overview covering foundational knowledge on digital print processes and materials, a new descriptive language to assure accurate communication, and the basics of best care for these objects. The experience will be groundbreaking for attendees. Most have little or no experience in this area and this will be the first educational experience on the topic they have ever received.

Funding supports five workshops and nine webinars for staff of museums, libraries, and archives about managing collection environments in sustainable ways. Participants will learn to assess the preservation quality of environmental conditions and the needs of collections materials, and to understand the impact of local climate and the basics of HVAC operations. Strategies for reducing energy cost and consumption in cultural repositories without sacrificing the preservation quality of collection environments will also be identified.

The project entitled Sustainable Preservation Practices for Managing Storage Environments will enable cultural institutions with significant humanities research materials to avoid risks to collections while they support sustainability efforts and pursue opportunities for energy cost reduction. Through a series of 5 regional workshops and 9 webinars directed at a national audience of collection care, preservation and facility management staff, the project will convey the latest knowledge and techniques for managing the storage environment in sustainable ways. Nationally recognized experts in preservation environmental management and energy efficiency will present the latest research and field practice in leading US and European museums and libraries. Environmental assessment tools and methods that will be presented have been developed through previous NEH projects and will be based in part on actual case studies, for example through a decade of contracts with the Library of Congress.

The creation and testing of a freely available web-based application, FilmCare.org, that would provide an authoritative source of information and an easy-to-implement decision-making tool for preserving all types and formats of film materials.

The Image Permanence Institute is seeking funding for a major education and training project dealing with best practices for preserving film materials in museums, archives, libraries, and other repositories. This project will create a web-based educational application, FilmCare.org, that will provide an authoritative source of information and facilitate the otherwise intricate decision-making process for preserving all types and formats of film materials and implementing best-fit preservation strategies for a wide variety of real-life situations. Through an interactive process, this free tool will guide users to identify the nature of film materials, to design and conduct condition surveys, to evaluate existing collection environments, to analyze findings, to simulate certain improvements and their impact on the collections, to choose between alternatives approaches, to implement the appropriate preservation plan, and to monitor the state of preservation over time.

The purchase of storage furniture to rehouse a collection of approximately 2,000 19th- and 20th-century posters in the Cary Graphic Arts Collection. Improved storage will make it easier for faculty and students to view the posters safely. Highlights include posters by the American artist Edward Penfield used to promote "Harper's Magazine" from 1896 to 1899; government-issued posters from both World Wars encouraging public support; and graphic design posters from the Lester Beall, Will Burtin, Cipe Pineles, and Chermayeff and Geismar collections.

The grant will support the purchase of storage furniture to relocate the late nineteenth and twentieth century poster collections in the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection. These significant collections, numbering some 2,000 posters, are used for instruction, exhibition, and scholarly research. As a collective resource, the posters document trends in historical events, graphic design, communications, advertising, and printing technologies. New flat files will be purchased to increase storage area and thus improve crowded storage conditions. The ability to store manageable quantities of posters in each drawer will foster safe handling of these oversize artifacts. The methodical transfer of the posters to new storage drawers will begin in January 2011 and be completed by June 2012.

The creation and field testing of a coordinated system of computerized resources that can be used to document and control the effects of environmental conditions on the preservation of collections.

The development of capture protocols, standards, and tutorials for long-term preservation and virtual representations of aural heritage.

Aural heritage preservation documents and recreates the auditory experience of culturally important places, enabling virtual interaction through physics-based reconstructions. A form of “intangible” cultural heritage, aural heritage is captured via spatial acoustics techniques, creating digital audio data for auralizations (reconstructions for listening). This project will 1) codify a protocol for the capture, verification, and auralization of aural heritage, demonstrated in case-study application on three culturally distinct sites; 2) create extensibility pathways for the widespread adoption of this protocol, including workshops, web-based tutorials, and other freely disseminated resources that enable non-acoustical specialists to apply the method to a diversity of sites. Case study demonstrations of the method will serve as models for site constituencies, Humanities researchers, and other cultural heritage practitioners, while providing a digital archive of endangered aural heritage.

A three-year Tier II advanced research project to develop a diagnostic methodology for cultural heritage institutions to monitor and adjust room-level pollutant concentrations while implementing sustainable preservation strategies.

RIT’s Image Permanence Institute is applying for a three-year Tier II: Advanced Implementation Grant to integrate new methods for pollution risk assessment into best practices for implementing energy-saving strategies in mechanical systems serving collection spaces. Pollutants are pervasive, occurring in indoor and outdoor air, causing damage to nearly all forms of collection objects. The project will document, analyze, and interpret changes to pollutant concentrations when implementing energy-saving strategies, as compared to standard operation. A data collection and modeling procedure will be developed to help institutions balance their own indoor and outdoor pollutant levels with preservation quality, energy-savings optimization, and reduced carbon footprint. The proposed project’s relation to climate change, financial impact, and preservation makes it both timely and pressing, and the results will be applicable to the vast majority of collecting institutions.

Investigation of the impact on paper-based collections of short-term fluctuations in environmental conditions resulting from the dynamic management, through temporary setbacks and shutoffs, of climate control systems. A guide would be published to help cultural institutions design and evaluate sustainable approaches to managing collection environments that achieve energy savings and long-term preservation of humanities collections.

"Methodologies for Sustainable HVAC Operation in Collection Environments" is a research project designed to allow staff of libraries and archives with significant humanities collections to confidently evaluate protocols for energy saving and sustainability, and to balance stewardship with fiscal realities and global responsibility. Since little research has been done on the impact of short-term fluctuations in temperature and humidity("setbacks" during unoccupied nights and weekends), neither facilities managers nor collection care specialists know how to evaluate their effect on collection preservation. Through a combination of laboratory research, field investigation, data modeling, and the creation of a user-friendly field guide-style publication, this project will provide the field with reliable data and a usable method for monitoring room environments and estimating the impact of short-term fluctuations on long-term preservation.

An applied research project conducted by the Image Permanence Institute that would define the permissible limits of relative humidity (RH) for rare books and other library and archival materials that are critical for humanities research.

One of the most frequent questions asked by rare book curators and librarians is: "At what RH, especially with respect to dry conditions, does a serious risk of irreversible mechanical stress occur?" Mechanical (physical) damage due to dryness or excessive dampness is the principal reason why special collection materials require controlled environmental conditions. For many years, recommendations have emphasized close control around a target of 45-55% RH. What is not well established from actual experimentation, however, are the practical limits where irreversible damage takes place. This area of research—safe limits for RH—has received considerable attention in the fine and decorative arts, but not for the complex and diverse mechanical structures of bound volumes. To overcome the difficulty of studying mechanical behavior of complex book structures IPI will employ a new technology, Digital Image Correlation (DIC) to dynamically assess expansion and contraction of composite objects.

To support the development of procedures that will enhance the longevity of silver-image photographic film by applying sulfiding agents that prevent oxidation.

To support a preservation research and development project conducted by the Image Permanence Institute to determine the most effective means of preventing air pollutant damage to preservation microforms.

To support a study of the effectiveness on previously developed microfilm of polysulfide treatment, a recently developed chemical application used to prevent oxidation of silver microfilm master film.

To support a research and demonstration project that will develop technical information necessary for the improvement of storage practices and enclosures for film collections in libraries and archives.