NEW and REVISED

Environmental Monitor Loan Programme

For AAO Institutional Members

The long running Thermohygrograph Loan Programme has now been retired. This 
popular programme, available at no cost to Institutional Members of the AAO 
for several years, has helped many institutions to monitor temperature and 
relative humidity conditions within their archives.  The resulting 
information has helped  archives to initiate improvements to environmental 
conditions, or to acquire their own monitoring equipment.  However, the age 
of the AAO equipment and  increasing costs to maintain and ship them to 
members led the Preservation Committee to review the programme and to 
recommend a change to the AAO Board, which they approved  last winter.

As a previous announcement on the AAOLIST stated once the thermohygrographs 
were retired those in good condition were offered on a first come basis to 
AAO members, in exchange for a nominal donation to AAO.   Environmental 
monitoring however is a fundamental activity of preservation management that 
has been supported and encouraged by the AAO through this loan programme.

To continue this valuable service the AAO has purchased five HOBO 
temperature and relative humidity data loggers, which will now be made 
available for institutional members to borrow at no cost.  The Preservation 
Consultant will continue to administer this loan programme as before, with 
some changes.  A data logger will be shipped free of charge to the borrowing 
institution with instructions for set up and starting the recording dev ice. 
The duration of the loan will still be a minimum of three months. Longer 
loan periods may be negotiated subject to availability of a unit.  At the 
end of the loan the logger will be shipped back to the Preservation 
Consultant who will download the data using the logger’s software programme. 
A brief report will be sent back to the borrower showing the readings 
recorded and what they mean.

Any questions about this loan programme,  or a request to borrow a data 
logger can be sent to:

Iona McCraith

AAO Preservation Consultant

(705) 277-1309

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