[AV Media Matters] Who maintains an archive with high

[tony gardner <anthony.gardner@cec.eu.int>]

I think if you live in the real world, a lot of people who would like to
have better environments for their valuable materials are nevertheless
obliged to keep them is less than ideal environments. Or else it just
happens that way.

It is therefore that these pollutant tests are important.

I would have more confidence in the test and life time parameters if tests
were more rigorous and wide ranging (lots of varying parameters like
temperature, humidity and any of the aggressive gases and particles we
breath in everyday).

I know of a major European archive who kept their main film and cassette
archives in the car parking area in the basement, without air-conditioning,
and where ground water penetrated into the storage area regularly. It should
not have been, but it was. That's reality for some materials that need
nevertheless to be preserved.

Tony Gardner
EC Brussels

>Third, when talking to archivists, we primarily heard concerns about data
>longevity in a controlled environment.  Who maintains an archive with high
>levels of pollutants?  So, we did an extensive Arrhenius study to estimate
>lifetime in that environment.