Environment, Housing & Building Materials Testing to Protect our Collections
April 30, 2020
Video
View the one of the Preservation Research & Testing Division's labs
About the Program:
Challenges to preserving the national collection come from both inherent risks in the collections themselves and from materials in the immediate environment. The Library’s quality assurance (QA) program is focused on analyzing all materials that come into contact with collections or are part of the surrounding environment. The QA program involves testing of materials used for housing, storage, and in conservation treatments, as well as evaluation, definition, and dissemination of standards for the use of these materials.
This presentation will give specific examples of QA testing, new developments in quantification and identification of volatile organic compounds, fast and accurate test methodologies, examples of collection inherent material challenges, and assessment of off-gassing from potential building and housing materials to determine safety for special collections.
Speaker
Dr. Eric Monroe, Supervisory Physical Scientist
