Research on energy savings opportunities in university libraries

Archivists’ golden egg: environmental sustainability practices of archives

Purpose

Archivists are charged with the preservation of their collections by reducing deterioration because of temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pollutants and other factors. The methods archivists use to preserve their collections may have a negative impact on the environment. This paper aims to identify factors for building environmentally sustainable archives to help guide archival environmental sustainability practices.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper identifies factors through a literature review, and conducts a content analysis of the websites of seven national/state archives. The analysis focuses on the policy statements of these archives.

Findings

The authors found that the literature lists 31 factors under 7 categories: electricity, facilities, water, exhibitions, pollution, collection practices and education and outreach. The content analysis of the policy documents or statements demonstrated that archives applied and addressed mostly “resource-related” efforts to protect the environment, such as factors related to electricity, facilities, water and pollution. However, factors related to “work-related” efforts, such as exhibitions, collection practices and education and outreach, were ignored.

Practical implications

This study can provide insights to archivists on current implementation and help to guide their further environmental sustainability practices.

Originality/value

Little is known regarding archivists’ implementation of environmentally sustainable practices. This study focuses on identifying factors for environmental sustainability of archives addressed by literature and existing archives, trying to find the gap between literature and practice.

Indoor Airflow Distribution in Repository Design: Experimental and Numerical Microclimate Analysis of an Archive

The majority of cultural heritage is stored in archives, libraries and museum storage spaces. To reduce degradation risks, many archives adopt the use of archival boxes, among other means, to provide the necessary climate control and comply with strict legislation requirements regarding temperature and relative air humidity. A strict ambient indoor climate is assumed to provide adequate environmental conditions near objects. Guidelines and legislation provide requirements for ambient indoor climate parameters, but often do not consider other factors that influence the near-object environment, such as the use of archival boxes, airflow distribution and archival rack placement. This study aimed to provide more insight into the relation between the ambient indoor conditions in repositories and the hygrothermal conditions surrounding the collection. Comprehensive measurements were performed in a case study archive to collect ambient, local and near-object conditions. Both measurements and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling were used to research temperature/relative humidity gradients and airflow distribution with a changing rack orientation, climate control strategy and supply as well as exhaust set-up in a repository. The following conclusions are presented: (i) supplying air from one air handling unit to multiple repositories on different floors leads to small temperature differences between them. Differences in ambient and local climates are noticed; (ii) archival boxes mute and delay variations in ambient conditions as expected—however, thermal radiation from the building envelope may have a large influence on the climate conditions in a box; (iii) adopting night reduction for energy conservation results in an increased influence of the external climate, with adequate insulation, this effect should be mitigated; and (iv) the specific locations of the supply air and extraction of air resulted in a vertical gradient of temperature and insufficient mixing of air, and adequate ventilation strategies should enhance sufficient air mixing in combination with the insulation of external walls, and gradient forming should be reduced.

Library directors’ concerns and attitudes towards going green and sustainability in China: An unexplored area

Environmental issues are one of today’s growing concerns. Numerous associations, organizations and individuals are waging an active world preservation campaign. The purpose of this pilot study is to examine an important aspect of library directors’ attitudes towards environmental protection and the level of their concerns and green practices regarding sustainable development that has generally been overlooked in the literature. Multiple means of data collection (interviews, observation and document analysis) involving 14 libraries in China were conducted between March and May 2015; seven main thematic areas emerged from the data, such as: levels of awareness and commitment to sustainability issues in Chinese libraries are relatively low, and the current efficiency of facilities and operations have been seriously wasted. These findings indicate that the main priority of the library has been to attain economic and social development rather than environmental sustainability, while ignoring the energy costs and serious waste to some extent in the rapid development process of the Chinese library. The author notes just from observation of daily practices that there is definitely room for improvement to minimize the negative impact of their activities on the environment. This paper discusses for the first time the library directors’ concerns and attitudes towards “going green” and sustainability. The ideas are expected to inform and improve library directors’ environmental consciousness and sustainable practices, as well as open new vistas for research into the economic, social and environmental sustainability of library information services. How to achieve the social, economic and environmental requirements of present and future generations from libraries, especially library environmental sustainability is discussed intensively.