The establishment of a preservation stack environment monitoring system

Abstract

The National Library of Korea (NLK) owns a total of 10 million books and items in its collections. Currently, 44 preservation stacks are dispersed in four independent buildings, namely, the NLK’s Main Building (12) and Digital Library (12), the National Library for Children and Young Adults (NLCYA) (5) and the National Library of Korea, Sejong (9). Quite a distance separates the NLK from the NLCYA (3.68 km) and Sejong (129 km), and thus an integrated system for efficiently managing the materials and stacks located in different regions became necessary.

In 2015, a monitoring system was established for measuring the temperature, humidity, levels of harmful gases and the distribution of microorganisms of all the preservation stacks. The temperature and humidity of all the stacks, which are geographically separated from each other, are measured every 15 minutes and transmitted in real-time to a central system, and the level of harmful gases and the status of microorganism distribution are measured and recorded twice per year.

The preservation stack environment monitoring system can be used for: maintaining an optimal preservation environment; comprehensively analyzing the environment in which the stacks are placed; preventing causes of damage; and statistically analyzing the preservation environment. Furthermore, since materials can be transferred to an optimal preservation environment after undergoing preservation and conservation treatments (such as fumigation, mass deacidification, repairing, dry washing, etc.), such treatments can be safely maintained, and the lifespan of the materials can be extended.

Data accumulated in the monitoring system will be analyzed and used as basic information to: establish mid- to long-term plans for improving the preservation environment in order to extend the lifespan of materials; and operate preservation environments that are customized to various media materials. Moreover, the system will enable a centralized control-type remote management system for managing the dispersed preservation stacks and their environments.