Relocation of Iconographic Collections as a disaster response to water activity in 17th century palace

Abstract

The paper presents response to water activity damage that occurred on the wall of one of the storage rooms with the Iconographic Collections of the National Library of Poland in the Krasiński Palace:

1. wall and room damage evaluation 2. microbiological sampling of air and objects 3. decision on relocation of the entire Iconographic Collections of approx. 500000 objects 4. preparation of the new storage rooms 5. decision on mass disinfection of the relocated objects 6. analysis of available disinfection systems 7. logistics of transportation 8. legal aspects of use of external disinfection system on premises of National Library 9. repackaging of large format objects for the disinfection system of National Library 10. introducing the evaluation of microbiological condition for individual large format objects instead of disinfection

The entire operation took over 2 years and was executed by Department for Iconographic Collections and Department-Laboratory for Conservation of Library Collections with great help of many other units of National Library. In effect the storage conditions of Iconographic Collections were significantly improved. The experience gained during the relocation became the material for further research (including the microbiological evaluation of entire collections), procedures and training. The Department-Laboratory is now the part of the Institute for Conservation of Library Collections of the National Library of Poland.