Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 39. (1986)
Archive Buildings and the Conservation of Archival Material. An Expert Meeting, held in Vienna, Austria October 30 - November 1, 1985 - THOMAS, David: Architectural Design and Technical Equipment for the Physical Protection and Conservation of Documents
236 Archive Buildings Despite good building techniques, artificial methods of controlling the environment will be necessary in some areas, notably the humid tropics and the cold northern countries. The ideal system is air-conditioning which controls temperature and RH, as well as providing a supply of air which has been filtered against pollutants. There are a number of disadvantages to air-conditioning which might make it less attractive to archivists: 1. Costs: the capital and running costs are very high; a number of archives in Europe and lesser developed countries can only afford to run their plant during working hours. This rather undermines the purpose of installing the equipment13). 2. Plant failure: problems I have experienced include a system in Africa which was cooling the air and raising RH to dangerous levels and a system in London which was heating the air and drying it to below 40%. In a number of cases it has been reported that plants are very liable to break down in the early days or months of operation14). 3. Maintenance: this can be difficult, costly and in lesser developed countries, hard to arrange because of shortages of spare parts and lack of skilled labour. There is some evidence of archivists experiencing difficulties with plant maintenance engineers who do not appreciate their particular problems15). 4. Air flow: poorly designed systems can result in inadequate levels of air movement which can lead to mould growth or other difficulties. In one case I observed mould was growing on records inside mobile shelving because the flow in that area of the repository was inadequate. Hard experience with air-conditioning systems led Timothy Walsh to publish a series of questions which archivists should pose to architects before an air- conditioning plant is installed. They are worth repeating here16): 1. What will the temperature and relative humidity be in the far left hand comer of the top floor at 2 a. m.? 2. What will be the temperature and relative humidity after 2, 12 and 24 hours of plant failure? 3. What will be the maintenance needs of the plant after 10 years and what parts will need replacing? 4. How frequently and for how long will the plant be out of action? Full scale air-conditioning is not always necessary and should not be installed as an alternative to good building design. Rather, it should be used to ‘fine tune’ sound buildings and to deal with very severe climatic conditions. There are a number of possible alternatives. In cold countries where the main 13) Kathpalia Conservation and Preservation 97. 14) Lionel Bell Archival Accommodation in the United Kingdom in Journal of the Society of Archivists 6 (1980) 360. 15) P. N. Banks Education in Library Conservation in Library Trends 30 (1981) 193-194. 16) Timothy Walsh Air conditioning for Archives in Archives and Manuscripts 8/2 (1980) 76.
