The Museum Environment Revisited: Managing Heritage Environments in the 21st Century

The Museum Environment Revisited is a valuable text that helps the reader understand collection care fundamentals and the preservation environment, as well as storage issues and decision-making.

Presenting contributions from a range of experts working in heritage fields, this reimagining of Thomson’s seminal text explains the principles and techniques involved in controlling GLAM environments to minimise and mitigate agents of deterioration, including light, relative humidity and air pollution. Describing data collection and analysis techniques, the book points towards methods of remediation, with reference to international standards and ethics. It also contains important new content, including a chapter on integrated pest management and material about dust, conservation heating, film production lighting as well as sustainable architecture and engineering lighting. It also demonstrates how sustainability policies and risk management have been incorporated into organisational practice in recent years.

The Museum Environment Revisited will inform thinking about developing and maintaining appropriate collection preservation environments. It will be essential reading for students, conservation and heritage professionals as well as volunteers working in GLAM and other heritage organisations.

Jane Thompson Webb is Conservation Manager for Birmingham Museums Trust, responsible for care and conservation across nine sites dating from the 13th to the 21st centuries. She chairs Icon’s Care of Collections and Pest Odyssey groups and, with David Pinniger, is the creator of www.whatseatingyourcollection.com.

Meagen Smith, ACR, is a Collection Care Conservator at Lambeth Palace Library in London, UK. She develops and delivers book and paper conservation programmes and preservation activities for the archive. She prepares exhibitions, provides digitisation support and training along with overseeing preservation and environmental monitoring. Meagen’s conservation experience includes freelance and project work at the London Library, UK Parliament Archives, The UK National Archives, and University College London Special Collections.