Hello,
It would be great if anyone could advise me on a couple of things?
We wish to refurbish an area of our library to create two new areas, one to
store little-used and rare materials in, and one acting as a reading room area.
The storage area would be 18 degrees C, plus or minus a degree, the study
area would be 21 degrees C, plus or minus one degree. Ideally, items from the
rare book store/little used materials store would be consulted in the reading
room and thus move from a cool to a warmer environment, and vice-versa.
BS5454:2000 in section 7.3.4 states that "if it is necessary to move materials
from one set of environmental conditions to a sharply differing environment,
they should be allowed time to adapt before use, for example in an
acclimatization chamber where the temperature can be increased gradually for
several hours before the material is handled. The reading room should be kept
as cool as the comfort of readers allows."
Can anyone tell me if a difference of three degrees either way therefore
represents a "sharply differing environment"? If it does, then I suppose we will
have to think about an acclimatization chamber of sorts, which we don't have
room for at present. How do you cope with this situation?
We would also need to decant the materials while the areas were being
refurbished. It would be ideal if there was somewhere fairly near to Cambridge
that would store and perhaps acclimatize the books before we put them on
the shelves (although I suppose we could acclimatize them slowly in the newly
refurbished area) - do you know of anywhere suitable?
Many thanks in advance,
Clair
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Ms Clair M. Castle MCLIP
Librarian
Balfour & Newton Libraries
University of Cambridge
Department of Zoology
Downing Street
Cambridge CB2 3EJ
England
Tel. +44 (0)1223 336648 (office)
Tel. +44 (0)1223 336600 (message)
Fax +44 (0)1223 336676
Email [log in to unmask]
Web http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/index.html
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