Institutions with cultural heritage have a variety of obligations linked to their mission. Most of the time this is about acquiring and opening up collections, making them available to the community and secure a good care and storage.
Realizing these goals is often an act of equilibrium and leads inevitable to compromises. The 2 extremes, unconditional availability to the public without protective measures, or permanent withdrawal from the public scene for reasons of exclusive preventive conservation, are inacceptible.
Storage of cultural heritage is a complex matter. Most objects are made of different materials which demand, according to their properties and restrictions, different storage conditions. Creating an efficient collection care and storage depends on a combination of storage environment, storage furniture and adequate packing materials.
In practice adequate storage is searching all the time for the best denominator for all objects in a collection. The reason for this is that we also have to take in account the financial restrictions that govern all institutions, although this can not be an alibi to neglect or minimalize collection care.
Collection care/storage and public availability are two sides of the same coin because, being realistic, when one does not put its money on safeguarding its collections, there will be no collections left in the future to make available to researchers and public. And that is of course not acceptable.
In this section we want to help to formulate, in the long run, guidelines based on scientific research. Not only storage conditions, but also adequate furnishing and packing material will be considered.
foto: acid-free conservation boxes