 Welcome to everybody who's already in. We're gonna wait a few more minutes before we start. We see the participant list is sort of flattening off. So I'm gonna get us started as people, the last few people enter. Thank you to everybody who is joining us today. Good afternoon, good morning, good evening. I see we have people from the UK, Portugal, Canada. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Amy Christ, and welcome on behalf of the American Institute for Conservation Sustainability Committee. I am current co-chair of the Sustainability Committee and this is the seventh of our conversations with change makers in which we are addressing the environmental impact of the buildings in which cultural heritage is stored, exhibited, and studied. Today, we are having a conversation with Jay Gutierrez, Executive Director of the Image Permanence Institute, or IPI at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Jay's going to provide an informal introduction to IPI's current research on sealed frame packages, which is the perfect follow-up to our last conversation where we were talking about microclimates and their use to protect more vulnerable objects, especially as institutions consider widening their temperature and humidity set points. Before we jump into that, a bit of quick housekeeping. We will have time at the end for questions. Please enter your questions in the Q&A, rather than the chat. We are looking to the Q&A for the questions, not the chat, but use the chat for comments, enthusiasm, links, et cetera. Hopefully, you'll be able to comment on the questions and upvote any that are important to you. We're asking you to not use the raise hand function. If we have more questions and we have time, we will answer them after the webinar on our wiki and we are enabling captioning. We are recording the event. And like all change makers, this will be, the link of this event will be distributed including being posted on our wiki page. Please check out all the past change makers and we have an awesome team on our committee who is now transcribing each episode so that you can more easily access information that was shared out in these great conversations that we've been having. So I'd like to introduce you to our speaker, Jennifer J. Gutierrez has served as executive director of IPI since 2017 where she provides leadership and strategic direction for the research center. J has a master's of science in art conservation from the University of Delaware, specializing in photograph conservation. Prior to her appointment at RIT, J was the Arthur J. Bell Senior Photograph Conservator at the Center for Creative Photography or CCP in Tucson, Arizona, where she established the conservation department. Before that, she had a faculty appointment in the art conservation department at the University of Delaware, where she taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in preventive conservation, conservation ethics, and the conservation of photographic materials. Welcome, J. Before you tell us about sealed frames, sealed frame packages, can you give us a little bit of background about IPI and how it became part of IPI's mission to embark on research related to sustainability in the field? Sure. Amy, thank you for the introduction and thank you, Kate and Nick, for all that you're doing to make the webinar possible today. Amy, the Image Permits Institute, as you know it, is a research laboratory at Rochester Institute of Technology. The lab was founded in 1985 and initially, as our name suggests, our research focus was to study projects, study materials, photographic materials, image-based materials, looking at image permanence issues or vulnerabilities and stability. All of that work in the 80s and early 90s pointed to the importance of environmental monitoring and environmental management in collections. And that led to the lab focusing on research projects that looked at material responses to temperature and relative humidity and how we might manage collections environments differently in a way to maximize preservation but also minimize energy usage. And so for over two decades, IPI's research agenda has been looking at ways to better understand collection responses to changes in temperature and relative humidity and how to use that information to make informed decisions about environmental management. Thanks, and Kate has put the link to the IPI website in the chat and you have a very robust section there about all the research past and present, I'm correct. Can you know? I think maybe, Amy, I would just add to that while our sort of core function is to conduct research, ultimately the goal is to make sure that we translate the research findings into practical tools and resources that collections care professionals can use to make informed decisions for caring for their collections. And so while that I've spoken to sort of how the research agenda and the focus on environmental management came about, it's worth noting that as outcomes along the way, we've produced publications that help people understand how to start monitoring programs, that help people understand what energy saving strategies they might be able to implement in terms of mechanical operations in their spaces. And of course our web-based software eClimate Notebook is a tool where collections and facility staff can upload the environmental data that they're collecting and interpret and analyze that to make informed decisions. So there's this cycle of identifying research questions that need to be addressed, developing the research projects to address the questions and then turning the findings into relevant tools and resources that professionals in the field can use to inform decision-making. Right. Yeah, on behalf of probably everybody here, just much appreciation to IPI for just putting forth some of the most useful data, the most foundational data that we use as conservators, especially in the, you know, when we're kind of fronting questions about preventive conservation and long-term life of objects. And I think it's so great that you are also pulling in the balancing act of how to use, you know, what is ideal for the object and how do we balance that with the environmental impact of caring for the objects. So with that, can we segue into your specific current research on the sealed frame packages? Super, yep. So I think I'll go ahead and advance the next slide. Next slide. So as Amy already mentioned, the previous conversation with change makers focused on microclimates. And so when I was approached by the Sustainability Committee about talking about our current research, we talked about a project that we're working on that was started here at IPI in 2020. The title, full title of the project is cost efficient and environmentally responsible preservation methods for preparing paper-based objects for transit and display. And ultimately behind that project title, the overarching research question for us was, what are the most cost efficient and environmentally friendly methods of preparing paper objects for transit? And so there are two components to this research project and I'll talk a little bit about both of them. But the main focus for today will be the work we've been doing on sealed frame packages. So as we just discussed, IPI has had a long history of studying material responses to temperature and relative humidity. And this has been driven by laboratory work but also field-based work that has informed significant projects with institutions to work on adjusting preservation set points, adjusting mechanical operations to meet preservation goals while also using less energy. And in this project, we were looking at how do we leverage our understanding of collection storage spaces and environment and begin to look at what's happening in transit and the travel environment, if you will, or transit environment. We were mindful from experiences. We have a very diverse staff here in the lab in terms of people with preservation backgrounds and people with scientific backgrounds. And as we talked about the work that goes into traveling objects, be it individual items or small groups of items for loans or entire exhibitions, that there are many layers of packing to prepare paper-based objects for transit. So this slide demonstrates those layers. On the left, you see at the item level a sealed frame package. So this is a matted silver gelatin print that has had a sealed package created for it. And then we often see that these sealed frame packages are framed, but then also bagged and packed into very densely packed crates, often in trays that might be horizontal, as you see in the diagram here or vertical. We wanted to kind of understand, develop a project where we could understand what environmental conditions works about on paper or experiencing in transit and are there ways that we might adjust or adapt, change these packing configurations to be more cost efficient and more environmentally friendly. So as I just mentioned lightly here in the introduction, one half of the project involved monitoring crates during transit that were moving works of art on paper from one institution to another. And we were very fortunate to secure partnerships with 10 institutions across the United States, Canada and the UK that were willing to accept loggers from IPI and place them both inside their crates that are moving collection materials as well as outside. So in the slide you see here, you can see that the first two images depict loggers that have been placed internally in crates. And the third image on the right shows an external logger. So one of the really neat aspects of this project is we were collecting data at the object level inside the crate. We were also recording exactly what the conditions around the crate were. And we are still meeting with our partner institutions to share the data that was collected. It's all been processed in the same way. We're sharing it with the partners first and then we will begin to disseminating that data and that information more publicly as well. So look forward to some additional information on that aspect of the project in the future. For the remainder here, I'm gonna tell you more about what we've been doing in terms of the SEAL Frame Package research. So we started this side of the project by launching an online survey or questionnaire to the field to collect information about the most common SEAL Frame Packages and SEAL Frame Package designs that are in use in the field today. We had over a hundred responses to the survey and of those responses, 25 respondents also provided annotated schematics of the SEAL Frame Packages that they're creating. So here on this, this is a screenshot if you will of the lead page for the SEAL Frame Package questionnaire summary. So I've put the link here just above it. We did the survey and then we created a report on the survey findings that is the questionnaire summary and that's available on our research pages at the URL that you see on the slide here. I also wanna pause here to just note that this shares a common schematic for SEAL Frame Package to make sure that as I progress through the talk, we're all sort of on the same page in terms of vocabulary. So when I'm talking about the glazing of the SEAL Frame Package, that is the glass or the acrylic that's on the object side of the package that you would look through to see the object. In all of our SEAL Frame Packages, we have the same matte package with a silver gelatin print as sort of the object itself. And then we varied, we have different backing boards and vapor proof barriers and different seals as well as different glazing. So when I refer to the SEAL, that's the material that's holding all of these elements together as one SEAL Frame Package. The vapor proof barrier is the material at the back of the package that is meant to prevent high excursions of relative humidity or moisture intake into the package from the back. So from the results of that survey, we selected what materials we would test in the lab. And ultimately we have tested four types of glazing, six vapor proof barriers and nine different SEALs. And the materials that we tested are all listed here. So again, these were all materials that we drew upon both from the survey findings but also literature review. At the start of the project, we did extensive literature review when we were in the proposal phase of the project and then returned to many of those readings while evaluating the survey findings to determine what materials we would test in the laboratory testing. So if I move on to that, to talk a little bit about how we prepared the SEAL Frame Package designs for performance testing, here you can see a series of different designs that are waiting in our walk-in chamber essentially acclimating after assembly in preparation for the experiment. And hopefully you can see from this image, again, the window mat that's present to hold the object in place was standardized for all of the SEAL Frame Package designs. And then we had one silver delton print just slightly smaller than eight by 10. So these are eight inch by 10 inch packages to apply a window mat and back mat and a silver gelatin print. And at the center of the package, we cut cavities into these research collection prints as well as the back mat of the mat package to place very small, easy log, temperature and relative humidity loggers at the center of the package to monitor the temperature and relative humidity inside the package. And these loggers are designed for monitoring pharmaceuticals in transit. And at the time that we developed the project and then also during the procurement period, these were the smallest thinnest loggers we could identify that met our needs to be installed, if you will, at the center of the SEAL Frame Packages. So ultimately, the goal with testing these SEAL Frame Packages, there are multiple goals. We were looking at the designs both for qualitative analysis as well as quantitative analysis. So the image on the left here shows that an assembly of one of the SEAL Frame Package designs. And I'll point out here that the ease of assembly, so during the assembly process, notes were made about how the materials interacted with each other, what it was like to assemble that package. And you can see from this image that for the pressure sensitive tape SEALs, we did decide to do one continuous SEAL. The only instance where that's not true is we did test a design with strips of JLAR as the tape and that included strips of Marvel SEAL equal to the thickness of the package so that the Marvel SEAL strip would align with the side of the package and the JLAR would wrap around the top of the glazing and then the back where the vapor proof barrier was. That package was assembled with four separate strips of tape, but otherwise we did use a continuous SEAL as well as reinforced corners. And those decisions were based on the literature view and previous testing that showed that a continuous SEAL was better at less more dependable I guess in terms of results and less leakage in previous tests than separate strips as well as the reinforced corners and the technique for the reinforced corners was consistent across all of the designs. So we have evaluated them, the packages from these of assembly. At the center, you're seeing a different view of several packages in the walk-in chamber. All of the materials that were used to create each of the packages were acclimatized in our walk-in chamber at 40% relative humidity and 20 degrees Celsius or 70 degrees Fahrenheit for at least four weeks before the packages were assembled. And then we created packages until we had sort of the right amount to run in an incubation oven in groups and then ran them for a series of four month tests and we'll focus on the last three months of those tests. Ultimately, the goal here was to expose these different designs to the same temperature and relative humidity profiles in our incubation ovens and see how the environment is changing inside the packages and then compare across packages. When the packages were removed from the incubation ovens, they were disassembled to access and download the temperature and relative humidity data that was recorded at the center of the packages. And during that process, we also were careful to record what the assembly process was like, how difficult or how easy was it to take a package apart and also more importantly, and given the goals of this project, what materials from that particular design could potentially be reused for future sealed frame packages or other uses after this usage. So I have just a few examples of the kind of data, the way that we're looking at the data that we've collected, basically the same type of box plot for each layer, if you will, of a sealed frame package design. So ultimately I should say that we've looked at 28 different sealed frame package designs. We started out with 19 designs that we thought would answer our primary questions. And then after some initial review of the data collected for those 19 designs, we then added an additional nine designs to potentially collect additional information to help understand some of the responses we were seeing in the initial data. So that gives you kind of a sense of the overall process for preparing the frame packages for experimentation. In terms of the experiments, I'm gonna focus today on sharing some results related to relative humidity and relative humidity incursion into the different sealed frame packages that we tested. So in that regard, after incubating our materials at, I was to say acclimating our materials at 40% relative humidity and 20 degrees Celsius, they did initially go through temperature change profiles for a month to record how the changes in the ambient temperature within the incubation oven or the climate chamber was affecting the response of the sealed frame package. And then we went on to a three month or 12 week change in relative humidity. So temperature remained constant. It was an elevated temperature of 25 degrees Celsius or 77 degrees Fahrenheit. And a constant relative humidity of 70% for 12 weeks. So these are the conditions for evaluating what are the sealed frame packages responses to being in a high humidity environment and also really a high temperature environment, right, 77 degrees Fahrenheit. So on this side slide, you're seeing a summary of data for the glazings that were tested. You'll see that there are five designs represented here, design one, two, three, four and 23. So I know early, for those of you that remember, we said we tested four different types of glazings and that is true. We tested glass as the glazing as well as three different types of acrylics. And what you can see here is the relative humidity data converted to hygrometric half-life. So what we can do is, I'm just gonna make sure I'm moving on here. The hygrometric half-life, the definition of hygrometric half-life is the time required for the relative humidity in the environment to change by half of the amount of external change from the starting point to the final relative humidity. So in these experiments, we started at 40% relative humidity. Then we took the environment to 70% relative humidity. And the hygrometric half-life for that range is 55% relative humidity, so conservative, a safe RH for paper-based objects. And what we've done is converted the data into hygrometric half-life to show how long would it take for that particular package to reach 55% RH under the conditions of the experiment. And so what you can see here is for the glass, I have the average was 503 days to hit the hygrometric half-life. So if you look at the scale on the left, hygrometric half-life is measured in time units and it depends on sort of what you're evaluating, what those time units will be. For us in these experiments, we're monitoring measuring in days. So for the box plots, the larger the box, the more variation there was between the samples. The smaller the box, that means the samples were producing more consistent results. So if we focus again on the glass results here on the far left, all of the designs were created in triplicate. So we would have three identical packages that are monitored exposed to the same profiles in the climate control chambers and then monitored and then we get an average of what the performance is. So the average performance for those packages where we were testing the impact of glass as the glazing material averaged 503 days to the hygrometric half-life and you see the range there. I've put a line in on this slide at 200 days to point out that all of the glazings tested took over 200 days to hit that hygrometric half-life, which is great numbers to see in terms of how long you might expect a sealed frame package to be able to withstand very high. We're looking at 70% in the ambient environment, high relative humidity before that humidity reaches half of the hygrometric half-life that we're looking at, the half the distance between 40 and 70. 200 days is well beyond any of the travel itineraries that we were looking at in this project, but you could see that sort of being like an exhibition period and certainly more than a season if you were trying to isolate an object from high relative humidity during a display period and a high relative humidity environment. So for the acrylics, they are a little more than half of the same of the hygrometric half-life of the glass, the plain acrylic averaging 232 days to the hygrometric half-life, the coated acrylic on average of 255 days and the museum acrylic 224 days. In this graph, we've also shown the results of design number 23. In this case, glass was still the glazing, but this is a design where we were testing the different vapor-proof barriers. So for the first four designs here, the glazing is what's changing, but the same aluminum foil tape seal and the same Marvel seal vapor-proof barrier were used to create the packages. For design 23, the glazing was glass, the seal was aluminum foil tape and the vapor-proof barrier was acrylic. And so it's interesting to see that performance on one of the things we're interested in, especially in looking at reversibility is once acrylic is no longer usable as a glazing, can it be reused and recycled as a vapor-proof barrier in sealed frame packages to continue using those materials and beyond one framing? Here are some results then for comparing vapor-proof barrier materials. Now, I'll note that the line has moved in terms of the hygrometric half-life. That blue line is at 100 days. If you look at the scale on the left and you can see that of all the vapor-proof barrier materials that were tested, Mylar did not perform as well as the others. So it did not meet the 100 day mark, but all the other materials that were tested as potential vapor-proof barriers at the back of a sealed frame package were able to last at least 100 days before hitting that hygrometric half-life. And again, you'll see that the box plots, the size of the blocks is vary and show sort of how much variation there was. The best performer was Marble Seal as the vapor-proof barrier followed by acrylic, as you can see here in the first two designs. And finally, here is a summary of results for seals. Again now, just to orient you, the line at the bottom is at 100 days. So you can see that all of the seals above the line were able to maintain a relative humidity up below 55 until after the 100 day mark. And the only material I see here that did not meet the 100 day mark in terms of seals is the hot melt glue. So again, there were two designs where the seal was essentially Marble Seal being wrapped around the edges of the package to the top of the glazing. In one case in design 12 using double-sided tape and in design 13 using hot melt glue. Here you can see that the best performers were the aluminum foil tape on the far left where you can see that the hygrometric half-life I have here, let's see, the average was 503 days to the hygrometric half-life for the aluminum foil tape. When we see that range of variation, we've spent quite a bit of time talking about how there's greater variation with the seals than the other two components of the seal frame package. And this very well may be the fact that these are handmade packages. And so the quality of that seal depends on how well the seal frame package maker is applying that seal around all four edges. What is that process in terms of making sure there's good adhesion between the seal frame package elements and the seal all the way around and the quality of the reinforced corners. So I'll point out that with design 30, we did run a sample that was equivalent to design one, except that the corners were not reinforced. And you can see there's a significant difference without the reinforced corners. But I'll also point out that this is only one sample point. We don't have triplicate data as we do for the other designs. And so this is interesting. This is probably the most interesting element of the seal frame package to sort of talk through in terms of that human element and the hand-making of these and the ability to replicate consistently in terms of results. So I will note that, I think my last slide might, yep, acknowledgement slide that I wanna thank all the team members here at IPI, Marvin Cummings, Meredith Noyes and Emma Richardson that are working on this project with me. Also our sincere thanks go to all of our crate monitoring partners. Without them we couldn't collect the field data that we're collecting. I'll also do a plug here for Marvin is giving a presentation as part of the art and transit session at the AIC annual meeting next month in May. So he will be presenting additional details about this project and our findings. If you're interested in learning more and then previous IPI team members Al, Carver Kubik and Lauren Parrish were significant contributors to the start of this project. And finally, I'd like to thank the AIC sustainability committee for inviting me to be a part of this valuable session that I appreciate they make free and accessible to the field. So thank you, Amy, Kate and Yadine for the invite. Well, thank you, Jay. That was excellent. And I encourage we have a few questions in the Q&A. I'd encourage anybody else who has questions to please enter them in the Q&A rather than the chat. We're looking more closely at the Q&A for questions. I would like to ask you a question. That was really great. Love seeing those graphs and thank you for explaining them so carefully. I'm not familiar with the hygrometric half-wife as a variable on the graph. What were those data loggers? Because we had a question at the end of our last conversation about like how could you put something in, like what could you put into a thin package? They did not look like an off-the-shelf. Are they something, how user-friendly are they? How available are they? Tell us about those. I have, I'm trying, I have the full name because I anticipated, tried to anticipate what might those questions be. They are EZLog Ambient Pharma ELCC2004, Temperature and Relativity Dialogers. You can reach out, Amy. We can maybe put it in the transcript or something. We'll get it in the transcript. That's why we record them. And here's what I can say about those and timing. And I was, I don't, I wasn't going to kind of comment on this, but it's been interesting. We wrote the proposal for this project in 2019 and it was funded in 2020. So we all well aware of what their big differences between calendar year 2019 and 2020. And so, so we found these loggers and they're really, they're like bulky credit cards. Is maybe the best way for me to describe it without having one I'm, I'm wishing I had one here at my desk to hold up for you all. But they're very flat because essentially they're the circuit board wrapped in a paper envelope. And when you receive them, they're also wrapped in plastic and that's how they are meant to travel with pharmaceuticals. And they are essentially, they have a temperature range that they're set to monitor within. And if they're a certain of kind of excursion, I can't remember all the details like how long, but if they, there's an excursion outside of that range when you receive them, they're blinking. Just to indicate that the pharmaceuticals at some point in transit went outside of the range. We didn't need that functionality. It wasn't something that we used. But we use them outside of the plastic wrapper just in the paper wrapper. And then at the end of the circuit board, you essentially have a USB B end that you can insert in a computer to download the data. So we've been happy with them. We've also been using them now for another project where we're incubating materials in a very small package. And so at the time that we wrote the proposal, so I started down this path and I was like, why did I mention the pandemic? They were a third the price that they were when we started the project. So a lot of new vaccines were moving around in the world being kept at cold temperatures. So we all have a good reference point for why people care about monitoring temperature when moving pharmaceuticals, right? And so the price change was significant. And because we did continue using them for another project, I can say that procuring them also has been difficult post-2020. So we have not yet looked for a small equivalent. I know there are others, but overall we've, they met our goals. Great, thank you. The Q and A is filling up. There's quite a few questions. I'm trying to sort of condense them, asking about how you reinforce the corners of the peeling tape. Yep. So each, this gosh, this is funny. This is how I go. I always find like I would like a whiteboard or something. So essentially we start out with basically about a rectangle piece of the same material that's used for the seal. You cut a notch out of it to overlap with the corner of the seal. And then sort of make a slit so that you can wrap around the seal and fold one piece under if this makes sense. And then another piece on top of it So for those of you who were trained as kids to do hospital corners at the bed, it's a bit like creating that extra hospital corner versus just kind of tucking things under. So this is a technique that we had experience with prior to the project and implemented across all the designs with reinforced corners. So I hope that helps. I'm sorry to show you that with just hand gestures. It's okay. It's a workshop. Yeah. Yep. It's super interesting how much variation there is by how it was put together. You kind of think that's the case, but then when you see the data, it's really interesting. Tips and tricks for removing the leftover adhesive. I assume on the edges of the glazing tape and all the other stuff that gets stuck to it. Yeah. That's a good question because it allows me to speak to sort of something we did not do. So in terms of the disassembly, that was all mechanical. So we didn't test any cleaning techniques to reduce residual adhesive residue, but for our write-ups, we have a draft report on all the silvering package data. We have a table, sort of the ease of assembly and reuse with notes on which seals left more adhesive residue than others, but beyond the mechanical removals of like of all of the carrier. We did not further test how to reduce the adhesive. We just commented on how much adhesive residue was removed. Thanks. A question acknowledging the human air as a potential source of variability. Was there any visible difference between the best and worst performing packages of the same design to help identify what might have been significant? And I assume that the differences in the way that they were put together. I would say that one of the things that was interesting to note is some of the seals, obviously the some of the seals adhere to glazings better than others. And also some of the seals don't adhere as well to themselves as others. And so it was interesting that even though we might have applied reinforced corners, in some instances there were some seals like the line coat tape comes to mind. That's something that we have to be aware of. Some seals like the line coat tape comes to mind that would regularly lift in the reinforced corners. Like it didn't have good adhesion to its own carrier. And so those things obviously are gonna matter. So if you have like, if the seal has good adhesion to your glazing and your vapor proof barrier, that's great. But then to have that reinforced corner provide that additional reinforcement at the corner, you need good adhesion between the material that you're using to make the reinforced corner. And again, we consistently use the same seal material that was used all around the package for the reinforcing. But that's something that you could certainly vary. So I think like what's really interesting is you sit down and you think about, well, I don't have to reinforce the corners with the same material as the seal. And the ways that you can make changes. And that's where I think we expected maybe more outliers and things to kind of help say this seal because and that glazing because where when you see them performing very similarly then there are other factors, many other factors to consider. Related to visual examination, did you note any difference in the appearance of the photographs and cells? So no, we didn't have any changes in the objects themselves or in the map packages. That's good. There are tight packages, right? When you have all of that, there's like the tiniest amount of air and then all basically the moisture that's held by those hygroscopic materials that make up the package. Yeah. We are unfortunately in time and there's a slew of questions. So we are going to take note of the questions and hopefully we can get them answered and we'll put them on the Wiki, the Sustainability Committee Wiki which is one of the wikis on the AIC Wiki Kingdom. Jay, thank you so much for being here. This was terrific. It's so fun to see data. Great. Well, I have to say, do see Marvin's talk in May if you wanna learn more and he can maybe even send him with some samples so he can show reinforced corners too. I wanna thank AIC for the support they give us to keep putting these on and Nick in particular was here to help us with the Zoom and thank you to everybody who attended. Thank you to the rest of the Sustainability Committee and hope to see you all again soon.