 catch up but thank you everyone for joining us for another ask an expert what is now becoming quite a series. Speaking with people in our profession around issues of sustainability so we are like the title of the event suggests we really encourage you to ask your questions so. As Kelly and Kate and I are talking you're welcome to put them in the q amp a and we're going to try to sort of sprinkle in any questions so don't feel like you have to wait till the end. We're going to try to sort of really engage the audience with this one because. Yeah, I'm imagining everybody's going to have lots of lots of good questions so just to quickly say I'm Roxie Sperber I am the chair of the. This is Kate Fuget who is also on the AC sustainability committee our networking officer. And today we are speaking with Kelly Chris who is a preventative conservation specialist at the image permits Institute in Rochester, New York. So she in her role she provides information and guidance on preventative conservation. She's actually best practices surrounding sustainable environmental management, through outreach and consulting projects and at cultural institutions and many other places. So she does it all basically, and has a lot of great concrete science to back up some of the stuff that I like to talk a lot about and love to see science behind so I'm going to hand it over to Kelly just to sort of introduce herself a little bit more thoroughly. And then we're going to jump into questions. I agree with you Roxie I really appreciate kind of the understanding the background and science to to what we're doing and so I'm very happy to be at the image permanence Institute we are a nonprofit research lab based out of the university. We just celebrated 35 years and so it's been great we had we the idea is that we do a lot of laboratory work a lot of experiments and then we take what we learn and we take it to the field and try to apply it in real life scenarios. And then the issues and challenges that we learn about through the field work then goes on to inform the future research so in that way we we hope to be contributing really valuable resources to the field and learning a lot in the process so I started with its background in film and photographic preservation and realizing kind of the importance of environmental parameters and preventing their degradation, kind of have expanded into more broad environmental studies as well as other forms of damage that have been provided through preventive conservation so I've been here about six years I'm trained as an objects and preventive conservator. And I work closely with my colleague Christopher Cameron who's a facilities manager trained in each back. So between the two of us we've actually together the two of us have worked on directly on projects at 60 institutions at least and then we started with many more through smaller projects or education and outreach expertise so it's been it's been really great to connect with people in the field, and you know, see how each person situation kind of plays out and what we can do to help improve preservation and sustainability. That's so great. 60 plus Wow. I was right you really have done it all so well it really is like each time you go in there's you know there's there's some similarities but there's always there's always something that keeps it interesting and you know you you get to really engage with so. Yeah, that kind of that kind of segues in one of the questions we just want to start off with for fun was, you know what really makes you tick about this work what is super exciting I know sort of the conservators can sometimes be more, you know treatment oriented and not get the present or like this sort of more preventive conservation bugs so I'm always interested, you know what really excites you about this work. Well a number of things I will say my my undergraduates actually in stark preservation and so I kind of came into the field from from that background rather than from a fine arts background. So in terms of an appreciate you know appreciating the building envelope and, and the role that that can play that had already been ingrained in me for for four years prior but there's a I think preventive has a lot going for it I mean for one thing like, you may not always have 18th century paintings in your collection but there's going to be a temperature, no matter what and you, you may not be interested in it or there may not be much you can do to change it but it's going to be there and so understanding how it can impact the collections, and all the subsequent decisions is just really important and I think it also has so much overlap with sustainability which is such a pressing pressing issue for, for everyone really to address and do their parts and so you know it's really the most effective way that we can manage collections prevent future damage, and you know reduce our carbon footprint so I've always, I enjoy the fact that you can kind of get involved in all aspects, you know that that preventive covers lots of different collection types, lots of different situations, there's there's many aspects to it there's chemistry there's physics there's biology. So you can kind of, you know, go go anywhere with it but it also you know you can relate it to that sustainability aspect which is so important. Well that's another really great segue you kind of touched on this already but one of our first questions was just sort of how you see this work. You know, I think we often say and I would like to check with you that this is right that this is one of the areas in which we can be the most impactful as a field. In museums you have a huge carbon footprint, often in other cultural institutions do too so I'm just curious. If you could talk a little bit more about how sustainability segues with the work that you do and how combating the climate crisis, sort of integral to this work. Museums are huge consumers of energy. I think there was a study done that found that we're comparable or maybe even slightly more than hospitals, which if you think about all the things that they have to do. But that's, that's not great for our field. And I'll say to for anybody who might be interested on the EPA's portfolio manager is actually a great place where you can upload your energy bills and get an understanding of how you compare to buildings of similar size and age, really get a sense of your own benchmark. Yes, we are very big users of energy and a track and lighting make up a very significant portion of it so I don't know if it's like the biggest way we can impact sustainability but it's definitely a major contributor. And I think, you know, as, as places that where we want to be leaders and seen as, you know, examples to the public and everything I think, you know, demonstrating best practices ourselves is really important. And when you think about preservation, you know, we're we're preserving objects that are important to people and we want them to last for a long time so, you know, caring that the environment outside of our museum is also there and the people outside who want to come and see these, these objects are, you know, living good lives and able to to enjoy their culture. It just, it just makes so much sense that we would, we would also want to support those goals, you know, and preservation more broadly so I really like that about our work because we always set as our goal is kind of to optimize preservation and sustainability and there's so many opportunities where we can do both or we can improve one without negative impacts to the other and so, you know, seeing those those opportunities and being able to implement them. You know, it's just a real win from a preservation standpoint and meaning preservation in the broad sense even so. So, in a lot of your work at IPI, you've mentioned to Roxy and I in previous conversations, you have identified six HVAC strategies that can really help, you know, cultural institutions reduce their energy use. Can you talk briefly about those strategies that you've identified? Sure. And I should say too that that I didn't identify them. They're actually their energy saving strategies that have been used in industries for many years. And so, IPI has worked with with others as well, including architect Peter Herzog and this has tested how we can apply these in in museum settings. And so it's really drawing again on a lot of laboratory based work done by many of my colleagues here at IPI, as well as as well as what we're seeing in the field but yeah there's really six. So I kind of try to be brief about the explanations. I, not everyone loves HVAC as much as I do but it's pretty interesting. So, so system shutdowns is probably the most straightforward. It's about like, how do I save energy, turn it off is the easiest way. You're not consuming any then. And so, so system shutdowns when we turn off our HVAC what we're really doing is we're depending on the quality of our building envelope to maintain conditions. We've actually I would say that this strategy is actually much more successful than I think people would initially would initially think so when we we tested this through an IMLS grant and we partnered with institutions in Delaware, Virginia and Louisiana. And they were actually all able to shut the system down including the institution in Louisiana. It just varies when you can do it and for how long. And so it's a matter of kind of tailoring those strategies in ways that make sense. And not not every system will be able to be shut down, you know it depends on the programming and like so the building envelope and what kind of collections it's housing. So that's a very important qualifier I should really put on all of them that not all of them will apply, or you know might be some combination that works best for you. System shutdowns again string system off and relying on the building envelope for a certain period of time to help. A lot of times these are overnight where we don't have occupancy we tend to have lower heat loads on the space, but sometimes they're in the middle of the day when energy costs to the highest. So variation on that is really a system setback and so that tends to be more on. You're still running the HVAC system but you're not trying to control it as tightly. So this is really useful for things like exhibit spaces and that sort of thing where you know maybe during those winter months you need to run it to maintain human comfort conditions. But at night it's not as critical to maybe maintain 70 degrees and maybe you can back it off to 65 and those lower temperatures are going to help increase the relative humidity. And so you're not doing as much work with humidification either so you can kind of play with some of the strategies on what more of a on a daily basis there. Then there's fan speed reduction. And so this is maybe like the most complicated of all of them but essentially the way it works is that when you slow a fan down and you reduce the horsepower the energy it's consuming. So it's not a direct relationship with the amount of airflow you get. It's actually a cubic relationship and it's related through what's called the fan affinity law. And so, so actually what happens is you could, you know, turn your fan down to consume say 13% of the original energy so an 87% reduction in horsepower, and you'd still get 50% of the airflow. So there's a major advantage that you can still be delivering air to the space, but at much lower energies. There's some other things you can do with fans to sometimes there's fan banks where instead of one big fan people have kind of a set of you know nine smaller fans that go across, and you don't have to have them all operating at the same time and you can kind of apply that fan affinity law to each one, and really see even more savings but not all fans. Again, not all fans can have their speed reduced but many of them can and that can be a big energy savings because of that relationship. Another one is the outside air reduction. And so, often we bring in outside air to spaces we use it to kind of ventilate. I think we think of outside air as fresh, you know whether it is or not. And just to kind of, you know, clear out those indoor generated pollutants and, you know, the CO2 and everything that we're meeting bring in bringing out that air, we also have to bring in outside air to maintain a positive pressurization in our spaces. There's always leaks and building envelopes, you know there's doors there's windows there's there's going to be leaks and so we have to be introducing air into our spaces in order to make sure that are keeping a positive pressure and not drawing in unwanted air. But outside air, depending on the outdoor climate and what your goals are we often have to do a lot of work a lot of heating cooling dehumidification or humidification in order to get to those goals. So, so the more we can rely on return air that's often much closer to the conditions we want for the space and reduce that outside air the less work the system has to do to be able to meet those set points. Again, there's, there's all there are there are qualifiers we like so we do need outside air and the amount. If it's an occupied space is often determined by codes. So this is much more of a strategy for storage spaces where we don't have the occupancy concerns. Seasonal set points is really kind of the final bit the pure HVAC strategy, and that just has to do with you making sure that we're kind of matching our goals more closely with what's happening in our outside environment creates less work for the mechanical system and it can also help us with some of our preservation goals. So you wouldn't want to do this or any of the strategies really to the detriment of the collection but often we do see that many collection types can accept a broader range of relative humidity and benefit from lower temperatures so with seasonal set points. We might use those lower temperatures in winter. And, you know, we might have slightly higher relative humidity and summer than we do in winter. And it just helps when when the system has less to do it can often provide a you can meet those goals and provide the conditions we need for those. And then the final one is a little bit of a little bit of an outsider but we often stress light reduction. And so, you know, using fewer lights using better lights, turning the lights off. That can be a really effective strategy one of the things we usually say is that you pay for lights twice, because not only are you paying for the light but you're also paying for the heat that the lights add to the space that you then have to remove. And we can often see an environmental data, and someone came in, they turn the lights on, you know the pattern just repeats every day you'll see it you know a couple to one two degree temperature gain every day from from those lights so those are kind of the six strategies that wasn't too long, but I'll say to you. For anyone who's interested, the, we have a methodology book that I think was provided in the links either with this talk or we can drop it in the chat to but it's free for download. It outlines all the strategies talks about like what might make you a good candidate for this how you would go about testing it and the criteria for seeing if it was effective or you might want to modify it so. And we always want to make sure that we're, we're doing right by the collection board. I think this is so important to kind of ground our conversation in those I know it was a lot for you to go through. No no no it's perfect because it really it's not something that I really learned in school it's not. I mean we hear about all of these different things maybe piecemeal but I like I like that you kind of put it out like here are the six options you know, and so I will definitely be downloading that book I can promise you that. I have a question from the audience that I want to ask. So, Jay Brown, thank you for your question asks what percentage reduction in energy use lighting slash age back is feasible in museums so this might, I assume this is sort of dependent on how much you start with. Three out of the six already then maybe you're, you're going to be able to reduce less but I don't know how you would handle that and if you have any more qualifiers. Questioner, you can throw those in the chat too. Yeah, sure. Well, it definitely depends on a number of factors. And we kind of look at it as those like levels of control so first of all the type of outside environment you have you know for those of. You might be living in climates that are a little more compatible with what we would typically see as set points for museums obviously you're going to be doing less work to meet those goals where as people who are in more aggressive climates where there's a lot of cooling or a lot of dehumidification needed some that that's it's probably going to consume more energy but the next sector is really your building envelope and how that's designed how it's maintained. I think it's often a pretty overlooked component, just how important it is not only to have proper insulation but a vapor barrier and air blocks so that we, we understand it if you're in a historic structure it's even more complicated, because they were designed to function in a certain way, and it's not necessarily totally sealed up sometimes when we start blocking things off we mess with the airflow in unexpected ways so so building envelope is definitely the next factor. We, we'd also be looking at the type of mechanical system you have, depending on its age the design, the layout those can, those can be major factors so one of the things we often see in terms of strategies is what might be one HVAC system. And this always seems to happen where it'll serve a collection space, and it seems like a great opportunity based on the collection needs and everything where we can, you know, try some of these strategies we can reduce the temperature it'll be great for the collection. And then, you know when you look at the ductwork layout it also serves it almost always serves the director's office. I don't know why they do that, but you know probably the, you know the person in the museum who's not going to want to have their office be set to 60 degrees. You know, and understandably so, you know that when you have those mixed use, it really, you know kind of limits your options, and since you're trying to meet different goals, then anytime you're doing that. It's going to try to involve more energy or some kind of compromise. So, so the the HVAC system itself and then even the type of storage furniture can play a real major role in it and the layout of that how how. You know how dense it is, or you know the types of enclosures that are used can do a can play a major role in terms of helping to control the environment, or making the space more responsive to changes in the HVAC so there's a ton of variation. But I would say that if I can, like, I'll just make a general statement that it's probably more than you think that that can be quite bit if you think of like a system shutdown. If you see a shutdown for eight hours out of the day, you know out of a 24 hour day that's a third of the time that you're not consuming energy for that HVAC system. So some of the strategies can really be quite effective. We've worked with other institutions where because of the lighting, we, you know, depending on how far they took it, you know if they just were turning them off or if they changed the lighting system or they had them on timers. You know we were finding one library had close to like $60,000 in energy savings for the year so it can, it can be quite significant. Thank you Kelly we're getting a lot more questions which is really wonderful. I'm going to ask Vincent's question now. Can you comment on the effectiveness of passive slash non mechanical climate control strategies for museum environmental management. I love to think that question I think. Yeah, even though like the bulk of my job is looking at each back systems. I think passive measures in micro climates really should be where we start, because we should do what we can non mechanically before we start looking at the mechanical system. Sometimes we're able to achieve the goals without the HVAC, or at least we're able to reduce the amount of work that we need to do with the HVAC system. And so I would highly recommend for people who are looking, you know, at micro climates. When you have your monitoring your environmental monitoring systems in place. You don't have a room monitor, but also have one that's where the collections are. So if they're in certain types of boxes or they're all within cabinets put a monitor in there and really get a sense of how well do they buffer against changes. It tends to be less effective for temperature changes. And usually you'll still see the those fluctuations occur but relative humidity, which is often one of our biggest concerns really. It can do a great job so I've seen examples and exhibit spaces as well as storage spaces. One institution we're working with. They actually had materials within a cabinet and then a monitor outside. And, you know, it's in the mid Atlantic over the summer so the relative humidity is high it's fluctuating all over the place. And inside the cabinet though where the collections actually were they saw like a 2% gain in relative humidity over the course of two weeks. So that's amazing. You know and then then like that whole conversation about like do we, you know how do we do humidify an historic building envelope or something like that. It's, it's much less of an issue because we know that our collections, the collections that is what we care about and that they're not experiencing such extreme conditions so. So micro climates can definitely be effective in that I've seen the same thing with exhibit cases they can be really effective even without Zorbans that they can do a great job of buffering. And I would just kind of related to that with passive storage environments. We do a lot of work with new construction and, and that sort of thing and people are concerned and rightly so about what kind of each of act they get. But that building envelope is so critical so anything you can do to make sure that that space is able to maintain the kind of conditions you want. It's really important HVAC systems. We replaced for 30, I've 50 or more years which is a really long time so that decision is important, but building envelopes are even longer. So the better we can do in terms of, in terms of our passive measures, it's great for preservation and it's great for sustainability. And one more thing on the topic before I let that, let that rest but it's also really important in terms of emergency situations. Mechanical systems fail. And they tend to fail like over the July 4 weekend, you know, where it's like worst case scenario it's hot it's humid and nobody's there. So, so, or you know even, you know, not not in that scenario but it might take you know sometimes things break and it might take a month to replace something. So if you have a good or power outages if you have a good building envelope that you know you can rely on and it's going to buy you that extra time, still maintaining good preservation conditions. It can be really effective for sustainability and making sure the collection stay safe, regardless of kind of what else might be going on. Well, funny you should mention it because we have a question from Ellen here about just that very scenario. She writes, is there a difference between system shutdowns and system failures. We recently had our steam pump knocked out causing a big drop in RH in a short amount of time does this give us information about our building envelope, or sorry. Does that give us information if our building envelope is feasible for system shutdowns. It may. We do actually really like to look at data from power outages or other types of issues when when we're kind of looking at at the strategies. So it can be very effective. Some of it though depends on what other types of operations were going on so for example, let's say there was an issue and so people were going in and out of the space to try to, you know, to fix the issue. So that doors opening people are coming in and out or maybe it's remaining open. You might be seeing that increase in relative humidity not because you have a bad room envelope because, because the door was open. There may be other scenarios where you know the system is turned off or something but maybe not all the components shut down. So, you know, reheat might have stayed on and the temperature increased really quickly. Not not the situation for for Ellen but you know those kind of things can kind of make the data seem like it might not be an option. So definitely the power outage or any kind of system failure is a really good opportunity to learn one about the operation of the mechanical system and and to about the building envelope. So Kim has asked asked a question. I realized that this might be complicated and very dependent on, you know, where different cultural institutions are located throughout the US or even in other countries. So are you aware of published case studies regarding upgrades to HVAC or related systems that include dollar amounts of energy savings. That kind of information might be persuasive to my institution in a way that other arguments have not been. And I think that question really hits upon something that a lot of us are concerned about is how we get you know institutional buy in and unfortunately in a lot of instances, you know people want to see some numbers. You know connected to that too many thoughts about that. There have been some case studies, I would say they are limited and again like, like you were saying Kate it can be difficult to see like how directly it would apply just because even the pricing for mechanical systems varies wildly across the country depending on where you are. And even where your HVAC is located in terms of the building, you know trying to replace something on top of a five story, you know, on a rooftop of a five story building where you might need a crane and to shut down a city street is, you know is very different and you know if it's on the first floor in a more suburban area. So, so prices can vary quite a bit, but one thing that I can say it's not necessarily like a direct case study, but often when we work with architects or mechanical engineers they can, they can model kind of the different options and what kind of costs would be associated with each one. So they would be able to provide it comes at a cost but they would be able to provide you with a more direct answer that's relevant to to your specific scenario so I would encourage you to to talk with any any of the firms that you might be working with for those kind of projects and just ask if they have that kind of data or or would be able to get it. So one thing that we wanted to address and thanks to the audience for all these questions keep them coming. But one thing we wanted to address kind of before we got too far. Is this sort of assumption that perhaps making changes to our environmental controls, in terms of making them less rigid will negatively impact the condition of objects. So I just wanted to ask you if you could discuss, you know, sort of some of the work that you've done, where more sustainable practices of actually potentially serve to even preserve them better if that's, if that's the case or, or, you know, kind of had not had an effect. So I was curious if you could kind of address that a little bit. Sure. Yeah, there's, there's actually quite a few instances so I guess one of the ones to kind of start off with from a, from a temperatures that point will say is so so we know that a lot of our organic materials you know they have their chemical decay is accelerated at higher temperatures, you know, reactions occur faster at higher temperatures. And so we often advocate for, for lower temperatures. So, you know, for that reason. So if you have, if you don't have occupancy in your storage space so you're going to, to heat certain set points, or it's winter time and you're able to use those lower temperature set points. Again, that means you're not reheating air and when you don't reheat it you're not drying it out as much so you're also not humidifying it, and you're slowing the rates to chemical decay. So kind of using those seasonal set points or, you know, the lower temperatures can be a real benefit for both. Some of the other examples kind of related to temperature would have to do more with, for example, blocking windows, or not having windows in the first place, you know, so we don't have that solar load coming in. So, we also don't have the temperature gains that it's offering, we don't have to remove it through the mechanical system, and we don't have the decay that can be caused by light. So, I mean, a lot of other issues with temperature where things might be turned on or turned on more than, than people might be aware of, you know, especially radiators or things that might not be, you know, directly controlled or might be done manually rather than electronically, sometimes those get left on and so they're just dumping a ton of heat into a space, and we really don't, don't want that. So, some of the examples would be, you know, in terms of maybe relative humidity. Depending on your collection type and I definitely agree with that caveat. Sometimes we can accept again seasonal set points or looser set points for a lot of our collections, you know, 30 to 50 or 55 really percent relative humidity. Generally within a safe range, you know, we're any that's again very dependent not only on collection type but the history of the collection where we are in the world. But just speaking generally, we tend to be at a lower risk for mold germination from for metal corrosion preventing mechanical damage within that range. There's been many studies done for different material types. That kind of show that specific range is the lower risk for mechanical damage. So, so if we kind of use those seasonal set points, again, we're working with that outdoor environment. So we're doing we're performing less work, but we're also able to kind of meet our preservation goals. There can also sometimes be one when we reduce the outside air the mechanical systems better able to keep up. It doesn't, you know, we might be overwhelming it may not be able to de metify and meet those set points in summer. So, by reducing the outside air and it doesn't have as much work to do. It might be able to provide that 55% relative humidity whereas before struggling to maybe get down to 70. And sometimes be an option. And then in terms of things that don't necessarily increase the preservation benefit but don't hurt. I would say there are many inefficiencies and mechanical operation that are not self announcing. I don't know unless you have the monitoring system in place. So, we've been in many, many places where there will be two supply diffusers and once putting out 50 degree air and once putting out 90 degree air so that they can make a 70 degree environment. And so what what you're seeing is that it's 70 degrees but it's done with 40 degrees more worth of work than actually had to be done. And then and that's pretty significant. And there's other examples to sometimes. You know, we'll see, we'll see operations that don't make sense where you know the system will work really hard to dry out the air and then the humidity is added back in downstream and so you know really looking at each stage where work is done. To the air you can you can identify some of those inefficiencies and they can they can be quite significant. So building on this question a little bit. And I think you gave a ton of great examples there so if there aren't any more to give, then we can move on to another question. But I feel like, you know, we are often operating sort of under these, these myths about changing the way that we look at the environmental data and cultural heritage institutions and so I'm just wondering if there are any other examples that you can think of where we have the evidence we know that there are alternatives and we're still not doing it. I feel like our field is kind of slow to change in that respect. Yeah, I mean I would say, um, I tend to agree with that Kate. I mean I think even just to take like a really straightforward example of lighting. You know, I think we know that, that light can cause damage. But, and we know it costs energy to run. That's probably one where institutions are moving in terms of like switching to LEDs and such but sometimes what happens with that is when, when we see it as less of a risk we don't address it as much so I've seen places, you know switch to LEDs and then they leave the lights on all the time because there's not that same same risk and so, so it's still not really like, if you're leaving them on all the time that that's still not the preservation and sustainability game that it could have been. And I think it's difficult to kind of, it is hard to change mentalities it's hard to change ingrained practices. You know, and sometimes, you know, light switches aren't located in good places in order to be able to do that but but you know we do know that that's there and if there are opportunities we can take advantage of it. And I think from an environmental standpoint, we do have a lot of a lot of really great laboratory research, a lot of really good examples from the field that do advocate for more sustainable environmental management, but I think there's still this, you know, having having a straight line as best and trying to maintain that. And some of that even goes to, you know, in terms of exhibit spaces what our loan practices are, and what we want to see so. So it's slow moving I think I think we're getting there though. And, and definitely the more people who can publish and share those examples the better those those tend to be the most effective means so. Yeah, it's, it's coming along. I'll say I was excited to see that the key futures program has a place where they can share case studies and, and everything so I think there's there's definitely an interest in doing so, and I hope to see more of it. And is really hopeful it does seem like this stuff is all about sort of individual granular, you know, figuring out as we go which is a great problem for us because that's really fun. Yeah, yeah, we like to you know it's it's always nerve wracking to if you feel like you're the only one doing it so having a sense that there's other institutions out there who are interested who are doing the same thing and going through the same struggles. The same struggles as everybody else like that can that can be a good, a good shared experience to work through. Absolutely. So if anyone does have any experience with this and wants to share it to our Gmail please do. We would love to like circulate that more widely. Okay, but let me just ask another question. So for those of us who work in institutions, I think it'd be really great to kind of talk a little bit about how we move this into into practice. And so one of the things that I think a lot of us wonder about is sort of who we should be collaborating with within our institutions to make this practice greener, you know, where do we get the data from. We can talk to to implement these strategies, obviously it's going to be a really complex story, but I'm just trace if you have sort of experience with creating teams that can kind of affect this change more powerfully. Yeah, it's, um, it can be a tricky balance because it's definitely you want to make sure that you have buy in and all the stakeholders are there but you also maybe don't want to have every meeting be everybody at your institution. It can be kind of a tricky place to place to start. There's also, you know, a lot of staff turnover in different positions and so making sure that the, the advances that you makes, you know, stay there. And it's really actually ingrained in practices rather than a single individual advocating for it can be is really important. Probably, I mean, it won't come as a surprise, probably from considering what, like the kind of work I do but I would say, you know, starting with facilities is a really great point because depending on what the mechanical system is capable of doing that's going to determine not just in meeting your preservation goals but your sustainability ones as well. And so having a good relationship with them and understanding, you know, what their challenges are, and and everything can be really important I've seen. I've seen a lot of frustrated relationships between facilities and collections, and it has a lot to do with you know sometimes collections people will be asking for conditions that the mechanical systems can't provide. And so they're in a position where they're like trying to meet it and they don't and it, it gets really frustrating and I've even seen instances where like from a physics standpoint, it was not possible. Like the, the dew point of the mechanical system could not possibly create the combination of temperature and RH that they wanted. And so, so it was like there was nothing that these poor facilities people could do to meet that goal. There might be a lot of other challenges to in terms of other demands on their time, or they might, they might be trying to give you the conditions and then somebody else comes along and says this is kind of cold, can you turn the temperature up. And, you know, it's unclear. And they'll see in place for what it's, you know what it's going to take to change those temperatures so they respond and, and they get kind of stuck in the middle so so starting with facilities and making sure that you kind of understand the position there in and the, and what the capabilities and challenges would be for them can be a really great place. In there, certainly some some institutions do already have sustainability officers or departments, universities usually have some kind of green initiatives going on and involving them can be really great because the institutions kind of already committed to that. So if you come on board and showing what your intentions are can be really effective, certainly administration is going to want to know what's going on, especially if there's any kind of financial costs associated with it. So, yeah, it kind of builds from there and then once you start talking about specific spaces that often involves curators or maybe even people more public facing who might be, you know, having to explain like why things are behind vitrines or, you know, like why you know maybe some institutions people, you know, they feel they want to wear their coat coat or something or feels a little warm to them in the summer and explaining why that might be. So, so kind of snowballs from there but you kind of can make your allies and, you know, start start small and and it'll grow. And I think more often than not we've seen. We've seen people kind of come on board more easily that then what what it might seem like initially, and I will say to that having funding and time to make to make the changes can make a big difference to so, you know, go after those grants and and opportunities so that the money is there. And, and that's at least one question that the institution can can see being addressed. We have a really great question by an anonymous attendee who would like to know a little bit more about loan requirements, and they write my institution spend so much time and energy on keeping lenders happy by maintaining the tight requirements and special exhibition spaces, while feeling that our collection can handle more relaxed conditions. So maybe you could talk a little bit about how loan requirements can be changed to be a little bit more sustainable maybe use less energy. Yeah, I would say anonymous attendee is not alone had certainly been an issue. And I think it seems like from the surveys and everything that most institutions are kind of in. They kind of agree but also don't change their loan policies. And we see that a lot of policies are, you know, more strict than what institution, what they're loaning out they require stricter standards than what they're maintaining when the objects in place so it's difficult there's a lot of politics at play. We recently, myself and Joyce lead at the through the American Association Museums published a blog post that was looking at micro climates for exhibit spaces and they were able to kind of quantify the financial savings and the energy savings associated with some of those so if it's possible, you know, using those micro climates or loan objects to, you know, meet their goals, and then managing your spaces, the way that is most appropriate for your collections can be quite cost effective. And again, you know, maybe just through the cases or cases with sorbents or one of the institutions that we talked about in the blog post was even they have had a very small, dedicated each vacuum but it was really just for for humidity purposes, and they were able to, to meet the needs of thought of that particular object without trying to condition the space as a whole that way. So, I would say that I think there's change coming in that regard, and it's really good to hear that somebody, you know, somebody else is also like saying you know this is an issue and wants to address it. And that feels like sustainability needs to be built into, like our central loans, you know, just like the centrality of loan agreements in so many ways, but it's not so. Yeah, conversation. It's a tough topic because it does involve so many parties and, you know, especially your if you're crossing climate zones and have fragile objects and, and all of the the insurance complications. So, so definitely I'm afraid I can't comment too much in terms of loan loan policies. But I can say that from from what I've seen in the field it's definitely a topic of interest and one that people are trying to address so I hope we will see change in the future and yeah loan requirements that match the needs of the object and allow us to operate more sustainably while meeting those goals. So on those lines, we, our next question was, how do you see our approach to environmental energy saving strategies changing in the next 10 years, or even beyond. Obviously we're sort of at the precipice of a major global crisis and we all need to be doing what we can. But do you have any ideas obviously we're asking you to hypothesize. What would you love to see happen in the next 10 years. It's tough to say I will say, you know, it's it's been interesting to even with coven because a lot of times institutions will do these studies they find these opportunities and then implementation and staying with it are our challenges because of the staff turnover and all the other issues so you know we we did see like increased interest in terms of understanding air filtration and airflow and distribution. You know because of coven and we also saw the financial reasons for wanting to be more sustainable kind of come into play. So, one institution that we spoke with so they, they, they kind of implemented these energy saving strategies in order to save, save jobs. And they were able to demonstrate that it was, you know, they were maintaining preservation conditions or improving it, and able to save enough money that they were retaining jobs and so I think that's really great that you know there's, you know, they can go on to do so much for the collection to, and we're, and we still have the good preservation in place so. So there is does seem to be becoming more motivations for for implementing the strategies and really looking critically at our operations. Well, this is like personally I'm excited about where we're currently doing a research project where we're doing pollutant monitoring for indoor and outdoor generated pollutants in, in collection spaces and we're using that information to further inform the energy saving process. So, when we, you know, like I said we bring in outdoor air, there's, there's costs associated with it but we're also doing it for reason you know dilute those internally generated pollutants. So, so we're hoping to kind of get it a place where we can kind of optimize air exchanges, and say, you know we're not bringing in outdoor generated pollutants but we are removing indoor generated ones and we're doing so with the lowest energy use that that we need to do so I'm. I think, you know that'll be great we're looking more critically at those aspects of the operation. More people are questioning even like their filters and you know what level filtration is appropriate, how often do those really need to be changed and kind of, you said this critical examination factor and actually having monitoring in place to make informed decisions and I think that risk based approaches is going to be really critical. So we have another audience question which actually lines up perfectly with the question I was going to ask anyway. Can you describe IPI process of consulting with individual institutions about managing their museum environment. So maybe talk a little bit about how you know how some of the folks in the audience or others could get your amazing help with their collections. Yeah, so so we, we do work with institutions. It's sometimes those are self funded sometimes people will go through grants and I'll take the opportunity to kind of plug some of the grant opportunities that that we we often see so the national endowment for the humanities has a number of great programs. One is sustaining cultural heritage collections are a CHC, and they have two different branches one is planning and one is implementation. And it's really great because the implementation funds can actually be used for making, you know, for for an upgrade to mechanical system or for installing my, you know, installing a BMS or sorry. So that's for controlling the HVAC system. So, so you can actually make, you know, physical changes with that funding which not not all grant opportunities allow you to do that and so those are both, both the planning and the implementation are pretty sizable and really excellent opportunities for for looking at these kind of issues. They also have a preservation assistance grant which is really designed, I believe more for like smaller mid sized institutions but can you can bring in consultants and and there's usually there's money for for implementation or even for purchasing tools so if you won't you know wanted to start monitoring the space or get an infrared camera so you can look at where those heat loads might be those sorts of things that can be great. So the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative offers funding as well. And so they can be a really great opportunity. So there's a number of different, different programs there's state and local funding opportunities as well depending on where you're located, or for those who who will maybe be self funded instead but yeah we the the general approach for working with us is you can you can reach out my my email I can drop it in the chat or provide through contact and we just set up a time to talk through, you know, what's going on. And I think that's be able to assist sometimes we do site visits sometimes we work remotely with people will help them with with data analysis or you know looking at construction drawings remotely and giving feedback that way or we can we can come on site and put each back system and look at the data with you and tell you what might be going on and how you might be able to operate more sustainably so we've done projects anywhere from, you know, a single site visit to you know multiple years and yeah happy to work with work with whomever whoever might be interested in looking at that environment and how they might improve the preservation or sustainability. That would be awesome if you would put any contact info in the chat. Then folks can be that without having to go anywhere else. We did have another question from our email that I'm not sure you know how specific you'll be able to get but I will read it off to you. So from November to March every year the relative humidity my institutions library building looks like a roller coaster when plotted on the graph, for example daily for average fluctuations from 25% RH to 15 to 40. In the course of a week are uncommon for paper based collections is this low humidity and constant fluctuation a problem for long term preservation. So, I won't go too much into the risk for collections without knowing more about the type of collection and the enclosure but I would, I would say, for my first question would to this person would probably be where your monitors so do you have monitors, like are the are the objects within boxes and there are monitors within the boxes that are reading this, or is this based off of a data logger like just just to get a better understanding of where the data is coming from if you're seeing it within enclosures event or you know if the objects are on open storage and you're seeing those kind of fluctuations within the space that might represent a higher risk than if you're seeing it at thermostat itself. So, sometimes thermostats aren't recalibrated very regularly and might be more of an issue of either airflow distribution or sensor calibration that it might be in terms of what the objects are actually experiencing. And my other question would probably be even before figuring out what the risks are to the collection maybe understanding even more why the fluctuations are occurring because it might point more to an issue, either of the building or with the mechanical system that you probably would want to address either way. So, because that is that it sounds like those are pretty, pretty wide fluctuations to be seeing just within a single day so it would be interesting to and curious to kind of get a better sense of what those causes might be before before kind of addressing whether it would be a risk or not. Sorry that's probably it's hard to get it hard to get people to put real numbers on it but it's hard to establish without seeing the data or the space or anything so but those would be my first two tips. So we only have about five more minutes. So I just wanted to open this up to you Kelly is there anything else that you think is super important for us to know that you would want to share with everyone. And it's okay if you feel like we have kind of covered all the major basis. Yeah, I think I think it's been pretty thorough I would say I'm sure I'll think of things like an hour so I can get off the call that I should have said, and didn't, but I'm, I'm really glad we talked about some of the passive strategies but also the HVAC ones and I'll just say to that. I agree I'm not not sure if it was UK or Roxy but yeah it's, it's not something I learned in school either. And so, and it takes time to kind of understand how to read the drawings or how the, the operation of the mechanical system can work and how it can influence what you're seeing in the data, or even data analysis or say even understanding how to do point and what exactly that is how you control it. It just, it takes time so if you're in a place where you kind of feel like it's a little overwhelming or frustrating or just not getting it. Yeah, feel free to reach out because I've definitely been there too. I'm curious if just kind of along those lines. I was just thinking about a loan agreement that I signed off on a few days ago and I'm, and I just sort of arbitrarily put the RH that I always put you know, and I'm curious and that that painting is in a micro climate it's pretty solid. I'm curious though like on an individual object basis like how do you go about experimenting and knowing whether or not it could be wider, you know what I mean. Yeah, it's I would say it's, it's, it's probably a larger conversation at the institution, you know, talking through talking with people who have. Maybe if there's, you know, other conservators who have worked with the object or curators who might have an understanding of, of the materials or how it's constructed and getting into that but I agree it is hard in terms of an object level criteria so you know we, we generally recommend you know kind of starting broad and then narrowing in on those specific objects that have special needs but once you start getting beyond like, you know, this. This is high right and so it requires this condition and talking about composite objects that might have very different climate histories. It is a challenge. I've seen, seen materials crack because they went to. You know cold northern climates in the winter and it was really dry and I've seen northern institutions that had, you know, 10% relative humidity or less and their objects were totally fine because they've been in it for 30 years so. It's really hard to say and I, you know, we definitely want to do what's safest for the collection so so I understand the object level application is is a real challenge. That's a really important point thank you for clarifying that in my head. Well, I just wanted to say thank you so much again to Kelly thank you Elena for having us hosting us a I see. And Kate for co hosting with me it's always a pleasure to have these guests. I always learned so much and then have like a million questions after two so thank you so much for your generosity with your knowledge. And yeah, thank you to all the folks who came in and ask questions and please do share this it will be recorded I know we did have a question about that so we're going to put it on YouTube and we'll try to let everybody know when that happens so that if you want to share it with other colleagues and try to you know, get this knowledge out there, then you can do that so thanks everyone for attending and have a great rest of your day. Yeah those are great questions and thank you all for for having me. Thank you so much everyone.