Context, Development, and Intent: An Introduction to the IPI Preservation Metrics

Abstract

Supporting collections care professionals and facilities managers to understand their preservation environments is of increasing importance as the field of cultural heritage grapples with the competing demands of environmental and financial sustainability and the desire to broaden access to collections. As such, the development of preservation indices that distill complex data into accessible tools can help collections care professionals understand the impact of access and preservation decisions and how they influence longevity. The IPI eClimateNotebook® Preservation Metrics were some of the earliest dose-response models developed for preservation, linking the rates of degradation and physical deformation to environmental variables and material properties. In this review article, we revisit the original aims and applications of the IPI Preservation Metrics with a view to aiding their interpretation and practical application for managing collection environments alongside a discussion of their limitations.