[Nhcoll-l] Nhcoll: specimen vault vs vaults
Hawks, Catharine
HawksC at si.edu
Wed Apr 21 12:00:29 EDT 2021
Hi Tonya
I agree with Carolyn. If it is in your power to create storage that fits the criteria she outlines, you are apt to greatly increase energy efficiency, reduce reliance on building systems that often fail, and if you also put your collections, to the extent possible, in good powder-coated steel cabinets on compactors, you'll have secure and accessible collection storage as well a immense potential for long-term preservation.
Cathy
Catharine Hawks (she, her, hers)
Conservator
Collections Program
MRC 170 Rm M85-J
National Museum of Natural History
10th Street & Constitution Ave NW
Washington DC 20560
w 202.633.0835 or 4041 c 703 200 4370
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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
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From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Carolyn Leckie
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2021 10:32 AM
To: Jean-Marc Gagnon <JMGAGNON at nature.ca>; Bentley, Andrew Charles <abentley at ku.edu>; Haff, Tonya (NCMI, Crace) <Tonya.Haff at csiro.au>; nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Nhcoll: specimen vault vs vaults
External Email - Exercise Caution
Hi Tonya
I am just following up from Jean Marc's excellent comments about our Natural Heritage Campus (NHC) at the Canadian Museum of Nature.
While your question was about the internal organization of collections, I wanted to highlight another relatively simple but brilliant design feature of our NHC - 2 building envelopes. It has been a critical, "passive" design feature in our building. This "passive" design feature, has probably been foundation of the tremendous preservation success of our building. The exterior building envelope is tightly sealed (no windows, only fire exits) and access is tightly controlled through a secure loading dock, which leads into a pest management and isolation area. The collection storage ranges are further protected by a 2nd interior building envelope. The double wall creates a "buffer space" and or corridor around the collection storage pods. Labs are located across the hall from the collections. The 2nd wall around the collections, provide additional security and pest control and ensure a more stable climate. All overhead water pipes and plumbing are routed in the corridor rather than over the collections. Only the fire suppression system goes directly over the collections.
Obviously, for future builds, environmental sustainability is a growing concern. I would like to explore with a building engineer, the potential of a very well insulated, double building envelop system, combined with zoning/grouping collections by environmental specifications. I suspect a well insulated system, could further reduce energy consumption and possible enable night time HVAC shut offs. Any improvements that can be made with passive building design, would obviously pay off many fold in the future.
Finally, over the years I have come to appreciate, the importance of anticipating building failure modes and planning for these issues during the initial design. For us routing overhead water pipes around the collections is an positive example of this, as we all know water pipes will eventually fail. But we have equally had some hard lessons about "air intake" when systems fail or what happens when a boiler needs to be replaced. Just some thoughts to keep in mind.
I hope that helps, good luck with your building
Carolyn Leckie
PS I think a senior head of CSIRO collections visited our facility a couple of years ago and I and our VP Mark Graham, toured him through the our facility and discussed these and many other design details.
From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu>> On Behalf Of Jean-Marc Gagnon
Sent: April-20-21 5:58 PM
To: Bentley, Andrew Charles <abentley at ku.edu<mailto:abentley at ku.edu>>; Haff, Tonya (NCMI, Crace) <Tonya.Haff at csiro.au<mailto:Tonya.Haff at csiro.au>>; nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [EXT]Re: [Nhcoll-l] [EXT]Re: specimen vault vs vaults
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Tonya,
At the Natural Heritage Campus of the Canadian Museum of Nature, there are a number of strategic separations between collections that were recommended (or imposed by law) by conservators and other specialists.
As you mentioned, pest management would suggest that collections that are susceptible to similar pest attacks should be kept apart so that if one gets an outbreak, the other(s) is(are) not so close that the pests can quickly spread to it(them). For that reason, we kept our Botany Collection far from our Insect and Bird/Mammal collections. While the Insect and Bird/Mammal collection share the same environmental conditions (and same system), they are in separate rooms, with limited risks of pest spreading between these two rooms (all adjacent walls are sealed all around, with no direct door passage).
The second important reason for creating separate rooms instead of a large shared space with separate compactor sets is fire. The larger the room, the larger the risk of a fire spreading to all the collections in that room. While collections kept in modern, sealed cabinets may not be the source of a spreading fire, all the material and furniture not stored in cabinets (including documentation) can serve to facilitate the spreading of fire. Even with an excellent fire suppression system, the damage from smoke or water can be significant and the more collections sharing that space, the greater the risk of damaging each of them.
For fluid-preserved collections, the response from our local fire department was very simple (and logical) when we designed the building: they would not enter a large space where alcohol is stored in a large number of containers. In other words, if fire was to start in a large room with lots of alcohol, they would not risk their lives; they would let it burn and let the fire suppression system try to deal with it...
For that reason, they recommended we limit the size of each room to house a maximum of 20K litres of ethanol (with two exception for the barrel room and extra-large tank room). Of course each room is adjacent to one another, sharing the same environmental conditions and system, but with walls and doors rated to withhold a fire for 2 hours.
We have been in our building for 24 years and these approaches have served us well. No regrets.
I hope that helps.
Jean-Marc
Jean-Marc Gagnon, Ph.D.
Curator, Invertebrate Collections / Chief Scientist
Conservateur, Collection des invertébrés / Expert scientifique en chef
Canadian Museum of Nature / Musée canadien de la nature
613 364 4066
613 851-7556 cell
613 364 4027 Fax
jmgagnon at nature.ca<mailto:jmgagnon at nature.ca>
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From: Nhcoll-l [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Bentley, Andrew Charles
Sent: April 20, 2021 4:59 PM
To: Haff, Tonya (NCMI, Crace) <Tonya.Haff at csiro.au<mailto:Tonya.Haff at csiro.au>>; nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [EXT]Re: [Nhcoll-l] specimen vault vs vaults
Tonya
I think like collections that require the same environmental conditions could just as easily be stored in the same room as long as there is separation of the two collections to allow for proper management of the collection. We have birds, mammals and entomology stored in the same room in our storage building but the collections are physically separated on compactor carriages to ensure adequate collection management by the individual collection managers and provide some level of autonomy for each collection in the way the specimens are shelved and managed. This would not necessarily need to be true for multiple collections managed by the same person or people. The same is true of our wet collections where ichthyology, herpetology, mammalogy, ornithology, invertebrate zoology and entomology are all stored within the same wet storage facility. Granted in this case there is floor separation for most collection with each collection on its own floor except for one floor which is a mix of collections - but all within their own compactor carriage runs.
I think it makes more sense to separate collections by type (wet, dry, paleo, etc.) rather than discipline for storage.
Andy
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Andy Bentley
Ichthyology Collection Manager
University of Kansas
Biodiversity Institute
Dyche Hall
1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
Lawrence, KS, 66045-7561
USA
Tel: (785) 864-3863
Fax: (785) 864-5335
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From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu>> on behalf of "Haff, Tonya (NCMI, Crace)" <Tonya.Haff at csiro.au<mailto:Tonya.Haff at csiro.au>>
Date: Tuesday, April 20, 2021 at 3:07 PM
To: "nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>" <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] specimen vault vs vaults
Hello all,
I am wondering if any of you have opinions on the utility of separating collections into different vaults/rooms, or of housing them all together in one large space? We are planning a new building, and there have been some questions regarding the utility and point of keeping similar collections (e.g. bird and mammal skins) separated (they are housed in different vaults now). From my perspective, it seems that keeping collection types separate is useful for several reasons, including reducing the risk of pest spread between collections, and ease of workflow for researchers and staff working in different collections. But perhaps there are great advantages (here's one - a bit of extra space from the lack of an internal dividing wall) to housing everything in one large space that I haven't thought of? Have any of you moved to or away from housing different taxa together, and if so what have you found? Advice and opinions very much appreciated!
Cheers,
Tonya
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