Where to Start: Creating a Roadmap for Collection Storage Planning Through a Collaborative Values-Based Approach: A National Endowment for the Humanities Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections project at The New York Public Library

Abstract

Collection storage is one of the most complex collaborations a museum, library, or archive can undertake. A high-level initial assessment can help overcome the inertia and complexity that overwhelms larger organizations due to the number of stakeholders, spaces, and collections. Large institutions need to rise above room-level preservation issues and focus on global, values-based thinking. With support from the Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections (SCHC) program of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), The Research Libraries of the New York Public Library (NYPL) designed a collaborative pre-planning exercise to inform long-range collection storage planning for over fifty storage areas within its Manhattan research centers. Pulling together experts in architecture, preservation environment, and sustainability to review NYPL’s storage needs in collaboration with an internal team of stakeholders, the project established foundations for ongoing values-based collaborative planning. Project design and considerations on synthesizing observations into recommendations are discussed in this article.