Environmental Monitoring of Archival Collections: An Exploratory Study of Professionals’ Data Monitoring Dashboard Needs and Related Challenges

Abstract

This work explores the data dashboard monitoring needs and challenges encountered by archives professionals engaged in environmental monitoring, such as collection of temperature and humidity data, across a variety of cultural heritage domains. The results of a practitioner focus group and data dashboard feature ideation session are presented. Findings suggest that practitioners’ environmental monitoring struggles include a variety of factors ranging from little budget or staff buy-in, to struggles with environmental monitoring device features, data collection, and interpretation. Suggested revisions to popular data dashboard tools in use included integrating multiple sensors’ data into a single, remotely-accessible real-time control interface. Participants’ required features in a data dashboard included: charts, export options, value ranges and exceeded alerts, web and mobile access, real-time data, and a date range selector. An initial data dashboard mockup based on the expressed end user needs and challenges is presented.