Archivists’ golden egg: environmental sustainability practices of archives

Abstract

Purpose

Archivists are charged with the preservation of their collections by reducing deterioration because of temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pollutants and other factors. The methods archivists use to preserve their collections may have a negative impact on the environment. This paper aims to identify factors for building environmentally sustainable archives to help guide archival environmental sustainability practices.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper identifies factors through a literature review, and conducts a content analysis of the websites of seven national/state archives. The analysis focuses on the policy statements of these archives.

Findings

The authors found that the literature lists 31 factors under 7 categories: electricity, facilities, water, exhibitions, pollution, collection practices and education and outreach. The content analysis of the policy documents or statements demonstrated that archives applied and addressed mostly “resource-related” efforts to protect the environment, such as factors related to electricity, facilities, water and pollution. However, factors related to “work-related” efforts, such as exhibitions, collection practices and education and outreach, were ignored.

Practical implications

This study can provide insights to archivists on current implementation and help to guide their further environmental sustainability practices.

Originality/value

Little is known regarding archivists’ implementation of environmentally sustainable practices. This study focuses on identifying factors for environmental sustainability of archives addressed by literature and existing archives, trying to find the gap between literature and practice.

Citation

Faulkner, J., Lu, L. and Chen, J. (2021), "Archivists’ golden egg: environmental sustainability practices of archives", The Electronic Library, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 258-280. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2020-0260