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

• Published in: Information in Contemporary Society Vol. 11420; pp. 777 - 784
• Main Authors: Maceli, Monica, Villaespesa, Elena, Adams, Sarah Ann
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2019; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Archives; Data dashboard; End users; Environmental monitoring
• ISBN: 3030157415; 9783030157418
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-15742-5_73

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.