Hi Katherine,
You have posed a number of good questions which are interesting for the entire museum world. I will give you some general answers below. However, specific answers depend on each museum's situation. I would by happy to talk to you about yours if you mail me at my work address below.
- First off, I have just published the results of a major study on transport and damage in JAIC which I am told by the editor will appear on-line any time now, and in the paper version sometime later this year. I spent one week at each of thirteen museums on four continents looking through as many of their loan transport records as I could in that week. What I found was that with the current "standard" way of packaging objects (such as what your crate makers design), vibrations are not the main cause for damage (changes noted in courier reports). The main problem as you yourself note is handling, and also not following proper packaging procedures/instructions. Therefore, monitoring vibrations would be a low priority if you have a limited budget for monitoring.
- There are many monitoring systems available to measure shock. Which one you use depends on what your objectives are.
- If you only want to make handlers be more careful, then something like a ShockWatch would be the least expensive. It is visible on the crate, and is a step beyond the "Fragile / This End Up" kinds of markings on the crate. However, it is always the question as to how much handlers pay attention to it. The disadvantage with a simple ShockWatch monitor is that if damage occurs, the ShockWatch would only show you the largest shock which occurred during the trip, but it would not tell you when and where it happened, nor if there were other shock loads which were almost as big. This would make an eventual insurance claim very difficult, especially if more than one company were handling the transport.
- Thus, if you need to determine when damage occurred due to a shock load for insurance purposes, and thus, who was responsible at the time it occurred, you would need a shock monitor that measures continuously, has enough battery life and memory for long trips, and provides each shock measurement with at least a time tag. If you know when the monitor was turned on / when the transport process began, and what the transport schedule was, you could estimate where the object was when a particular shock or set of shocks occurred. Shock monitors are available with or with a GPS tag, which is, of course, more accurate in terms of showing the time and location of a particular shock. But those GPS versions are, of course, more expensive. (In answer to your specific question, no, you do not need to purchase separate monitors and GPS systems.)
- Whether a given shock or set of shocks was enough to cause the damage you observed is beyond the scope of your question, but we can talk about that if you'd like for your specific collection.
- Which shock monitor you select thus depends on your budget and objectives. Do you want to just nudge the handlers into being more careful, do you just want to know what is happening during your transports, or do you need good data for insurance claims?
I do not represent any manufacturers of monitoring equipment, though I have an opinion as to whose monitor might be better for a given situation. I will only say here, that for many applications such as yours, there are many commercially available shock monitors on the market which are used, for example, by pharmaceutical companies shipping fragile medicines and equipment, and for the consumer/commercial food, drink, electronic equipment, etc. industries. These are less expensive than the monitors marketed specifically towards the art world, and do pretty much the same thing.
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Dr. W. (Bill) Wei
Senior conservation scientist (retired)
Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands
now:
vibmech.nl / Wilbar Holding B.V.
Mr. P.N. Arntzeniusweg 108-1
NL-1098GT Amsterdam
The Netherlands
+31 6 2246 3135
info@vibmech.nl------------------------------