Image Permanence Institute’s Alice Carver-Kubik in the Microsocopy Lab. (Dianne L. Roman)

Behind-the-scenes with the renowned archival preservation foundation that serves collections worldwide.

11 am & 1 pm,  thursday, october 22

The Image Permanence Institute primarily focuses on assisting institutions with their physical environment for the preservation of their cultural property through monitoring and managing humidity and temperature, yet there is much information here the individual producer of materials and the small-personal collector can benefit from. 

Photographic Research Scientist Alice Carver-Kubik offered us an overview of the amazing Graphic Atlas she has been working on for the past couple of years. This resource can be accessed by all at graphicsatlas.org and offers the viewer a comprehensive analysis of the various items in IPI’s collection that have undergone extensive object-based identification and characterization. Be prepared to spend several hours at this website taking the tour, learning about the processes discussed, and signing up for the Picture of the Week. We were also informed of a variety of resources available for downloading from the IPI’s website with content relevant for the production and care of work, especially the IPI’s Media Storage Quick Reference and Guide to Preservation of Digitally-Printed Photographs. Of the various specialized testing rooms in IPI, we toured Microsocopy, Incubation, and Pollution Studies. Although only slightly mentioned, the DP3 – the Digital Print Preservation Portal – can be accessed at dp3project.org/technologies. This is the place to go to clarify what is meant by the term “digital print,” and substrates commonly used.