The Environmental Monitoring Data project aims to improve Yale’s energy efficiency and reduce its carbon footprint while continuing to preserve its collections.
Initiated in summer 2023, the work is led by the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage in partnership with Yale’s Cultural Heritage IT. Project collaborators include conservators, collections managers, and registrars from the Yale Library, the Yale Center for British Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Yale Peabody Museum. Collection specialists are joined by information technology experts from Yale’s central ITS services and facilities management staff.
Two primary goals of the project are:
- To assess the current state of data collection to harmonize practices as needed, identify areas for improvement and define best practices.
- To create a shared data pipeline to aggregate data from all the collections so that it can be more easily accessed, shared, and analyzed.
The accomplishment of these goals lays the foundation for future cross-collection collaboration to create sustainable environments for collections.
Conceptual diagram of the data pipeline prototype of the Environmental Monitoring Data project.
To learn more about this project, please consult our most current project update linked here, or contact the project lead, Christine McCarthy, Associate Director of IPCH.
Community Workshops
Sharing expertise and knowledge across departments
In January 2025, a workshop was held in Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library to discuss the recommendations from a large-scale assessment of environmental monitoring practices in the cultural heritage collections.
This community workshop gathered key stakeholders from across all cultural heritage units, facilities, and IT departments to share ideas and reflections on the Environmental Monitoring Data project actions and findings.
Office of Sustainability Award
In celebration of Earth Day, the Yale Office of Sustainability honored individuals with awards for making significant contributions to advancing sustainability at the university.
The Environmental Monitoring Project team received an award for their work in driving solutions to climate change by addressing the unique impact Yale’s collections spaces have on the environment.
Cross-Collection Initiatives
This project is one of many cross-collection initiatives at Yale.