Application of the quality norms to the monitoring and the preventive conservation analysis of the cultural heritage

In recent years, the study of the indoor microclimate has assumed increasing importance, especially for the problems associated with the conservation of the cultural heritage housed in museums, galleries and libraries. In this paper, we describe the most important national standards relative to the procedures for the measurements and the analysis of the environmental conditions regarding the preservation of the works of art. These methods are related to the measurement techniques, which have to be applied for monitoring and analyzing the microclimatic conditions of museums, galleries and archives; these norms report, also, the threshold reference values for optimal climatic conditions. Furthermore, we present some considerations on the importance and on the foundations of the proposed scientific/methodological approaches. Finally, we have done a reasoned analysis on some reference values reported by the international regulations with some considerations on the possible chemical/physical mechanisms of degradation of the valuable objects.