Vermont Historical Society urges committee to fund Munter climate unit to protect rare collections

Steve Perkins, executive director of the Vermont Historical Society, told the Senate Institutions committee on Jan. 29 that the society’s capital request in Section 16 includes funding to replace the vault’s climate-control equipment with a Munter unit to protect fragile collections.

“This really is the last piece of critical HVAC equipment,” Perkins said, describing the Munter unit as a combined heating, cooling and very precise dehumidification/humidification system tailored for archival storage. He said the unit controls the vault’s environment for materials ranging from early film prints that are heat-sensitive to family papers and rare printed items.

Perkins outlined the vault’s holdings and the society’s public-access practices. He showed committee members examples from the collection, including a Chambers atlas and a rare daguerreotype of an early statehouse, and described a surviving slave narrative by Jeffrey Brace. Perkins said those materials are available to researchers in the society’s library and that the Vermont Historical Society lends artifacts to vetted institutions such as the Bennington Museum.

Perkins recounted past threats to the collections, including a 1992 flood in Montpelier that prompted relocation of the most sensitive holdings out of the pavilion basement. He said recent water-penetration problems prompted foundation and drainage repairs that are already under way, and that roofing, insulation and masonry work is being phased to stop leaks and stabilize the building.

A committee member asked how much money the society needs. Perkins said the procurement process produced an exact bid that was submitted to the budget office; the figure he read aloud is unclear in the transcript. He also said the society has already run a competitive bid process and that the current unit remains functional but is obsolete and cannot reliably be maintained because replacement parts are no longer available.

Perkins told the committee the work is on the society’s ten-year maintenance plan and said the current phase is on schedule and on budget. He asked the committee to support inclusion of the Munter climate-control unit in the capital package so the society can secure one of the available units and complete the conservation upgrades.

The committee discussed access and recordkeeping and did not take a formal vote; members thanked Perkins and asked him to share supporting materials and links to transcripts and catalog records.