There was a discussion of this on Museum-L back last summer or fall.  You
may be able to pull up info from the archives.  The short answer is that the
UV light levels will be many, many times higher with fluorescent bulbs than
with incandescent.  For long-term use, you should find a way to filter the
UV.  To the best of my knowledge, compact fluorescents with built-in UV
filtering are not being made.  Hopefully someone on the list may know
otherwise.  Therefore, you will probably have to come up with a creative
solution, such as putting the bulbs behind UV-filtering Plexiglas or
fashioning custom sleeves/covers from the standard UV-filtering film/casings
that are made be placed over regular fluorescent tubes.  Of course, visible
light levels are also an issue, so be sure to measure them to ascertain that
they are within acceptable museum standards.  If they are too high, use
lower wattage bulbs, move the objects further from the lights, use fewer
bulbs, etc.  In answering your question about the "best" type of light
bulbs, that depends partly upon the size of your budget.  The "best" may be
fiber optic lighting with no UV and no IR (heat).  Another good alternative
is LED lighting, but the color balance isn't quite worked out for good color
rendering on a commercial level.  Until that is done and an actual
acceptable bulb can be tested, I'm not sure how much UV they will emit, but
I would imagine that it will be quite low or even not present.  Good luck!

Marc Williams
President, American Conservation Consortium, Ltd.


-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of George Harris
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 10:05 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] florescent low energy bulbs


Hello,
I am wondering what the best light bulbs are to use for long term exhibits
are.  We recently put in some compact florescent bulbs that are energy
efficent and I was wondering how these might affect the collections vs.
regular incandescent bulbs and what resources there are about different
light bulbs and their affect on collections.

Thanks.
Beau Harris

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