Laura, what sort of organization are you with, and where are you located? If your museum or facility is connected with a town and they have a Historical Commission, this would be the sort of thing your Commission might fund. If you live in Massachusetts and your town or city has pased the Community Preservation Act, this would also be the type of equipment that would fall under Historic Preservation grants. Also, sometimes state library boards have free or discounted programs to do environmental monitoring for museums and libraries to give you a snapshot of your environment. For instance, the MBLC (MA Board of Library Commissioners) has been running a program like this (in which our museum participated), where they install 1-2 dataloggers and leave them there for 5 months, then pick them up and generate reports, which they send out upon completion. It's a huge amount of data, and chances are your environment does not change as much from year to year as it does from season to season and day to night. So a program like this might save you buying your own, depending upon your goals and the size of your facility.

http://mblc.state.ma.us/advisory/preservation/monitoring.php

Good luck!

best,

--Kathie

Kathie Gow, Curator, Hatfield Historical Museum