Get Started: Preservation Building Blocks for Smaller Institutions

Date: May 19, 2010

9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Speaker: Karen E.K. Brown

Nylink Offices

Description

This workshop will provide a foundation for smaller libraries, archives and other collecting institutions to start planning and building a preservation program. Topics will include environmental guidelines and strategies for improvement, best options for enclosures and furnishings, and proper handling and storage solutions.  Practical low and no-cost suggestions for preventing damage and minimizing risk will be emphasized.

AGENDA

9:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.                            Opening Remarks: Preventive Care of Collections

9:30 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.                           Environmental Guidelines & Strategies

10:15 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.                         Break

10:30 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.                         Enclosures & Furnishings

11:15 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.                         Handling & Storage

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES DIVISION OF PRESERVATION AND ACCESS

Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions help small and mid-sized institutions, such as libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, town and county records offices, and colleges and universities, improve their ability to preserve and care for their humanities collections.  Awards of up to $6000 support preservation related collection assessments, consultations, training and workshops, and institutional and collaborative disaster and emergency planning. Grants cover consultant fees, workshop registration fees, related travel and per diem expenses, and the costs of purchasing and shipping preservation supplies and equipment.
Read more »

Yesterday the NEA released the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. This is the NEA’s largest national study of adults’ participation in the arts.

From the Museum Association of New York:  “The new study finds a notable decline in theater, museum and concert attendance and other “benchmark” cultural activities between 2002 and 2008 for adults 18 and older, and a sharper fall from 25 years ago. The drop was for virtually all art forms and for virtually all age groups and levels of education.  Between 2002 and 2008, percentages fell for movie-going from 60 to 53.3, for jazz from 10.8 to 7.8, for museums/galleries from 26.5 to 22.7.  Other categories with lower attendance include ballet, opera, musical and nonmusical theater, and art/crafts fairs and festivals.  Visits to parks/monuments/historical buildings fell from 31.6 percent in 2002 to 24.9 percent last year.

The survey was conducted in partnership with the United States Census Bureau and has been conducted five times since 1982.  The conversation will focus on how these findings should inform the arts community’s work going forward, as well as how the survey should be expanded and refined in the future.”
Related to this, in recent weeks I have read and heard that many museums have found that their visitation actually increased in 2009.  However, many museums and cultural heritage organizations continue to struggle with basic funding.  MANY encourages museums and other cultural heritage organization to contact local media outlets to highlight their recent experiences during current economic crisis.   The Albany Institute of History and Art, located in Albany, NY, recently did just that and a story about their current situation was covered by local TV station WNYT, News Channel 13.

On Tuesday 12/8, representatives from the New York State Library, including State Librarian Bernard Margolis, the New York 3Rs Councils, and Nylink met to discuss digitization efforts in New York, including opportunities for statewide collaboration. The meeting closed with agreement that a smaller subset of the group would meet again for planning purposes.

The American Association for State and Local History announced the winners of its Leadership in History Awards Program for 2008.  These awards recognize the best of the best in state and local history.  New York state winners are the Coalition of Niagara County Historical Societies for the public program, World War II Axis Prisoners of War at Fort Niagara 1944-45 and the New York State Archives for the website, Throughout the Ages

Joyce Rambo, Nylink Reference & Digital Preservation Resources Librarian
One of the first things I realized when I was embarking on my month-long, one-day-a week externship at the Albany County Hall of Records this past April is that an old town like Albany sure has a lot of great old stuff. Little did I know as I walked into the Albany County Hall of Records, located in a former warehouse in downtown Albany’s Nipperville, that I would soon be treated to a reading room hung with 19th-century maps
of the City of Albany (”so that’s where the Erie Canal used to be”) or valuable histories about Albany’s many historic homes, parks and buildings, or a hand-drawn, 23-foot- long map from the 1800’s of the Albany Post Road that marks taverns, inns, meeting houses and homesteads from Albany to New York City.
I immediately recalled one of the basic tenets of my archives class in library school: many of the documents we generate today will be tomorrow’s precious clues to how we live today.
Read more about Joyce’s externship in the Spring 2009 issue of Nylink Connection.

The Division of Preservation and Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities announces a new preventive conservation grant program, Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections, with a deadline of December 8, 2009. The program offers U.S. nonprofit museums, libraries, and archives, as well as state and local governmental agencies and tribal governments with humanities collections two kinds of awards:

• Planning and Evaluation Grants: Up to $40,000
• Implementation Grants: Up to $400,000

Guidelines for the grants should be available by September.  For more information contact the division at preservation@neh.gov or call 202-606-8570.

This was just announced by Heritage Preservation.  It seems Historic Cherry Hill located here in Albany, NY has been selected for the Award For Outstanding Commitment to Preservation and Care of Collections.  Congratulations Historic Cherry Hill!

Here is the press release…

HISTORIC CHERRY HILL AND THE SHELBURNE MUSEUM RECEIVE NATIONAL PRESERVATION AWARD

(Nominations invited for 2010 award)

Historic Cherry Hill in Albany, New York, and the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, have been selected to receive the 2009 Award for Outstanding Commitment to the Preservation and Care of Collections.  This annual award is selected by a panel of distinguished conservation experts from across the nation and is presented jointly by Heritage Preservation and the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.
The two recipients have shown a sustained and exemplary commitment to preserving America’s heritage enriching their communities by caring for their unique and varied collections through dedicated planning and effort.
The presentation of the award to Historic Cherry Hill will take place on September, 17, 2009.  The presentation of the Shelburne Museum’s award will be on September 25, 2009.

Historic Cherry Hill

Historic Cherry Hill is the home of the Van Rensselaer-Rankin family. Built in 1787, it was lived in continuously by the family until 1963. Containing a wealth of information for scholars of social history and material culture, Cherry Hill is an invaluable cultural resource because of the well-documented provenance of its varied collection. The museum was founded when the entire estate, including 20,000 objects, 30,000 manuscripts, 7,500 textiles, 5,000 books, and 3,000 photographs, was donated by Catherine Putman Rankin.

Historic Cherry Hill’s programs and publications provide an unprecedented view into one family’s life and the community in which they lived. The size and richness of the collections literally had the house bursting at the seams−a structural engineer hired to review the site after staff members noticed severe cracking in the walls of the home in 1996 discovered floors that should have carried 30 pounds per square foot were discovered to be carrying 100 pounds.

Assertively responding to this crisis, the board and small staff successfully conducted a half million dollar campaign to design and construct a 3,500 square foot, state-of-the-art storage facility, which was completed in 2003. To date, more than 20,000 objects and 30,000 documents have been moved to the new facility and are being cared for in accordance with the latest advances in preservation.

In addition to this remarkable accomplishment, Historic Cherry Hill has researched and adopted many sound conservation practices to maintain its collection. From installing ultra-violet filtering and blackout shades throughout the house to obtaining grants and developing and executing a long range conservation plan, Historic Cherry Hill is a superb example of what the dedication and hard work of a few people at a small institution with limited resources can accomplish. And, in fact, they demonstrate that example at every opportunity by holding training sessions that share their acquired knowledge with outside institutions and the community at large.

Lawrence L. Reger, President of Heritage Preservation, said, “Historic Cherry Hill is a remarkable institution, and we are fortunate to have such a valuable collection in our national cultural history cared for with such close attention and thoughtful planning. The awarding committee was especially impressed by Cherry Hill’s ongoing work to refine its conservation plan and its collaborative relationship with other groups and the Albany community.”

News came over the Museum-L listserv late last week that Stanford University will no longer be hosting CoOL (Conservation Online) and the Conservation Distlist.  Both of these resources are used by many folks as places to find out the latest information on conservation and preservation related issues.

Below is more information:

ate: 10 Jun 2009
From: Catherine Tierney <ctierney [at] stanford__edu>
Subject: CoOL and the Conservation DistList

Dear Colleagues,

This is a difficult posting to write.  For twenty two years, it has been Stanford University Libraries’ great pleasure to serve and support the conservation community by hosting Conservation OnLine.
Sadly, Stanford—like so many other institutions—has been hurt by the economy.  As a result, we have had to make difficult choices. It is with deep regret that I inform you that we are no longer able to support CoOL.  We feel it is important to alert you to this change as we are aware that so many of you rely on the distribution list as a medium of communication; there are still a number of things to be worked out.

<URL:http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/june17/layoffs-061709.html>

Catherine Tierney
Associate University Librarian for Technical Services Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources

——————————

Date: 10 Jun 2009
From: Walter Henry <request [at] cool__stanford__edu>
Subject: CoOL and the Conservation DistList

It has been a great pleasure and privilege to work with this community and I look forward to finding ways to continue to do so.
I’ve always held that conservation professionals were, as a class, unusually committed to the cause they serve; we really do care deeply about the cultural materials we are lucky enough to work with, and that care takes form in a remarkable dedication to the profession, to the ethical foundations upon which it is built, and to the community of practitioners from whatever discipline or specialty.

So, at the beginning of what would have been the DistList’s twenty third year it is with great sadness, but also with some sense of pride, that I finally give up this enterprise and that of Conservation OnLine as a whole.  I don’t know exactly what will happen to the resources here but I have every faith that their fate will be in good hands.

I would like to thank, with all sincerity, Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources, my own department, the systems and IT staff, and most of all the directorate, who have been unfalteringly supportive of my work all these years, and I know would continue to be so were the world in just a little better shape than it is now.

As DistList tradition demands, I leave you a final accounting:  As of this day, the Conservation DistList comprises 9696 people from at least 91 countries. Conservation OnLine contains, at a very rough guess, 120,000 documents, possibly quite a few more.  I hope they have been useful to you all, and I hope to be of service to you as we move into the future.

onward,
walter

Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grant
The Division of Preservation and Access of the National Endowment for the Humanities will be  accepting applications for grants in its Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program.  These grants support projects to preserve and create intellectual access to such collections as books, journals, manuscript and archival materials, maps, still and moving images, sound recordings, art, and objects of material culture.  Awards also support the creation of reference materials, online resources, and research tools of major importance to the humanities.  Maximum awards are $350,000 for up to three years. The new guidelines, which include sample proposal narratives, can be found at:  http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/HCRR.html .The application receipt deadline of July 15, 2009 is for projects beginning May 2010. All applications to NEH must be submitted electronically through Grants.gov .