 I am Ann McDonough. I am the Deputy Director of the DC History Center. And I am absolutely thrilled to welcome everybody to today's program, Emergency Preparedness for Small Arts and Humanities Organizations. We have a very brief agenda here. Welcome, we're gonna learn a little bit more about the DC AFR. And then we're going to hear straight from the source from several folks. And then really it's just a chance for you to ask questions. We've got some amazing experts in the midst here with us today. And so as we are going through the agenda, I hope that you will sort of start thinking about the questions that you feel comfortable posing in a small setting like this. Now I will know we are recording this for posterity, but basically any question that you might want to pose that relates to your cultural heritage organization, most certainly somebody else is having the same question. So please don't be shy. Be thinking about those questions and make sure to pose them when it comes time. So with that, I'm just going to sort of welcome you in absentia to the DC History Center. I'm here in the West Gallery. If this was a post COVID, we would hopefully be offering the sort of program here in either one of our gallery spaces or in the Kiblinger Research Library. But barring that, let's see. I just wanted to give you a glimpse of what you might get to see when you are on site. Now our exhibits are actually, they just opened last weekend. We just reopened on Friday since Saturday. So we'd love to have you come in for that. And again, programs such as this one that we're doing with the DC AFR would be held in the Kiblinger Research Library or we do a behind the scenes, looking at some of our collection storage areas and learning from experts about how best to prepare for an emergency should one arise in our collection storage areas. Of course, hopefully that will never happen. So with that, I'm actually gonna pass the mic over to Becca Kennedy, who is the chair of the DC AFR. And, oops, sorry about that. And she is going to take it from there. So I'm going to stop the share, invite Becca to take the mic. Thank you. Yes, welcome everybody. I'm Becca Kennedy. I'm the current chair of the DC Alliance for Response. And many of you might be familiar with the Alliance. Some of you may not. So I just want to explain to you what we do. The Alliance for Response is actually a part of the Foundation for Advancement and Conservation who has kindly hosted us and got us started. But our goal is to get all cultural institutions, whether it's tangible, intangible, large or small, well-funded, underfunded to come together in the DC area and work together in case there is an emergency but help prepare each other as well. And we know it can be overwhelming for smaller institutions and institutions of the arts to feel a little scared to engage with things like the Smithsonian and the National Gallery Bar and things like that. But everyone has the same challenges. So we really want to encourage you to participate in all these programs. But today we really want to make sure we are addressing your needs. So we have some stuff planned for you today but we really want to make sure you feel comfortable asking us anything. That being said, I'd like to point out the other members of the Alliance for Response who are on the call. So if you all could turn on your videos and just wave. So, yeah, these are your committee members. And so feel free to get in contact with us if you need anything. We are here to help you. That's literally all we do. But we also have a special guest with us today to help us as well because we know a big issue is funding. So we've asked Tatiana from the National Endowment for Humanities to also be here to encourage you to apply for grants. So Tatiana, I will pass it on over to you. Great, thank you. Well, I am just, I'm so glad that DC AFR has put together this offering, this webinar. And I hope you continue to do it and continue to invite NEH to be here to answer questions and just be a friendly face either in person or in a square or however these future gatherings go. So as Becca said, I am Tatiana Osama. I am a senior program officer in the Office of Challenge Programs currently at NEH. But I was in the Division of Preservation and Access for many years and I'll be talking primarily about preservation and access. But I just wanna say this isn't intended to be a comprehensive presentation about NEH but mostly just a welcome and letting you know that NEH is here for you even as a small organization. And even if it's just a phone call to help you think through what you need we're happy to be a resource and we're happy to be a resource for trying to connect you with funding opportunities within our agency and more broadly occasionally as well. And I'm also here just to put a face with the agency and to be a point of contact if you have any questions. And so after I'm done with my little couple minutes I'll put some links in the chat including my direct contact information if you wanna reach out after this but I definitely encourage you to ask questions during the Q&A because if you have a question somebody else probably does too. So from the point of view of a funder we've seen in small organizations it's usually like just you maybe you and one other person. And so it can be really hard to prioritize emergency preparedness and to get staff and board and volunteer buy-in especially when things you've got a lot of other priorities. And so sometimes the act of applying for funding can be enough to start that conversation. And then if the funding is received that can be a carrot to get your board and your staff and your volunteers to start thinking about this as a priority. So think about applying for funding not just to get the work done but also to start this conversation and think about it as an institutional priority. I'm gonna focus primarily on NEH but there's a number of different organizations that offer funding for emergency preparedness and response. And I think Becca will talk a little bit about that in the resource document as well. So NEH particularly supports funding through a range of programs but the one I'd like to talk a little bit about is preservation assistance grants for smaller institutions or PAG for short PAG. And this is a program that it has a relatively high funding ratio. It's a relatively short application. It's a good way to dip your toe into federal grants and it can support education consultants and materials and it can support a range of activities but there's a special encouragement for emergency preparedness and response. So for example, if you need to bring in a consultant to help you to talk through your staff, provide some training, help develop a document you could apply to preservation assistance grants for that. If you need funding to implement recommendations from a consultant or to do your emergency kit preservation assistance grants can help with that as well. And if you need education more broadly or to attend some training that would also be something that could be funded. The grant is for up to $10,000 and the next deadline is gonna be January 2022. So there's lots of time to plan for that. So let's say that you wanted to apply for one of these grants or to have a conversation. The first thing I would absolutely encourage you to do is to reach out to a program officer. The resource sheet that we'll be talking about has the contact information for the Division of Preservation and Access. You could always reach out to me directly and somebody will get back to you and they'll wanna know what are your needs? What have you done already? What is the size of your organization? And you don't need to be embarrassed. We've seen a range of organizations and different levels of preparedness and just be honest with the program officer in your conversations. This is where we're at, how do we break down the problem? And we can talk about grants with you but also how do you break down and what steps do you need to take? So reach out to a program officer first. The application materials are on grants.gov and the NEH website. I'll include all of that information in the chat including a number of webinars on how to apply with tips and tricks. So everyone may have a webinar overwhelm right now but there's an NEH YouTube channel you can go through and hear about the various funding opportunities, tips for applying. And then also how to navigate grants.gov which is our portal for applying for NEH programs and funding. And if you apply to NEA or IMLS you also use grants.gov. It is daunting, it takes a while but it's worth navigating and grants.gov also has really good technical support that can help walk you through that process. So that is kind of the first step for the grant making on the federal side is to go through, examine all of these documents, reach out and allow our staff to help you navigate that process as you go forward. And before I wrap up, I just wanted to also mention a second grant program that you'll see on the resource sheet that's sustaining cultural heritage collections. That would be kind of your next step. So if you apply for preservation assistance grants to do your planning, to get that emergency kit into place, get your education done. If you want to do some work on your building mitigation, sustaining cultural heritage collections would be that next grant program. It has a planning phase of $50,000 or implementation up to $350,000. But again, that would be something to have a conversation with a program officer about. So that is a lot of information to just kind of start off this conversation. I am happy to answer any questions after we go along. I'll put some information in the chat but want to turn it back over to Becca and she can go through some of these resources. Thank you so much, Tatiana. And Tatiana's gonna stay on with us. So if you think of funding questions, when we go to the Q&A, she is here for you. So now actually I'm gonna ask Carol who is a member of the Alliance for Response to go over the resource sheet that we're providing for you. I'm actually just now putting it into the chat box for you all to download from a Google Drive. This is also document will be come available on the website on the Google Drive. We'll share all this with you. So we're gonna keep putting resources in the chat box but as Carol goes through it, I'll go ahead and share my screen Carol. That's okay with you with what the resources look like. All right, take it away Carol. Okay, while you are putting your screen up, I'm Carol Foster. I'm with the International Association of Blacks and Dance. I'm also an emergency preparedness consultant for the performing arts and that's a rare bird but that's the hat I'm wearing these days. And when I was training, I think the most important piece was finding out how many resources were actually out there and bringing that information to the community that there are lots of resources that we really don't even know about or think to investigate that can help us. So it's sort of like being in the situation where you say to yourself, what do you do when you don't know what to do? So the DCAFR is really, really working hard to get information out and this is the first piece of it and providing some resources for small institutions to look over. So it's pretty clear, first it's our stuff, the Alliance for Response and then you go down and there's emergency funding. There's a lot of emergency funding out there. The group I work with, PAR, they give grants for emergency planning. You'll see there's probably something for everybody in terms of reaching out and looking for funding. Then you look further down their emergency resources, lots of resources out there. Just look and make sure you can get something or find something that can meet your need. It may take a bit more of a deep dive but certainly the kinds of things that you need to know they're right there and they're readily available for you. So we go further down, we've got emergency resources that are publications in print, first aid help and emergency preparedness manual for museums. There's a lot out for libraries, museums, archives, not a lot out for the performing arts but we are moving forward with that via the performing arts preparedness project. There's arts ready, there's in caper. So a lot of these things are listed. Make sure you take a deep dive into all of these wonderful resources because if you dig deep enough, you'll find something that can really help what you're trying to do in terms of making your organization stronger and more prepared. Okay. Thank you, Carol. As I said, I just put the link in the box for anyone who wants to download it but I'll also post it again because I know we have some late comers. We should mention that all the online publications we listed are free. Unfortunately, the publications in print you do have to buy. However, our wonderful committee member Mark Greek from the DC public library did find one of them available for checkout. So, you know, trying to make it fiscally easy for you all to be prepared. Ann, what's next on the agenda? Well, so now really is the chance for folks in this small forum to ask questions. We have a lot of experts here. I will admit, so I'm on the steering committee for the DC AFR but I am the one person on the committee who actually is not an expert in emergency management or emergency preparedness. I'm here representing the small institutions that may know their collections really well, maybe, you know, serving our missions really well but do not have the in-house expertise. And so my role on the committee really is to sometimes ask the uncomfortable question which I'm gonna actually kick us off here with the questions. But after that, I really hope that people will either send in questions via the chat. You can send it into everybody if you don't want to be connected with the question. That's fine. You can send it directly to me in the chat and I'll pose it for you. You also can just use the reactions button and raise your hand and then unmute and have your video on and pose your questions directly to the folks who are here. But I'm gonna kick it off with a question. I think this would be directed to Tatiana, possibly. How, this may sound kind of silly, but how honest should applicants be about the state of unprepared that they are in? I mean, I think that with the NEA, I mean, we're often applying for grants that are, we're putting our, we wanna put our best foot forward, right? And you're saying, we deserve to get this money because of XYZ, because we're doing all these amazing things. But on the emergency preparedness, it's really kind of the flip side and it's sort of showing the soft underbelly of the organization, which can be really hard to put into print, especially to a funding organization. So I'm just out there saying how honest should we be about how unprepared we may be? That's a really, really good question because I think all of our applicants struggle with that. Whether it's a small institution or a large institution that thinks that they should have it all together too. And I don't think anyone does. I think that's kind of like the uncomfortable truth is I don't think anyone really has it fully together and that's okay, right? That's why AFR exists, that's why it's training exists. And that's why we offer funding in this area. If there wasn't a need, NEH wouldn't offer funding to support this. So what I would say is in terms of communicating with us and putting together an application, be honest about where you're at and put your energy into showing us that you have a plan, that you understand the needs of your collection and this is what you're going to do or this is what you need to take your collection from point A to point B and then here are the steps in between. So that's where I'd put the energy to really show us that you understand your collection, you understand the risks to your collection or if you don't, this is how you're going to find out what those risks are. But don't be embarrassed about the state of your collection and always be as transparent as possible. Photos are great. We've seen lots of really scary photos and it's helpful for both staff and our reviewers to understand the nature of the collections and the current conditions. Thank you for feeling that. I don't know if you can tell, but I actually am flushed like asking a question like that in a public forum. It's hard. But your answer really made me feel a lot more comfortable and I think also what you said about the particular grant program that you highlighted that it's a lighter lift on the application than some of the other NEH applications, which is really great, especially for those of us who are in small institutions who do not have grant writing staff and are trying to balance needing to be prepared with actually doing our everyday obligations. That's huge. So thank you very much for highlighting that. Okay, so folks, do not be shy. I am sure there are some questions out there and we have some really, really great folks here at the ready. So again, you can send it via chat or you can raise your hand. In the meantime, I'm going to ask another question and I promise not to hug the spotlight here, but do any of the folks on the panel have suggestions on how to deal with sort of multiple jurists and this happens a lot here in DC, multiple jurisdictions in terms of planning for an emergency? To use my building as an example, we have a landlord, but we also have a co-tenant. How would we, do you have any suggestions about how we could sort of get started on this process, bringing them in, bringing in folks who don't really have sort of collections backgrounds, but are physically in the same building that we're in. So how we would sort of coordinate all. I know I have experience with that, but Nora does too. So Nora, do you want to go? As does Andrew. And I mean, we all do. I was just, Jerry, I'm sure. Stacy, Rebecca is calling me out. I happen to work at the Smithsonian Institution and not only do we have DC crossovers in terms of jurists but we also operate in New York, for example, in New Jersey and Panama, in Florida. We're focused on DC here, right? But one thing that our Office of Emergency Management does and we're lucky enough to have one of those, though it's fairly new in its structure in Smithsonian years, but they actually do something called, they have a planning chief who coordinates with something called the National Capital Region, right? And that is, they have a call in every week to see what's going on with the Capitol Hill Police, for example, what's going on with the Park Police. And then, they are tapped in. That's a lot for a small organization to think about handling, but some of that is available in your continuity of operations plan. And that's something that I think we've discussed on the resource document. And Andrew had some really good tips about using any one of these templates that we're offering are available like the performance readiness template or a preparedness collections plan. If you can start naming and like at least writing down and connecting all of those things that are jurisdictions or stakeholders, like a property holder or other tenants in your building, how are they getting ready? Like start just filling out like a simple list of that and you'll see where they connect and you can start asking those questions. Do you call in to something like ReadyDC or the Mayor's Office of Business Continuity? And Tony is going to talk a little bit about that at the close-up program, but that's where I would start is trying to figure out who are those all and put them on the map and how do you connect to them? Can you have them know about you? Andrew, do you want to add or Jerry? Yeah, I was just going to add that I think having multiple partners like that in the same building is an opportunity for sharing costs on creating emergency kits and also just general planning and coordinating with first responders. It doesn't have to then fall just on you. And it shouldn't because that's not a cohesive response. Right. So we had a question in the chat that I'm just going to call out. It was answered, which is great. But the question and the answer, which is just that if an organization ever received similar grants to the Pag in previous years when they had more funding and staff, would that organization be eligible to apply for the Pag grants to help us with ongoing collections issues? And Tatiana luckily says, yes, you are eligible to, that's wonderful. So is Tatiana, is there a certain number of years that go between receiving grants or they totally separate the preservation grant, you know, the collect emergency from other grants? You can apply for a preservation assistance grant and receive one every single year as long as that activities don't overlap. Okay. So there's not a limit. You don't have, there's not a waiting period. And with the exception of challenge program grants, you can hold multiple NEH grants at the same time. Again, as long as the activities and the budgets don't overlap. That is excellent news. So for anybody lucky enough to get multiple NEH grants, you're in good stead. That's great. I'm gonna ask Maria Fusco to unmute and to pose for question, please. And maybe put your video on too, so we can connect. All right, that's me. Also what might introducing yourself like what institution you're at, that'd be awesome. Me? Yeah. So my name's Maria Fusco. I work at the Textile Museum, the George Washington University Museum and the Textile Museum. It used to be the Textile Museum. Now we have a really long name that's complicated, but it kind of leads into my question. Obviously we're based in DC. Although our collection is out in suburban Virginia. So that poses challenges, but it kind of leads into my question that we're a small museum and always have been, we're now part of a bigger organization, a large university with great benefits. So we still function as a small institution. We fund ourselves, we solve our own problems, that kind of stuff, but we luckily have resources within the university that we can tie into their lab safety departments and health and safety departments to great benefit to us. We get help in getting our chemicals removed from our lab and we can tie into trainings like fire extinguisher training and active shooter trainings. We're doing those things on a fairly regular basis outside of COVID. But I'd be really glad to ask the group, I think I know where we're at in terms of our preparedness steps. And I think I know where we should go next, but I'd be really glad just to ask if I'm on the right track and we've taken trainings from you, Rebecca Kennedy, you've been great. So what little I know is probably from you. So hopefully I digested it right. But yeah, we have a pretty robust emergency plan that we look at fairly regularly and update. We're in a group of very safety-minded individuals. So we're conservators, who are pretty shaken little as it is, but we're surrounded by other people who are equally if not more cautious. So luckily everyone thinks of these things. We again do these small trainings like active shooter, fire egress, things like that, fairly regularly. And we meet with our university's health and safety department luckily once a month just to kind of let them know what's going on with us and activities we might have that might attract negative attention. We let them know what's going on so we can tie into their health and safety. I think our next steps really are, and I'm conscious of being biased to think of object salvage, but the next steps we might plan are activities to train on object related disasters. So like first a tabletop exercise, maybe do that at some point and then six months later, a simulated object salvage. That's kind of what we've identified as our next steps. And I just wanna see if I'm way off track or if there's something I'm missing or if that makes sense. No, it makes sense. The general progression is usually you do a risk assessment of your space. You find out what, like in DC we're not gonna do preps for a volcano, hopefully. So that's what the risk assessment is. You really narrow down what actually is going to impact your institution. And majority of culture institutions, it's a pipe leak when it comes to objects. That's actually usually our biggest risk is infrastructure failure. Then we take it on and rewrite that into our emergency plan, which you said you had. And then we take that emergency plan and that risk assessment and we run scenarios to make sure we actually have accounted for everything we can do. So yes, your next step would be very well put to do some training scenarios. And you can just do tabletops, talk about the instant command system, talk about who's gonna be doing what, what type of other things. And just the more you do these trainings, the more it becomes second nature and not people panicking when it actually does occur. But I would practice for your most likely risk, which is like I said, usually infrastructure failure. And then next it could be at least in DC it's heavy rains and high winds, that affect cultural institutions. But I don't know if Tony, you have any feelings about how we should, anything better we could be do prepare against the DC's ravaging emergencies. I mean, there's so many things that there's so many resources out there. There's so many different things to do and it can be very intimidating. I think the most important thing is to understand who you are as an organization. What do you do? Where do you do it? Who are the people that need to make certain decisions or who are responsible for certain things? And if the first thing you do is just understand who you are. Then from there, you can figure out different scenarios and what you can do and continuity planning. But step one is just that. It's surprising how many organizations, including government agencies, haven't done that first step. And so it can be very intimidating to cut straight to that. First thing, just know who you are. And if you know who you are and something happens, you may not know what to do. We don't know where you're going to go. Where is your backup site? It's great if you know that, but if you just know how big your collection, who are the important people? Who are your contacts for certain things? Then it's easier to ask for assistance from government or from other institutions. We work with that a lot with some of our smaller DC agencies, where they only have one site and we're part of DC government. Hypothetically, they can go to another building that's owned by DC. But it's difficult even within a single government to make those connections. And it's a lot easier if you can just start with that document of who you are. Thanks, Tony. That makes sense, because you don't want to make assumptions. You want to articulate who you are. That tells you where you might fit in with a larger structure and that might then tell you what your resources wouldn't be and where there's gaps, everything. Exactly. And it's also looking at your space requirements. If you have a 10,000 square foot facility, but how much of that, how big of a facility do you need to be climate controlled in certain ways? Do you need certain equipment? Are there, and you don't have to necessarily know where you'd get that new equipment or where you'd move to. But first thing is just what are the most essential things that you do? So it will first is what do we do? And then once you know what do we do and how do we do it, then you can determine what subset of that are the things that have to maintain at all times. So in order to do a continuity plan, which continuity planning is maintaining your most essential operations at all times. But in order to know what are your most essential operations, the first thing is just to know what all of your operations are. So start with that. And then it's an iterative process. You're not supposed to, that no one expects that you have a great plan day one. It's start wherever you can start. And the goal is to make it better every year. Thanks, Tony. I was not shocked to see Stacey and Andrew's hands pop up when this question came up. Stacey, do you wanna, oh, Anne, sorry. Well, I was just gonna say that if Stacey or Andrew have to respond to this particular question, let's keep this slide going. And if we're going into different topics, then I'd love for Carol to get a hand up first at the turn to go. So Stacey, do you wanna continue? Yeah, yeah, I just had another recommendation or question for Maria. And also thumbs up, by the way, as far as your regular maintenance of plans and constant thinking about this, like well done. So I was just curious, museums inside of universities are a very interesting and unique kind of model. And the thing that always strikes me when disaster planning and that type of scenario is that it's easy to get narrow-minded that if an emergency happens within the university, they think the museum is actually not the only place that there are irreplaceable objects or, and because I think people forget, and I know we're moving into a digital world, but universities have caches and caches of records and archives related to the history of the university. And sometimes those disaster planning for those might get superseded with like the art collection. So I would be curious to maybe map out, if you wanna really become more dynamic and network, maybe map out where the other caches of irreplaceable stuff is at the university and maybe there are custodians there that want to pair up with you guys and see if you can share resources. Maybe the textile museum has, it sounds like you guys have your ducks in order, but maybe other places in the university would love to know if they could use your resources if they experienced a disaster as well. So that was the thought that popped into my head. No, that's, I'm kind of embarrassed, I didn't think about that before because there are university-based archives for student records. There are also history-based archives. There's a library, there's special collections, there are archives of, I think there's a labor history archive, which I wanna know more about. But there's a lot of sister organizations here more than I have been mindful of. So thank you for bringing that up. Cause yeah, you can pool resources. We could help them, they could help us. I should be mindful of that. So thank you. And that's the whole point of the DCAFR too, that depend on the resources of all the many cultural institutions within the city. I'm actually gonna call you guys, sometime this week or next to help a colleague out on something. Luckily, not a disaster for us, but so I will be dialing your number soon. I'm glad you guys are there. But thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, we're gonna go to Carol. Okay, I'm kind of switching and shifting a little bit. This is a question for Tatiana. I work with a lot of small arts organizations of color in the DMV. And even though they have massive number of issues, one that always comes up is the preservation of their archives. And we've lost so many valuable things, through fire, through just any kind of incident at all. And Ann, I know that, we've talked about this too, but just trying to find ways where they can get support in preserving their archives, in housing their archives. Is that something that they might reach out for one of the PAG grants? For Ann? Yeah, for sure. And it's a good question, because we do get questions about our arts organizations eligible. And yes, the archives, you put history of in front of anything and you're in the humanities. So, science museums, art museums, performing arts organizations, archives where you're documenting your history are absolutely eligible. And so then the question for you and for them is, is this something that is best tackled individually? Is a consortium model the way to go? Is it a group training? So thinking about that, and that's something that one of our program officers can help think through. How would they want to tackle this? And how could they best support each other? And once that's kind of put together, NEH could absolutely support that type of work. Great, great. I will share that. Nora, you're up. Wrong button, wrong button. Well, to answer you Carol, specifically with regard to archives, I just put it in the chat for anyone else in the audience who has archives or a couple of records. There's also the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference to be in touch with and they can be very helpful in connecting groups with starter plans for organizing archives and helping an organization that's archives might not be its complete program, but they have them and that that could be another resource in the area to connect with. And then, yeah, I was gonna echo without taking too much time for Maria or anyone in a situation where they have an overarching model that they report to, connect with that. There's probably an emergency manager for that organization. There's probably, it's probably falls to somebody in operations to do that. Do they know you exist? I'm sure they'd love to know that you are already preparedness minded and they might be able to connect you with the overall emergency plan and say, yes, this is how we think of you. This is where we would come to you or assistance or to think about you, whether it's a geographic basis or based on a content basis or if something happened to your physical plant. So I think that would be a very good connection for you. Figure out if they are running an incident command system and how you can be connected with it or who you would tap within them. And they'd probably be willing to share. They probably have a monthly meeting. Everybody's running in an emergency right now with the pandemic. And so, yeah, they're probably talking to each other a lot. So we can continue to take some questions if anybody wants to raise your hand or pop one in the chat. And we'll go once, we'll go twice, we'll go twice. Oh, good, all right. Yes, there certainly is time. Allison, please unmute yourself and put your video on and pose your question. Hi, my name is Allison McCroy. I'm the collections manager at the Hierocast Museum. So we're right in Dupont Circle. And I know this is kind of a basic question. So forgive me. And without getting to like institution-specific, I've been working on trying to set our salvage priorities. And I know, you know, the general rule of thumb, you know, everything you keep in mind of the value, monetary value culturally, I looked at the institution, you know, I understand it on that level. But what I've been struggling with is, like, where do you draw the line? You know, how many different scenarios should I be trying to keep in mind when setting priorities? As in most of our collections aren't in our storage, they're mostly out on view because we're a historic house museum and it's all just kind of like, gilded furniture, you know? So as far as value goes, I'm having a hard time distinguishing that based on like, do I consider risk? Like, should I set my priorities based on, well, I know there's a waterline here, so do I think about this room or how many different scenarios should I consider when setting priorities or how many different kinds of lists, like by space, by type of object, by risk? Like, I'm kind of getting beyond myself. And I was like, well, if I have too many lists, it's not gonna be helpful. So if anyone could do some guidelines and stop me, basically it would be great. I would appreciate that. I actually have very strong opinions about this. I knew you would. Thank you. Yeah, so usually what I actually have in my brain or I encourage institutions to do is create only no more than two lists and one's a main list and one's a sub-list. And we make these priority lists thinking like, oh, we're definitely gonna be able to get to those top 10 objects, no problem. But chances are in emergency, you actually can't get to those 10 things easily without actually salvaging 20 or 30 other things to get to it. You might actually be able to get to your 10 easily, but what damage are you gonna do to something else trying to get to these important things? And then usually when we think about establishing this priority list, we think about the, not just the monetary value actually should be fairly low consideration, but you think about things that are priority to your mission and things that are priority to your community. And it's funny and it's interesting how the community can actually perceive part of your collection differently than you perceive it as someone who works with it. But that being said, usually you just need to, with your staff of like three people, maybe less, I don't know, you really should have more than 10 things on your priority list. And it should be based on the value systems of really mission historical value, maybe monetary value if you really need to, but that shouldn't be the top thing. And then the subcategories are like, okay, based on everything else, I've saved these 10 things. Underneath that, it becomes a salvage matrix of things that are now giving more damage versus things that can actually survive, saying in water a little bit longer or things like that. And that's just a material type. It's not specific objects. And I have resources I can send you and pop in the list, but that's just sort of a brief summary of my opinion. Okay, so don't bother making lists based on where I know there may be higher risks in, you know, storage versus, you know, water life. Like don't even go there basically. That's a good thing to know. No, because that changes too, because as you said, like things might be in storage or they might be on exhibition. And so like as you're making these changes, you either have to go in and completely keep changing your priority list, or you just know that these are your top things that are gonna, if you lose these 10 things, you cannot reopen at the same level of professionalism as you did before because they're so important to your mission and to your community. Right, yeah. We have a lot of just decorative furnishings. So that's where like, that's a little trickier, but that's a personal problem, where like that's something else. But yeah, I was just worried that exactly. A list of 10 things is like, that's probably not gonna do me any good based on the types of disasters we would likely be responding to, like, you know, a water leak or something. So I didn't know if it was irresponsible to just have the 10 and just say, well, we'll figure it out from there. So hearing that from you makes me feel better. All right. It's irresponsible not to be prepared. Yeah, thank you, Becca. Yeah, I mean, one thing that we've mentioned before is if you have a tabletop to test a scenario, that may make you more comfortable with what lists you need for your group of people. And by far the most important thing is that you want, if it's three people, you want the three people that are gonna show up to have come to some consensus about how you'll proceed. And so that's probably the most important thing in each of you having your own list. So, and I think the tabletop is a very effective way, just in a scenario where you have a leak in one of your rooms, what happens? You know, what will you do? That may point out things to work on as Tony was saying in an iterative way that helps you feel comfortable with what you're gonna do with the most likely risks. I mean, we don't have a particularly complicated set of priorities. We have very high value items and then we have general classifications of value of collections based on whether they circulate or not. And then we work with subject matter experts about what are the most important things to you that are damaged? And we start looking at what are the most fragile things from our point of view. And it is very much dependent on that scenario. So a tabletop can be a really helpful way to make you feel comfortable with this. But it's not helpful to have a binder that you then have to find. It should be something that maybe getting to that binder list, it helps you but it should be something that you can deal with on a weekend when not everybody's around and you're doing the best you can. Great. And so Nora is going to jump in here and then right after Nora, we're gonna head on over to Tony. I will tie it up with, yes, what everybody said. Of course, those situation, not just the location but the situation will be different. And some priorities can change based on the threat that you're facing, whether it's water or whether it's a broken window that permits access to a very secure location. Those are different kinds of priorities that you have to address. And also for this is getting away from object specific but you are and many of you are a site that presents events. So that priority that day might be like a mission event like your biggest fundraiser, your notable event that needs to go forward the Met Ball, where you're gonna do if there's a situation happening in the other way. And also think about related to mission iconographic. What are you known for? And it goes back to Tony's question, who are you? Like what will people freak out about if it is damaged that can help that top 10 list and probably already have that. But I am about to pop in and chat something that was developed at Harvard for their libraries and it's very library specific but it's a worksheet on determining salvage priorities and that can help you, you can take libraries out of the word, out of the title and think about a collection item say is this replaceable, do that already so that people are focusing their time on something that's replaceable or something that you're gonna be able to live without but you can use it specifically for your library and ephemera collections as well. But look at it with a broad overview and that might help figure that out. Thank you everybody. Nora's gonna pop up in the chat. I'm gonna suggest that everybody save the chat because there are so many incredible resources that have been posted throughout the program along with questions. So please make sure in the before at the end when we wrap up that you do save the chat by hitting the three buttons at the bottom. But with that we're gonna turn it on over to Tony, who I believe is going to share his screen and wrap us on up. And... Hi everyone, I'm gonna try to get the screen working. Let's see, it should be visible now, right? Yes, it's visible. Okay. So yeah, I'm Tony Goodman. So in addition to being HCMA's business liaison, I managed the business emergency management operation center. I also happened to be the continuity of operations program manager for the district, which is that part of my job is focused in really entirely on making sure that the DC government is prepared for all hazards that may require activating your continuity plans. But yeah, that means that I'm happy to serve as a resource for anyone, since I'm already looking at continuity all the time anyway for non-business stuff. I'm happy to assist with any institution for anyone else who needs assistance. So yeah, HCMA is the, we lead the planning coordination of Homeland Security and emergency management for all hazards. So here in DC, that means, we're a little, as you all know, we're a little different than a lot of other jurisdictions that we have natural hazards. And we had an earthquake, which I know a lot of organizations are still dealing with many years ago and we have flooding, but some of our biggest things are things that the federal government does. You know, we manage the local side of inauguration, state of the union and then events that are permitted by the park service, such as January 6th, which was permitted, but spiraled out much far beyond control for that. There's a lot of demonstrations here in DCs, as we know, and many of those are permitted. We manage the permitting process for those. And we're also the lead agency for COVID-19. I have a couple of things there in red. As others have mentioned, Alert DC can sign up for text alerts on all things that are going on in the district. And then also sign up for the BMOC alerts that we send out. In general, our goal is to make sure that the whole community is prepared for any and all habits. So, whatever we can do to assist, we're happy to do so. We do calls or emails to the BMOC list before any major incident, before, in the midst of unplanned major incidents, then we'll also send out things. We try to provide connections to all the right people at DCRA and DDOT and everywhere else who are tasked with specific response when it comes to help with finding a contractor for boarding up or if there is debris that needs to be cleaned up or storm drains that are an issue. We are a small agency, a number of people, but we are the ones that help provide the connections to all of those. We have a 24-7 watch desk that's just always out there, always ready to help coordinate anything. This is where I'll talk about resources for continuity and planning. First of all, I mean, that resource guide has everything. That's a great resource guide. I hope everyone is using that. And then the AFR, DC Network. Locally here in DC, as mentioned, we've got the ready.dc site. We have a number of non-COVID times. We do a lot of exercises and trainings that we open up to everyone, especially a lot of our institutions, happy to have people participate. For one thing, especially if you have a plan and you need assistance in testing that plan, if we do a large exercise, like we have a hurricane exercise that we are trying to get scheduled for later this year, if you have your own continuity plan or your own action plan, you can participate in our exercises by exercising your own plan as part of ours, which can be a helpful thing. And then on the federal side, in addition to a lot of the links for online response, FEMA has a lot of great resources. They have millions of free courses and in particular highlighted course 1300, really good one, just one hour course intro to continuity and doing some of those courses can help with the language so that when you're talking with all of the various agencies that are involved in response, that you can speak the same language of that has them. It'll help in getting assistance and working together. Yeah. Thank you, Tony. So actually perfect timing. Time is up for the hour. We wish we, we would love to spend hours and hours answering any of your questions that you might have. But unfortunately, we all have to respect each other's time. So we will close it off. But please look at all the resources in the chat box. We have recorded this and if needed, we can share it with other people who might need more information. But more importantly, you can reach out to us. If there's resources you want more information about, if you really want to make a connection with somebody else in the cultural institutions around DC, but you're not sure how to do those intros, we can help you with that. You can email the entire group at DC Alliance for Response at gmail.com or if you go to our Alliance for Response host page, which I also put in the chat box, you can find each of our individual contact information. But we will look forward to working with you all more in the future. Please join our community network, which I put the link of how to join in there. It's also in the resource page because we want you all to become part of this community page because that's where we're going to post tips, lectures, trainings, resources as they become available. So we are here to help. So let us know how we can do that. We also would love if you guys want to shoot us an email, follow up with us on what trainings would be beneficial to you. So please let us know and give us all the feedback. We want to hear it all. But thank you for joining us and hopefully we'll see you at a future event. Thanks everyone.