 Okay, everyone. It looks like we are live. I want to welcome everyone to a special C2C care collections care during COVID-19. My name is Robin Bauer Kilgo and I'm here to help moderate this panel. I want to start by giving you a couple of few tips about today. We are going to be broadcasting this, but there's a slight delay between our broadcasting platform and when it posts online. So just be aware of that. Also a quick disclaimer that the conversation for today is based around COVID-19 and collections care. So that's going to be our focus today. So without further ado, I'm going to again introduce myself. My name is Robin Bauer Kilgo and I am co-chair of the National Heritage Responders. I'm also a contract registrar and I'm the community coordinator for Connecting to Collections. And now I'm going to go ahead and pass the mic over to Nicole Gravow. Hi, everybody. Thanks, Robin. My name is Nicole Grabo. I am the director of preventive conservation at the Midwest Art Conservation Center. We're regional center for conservation based in Minneapolis and we work with over 200 small to mid-size institutions. And I help organize educational programming and provide collections care resources and support for those institutions. I'm actually trained as an objects conservator and I worked as an objects conservator for over 15 years before I transitioned into preventive. So if you have any questions specifically relating to three-dimensional objects, I would be happy to answer those. Okay, then we're going to go on to Tara Kennedy. Hi, everyone in Facebook land. I'm Tara Kennedy. I am the preservation services librarian slash preventive conservator at the Yale library's preservation and conservation services department. So I've been there about 15 years and most of my background is in library and archives conservation. So most of the work I've been doing at Yale has been preventive conservation. In addition to that, I am the other co-chair for the National Heritage Responders Working Group along with Robin. And I'm also chair of the American Institute for Conservation's Health and Safety Committee. So my involvement with the COVID-19 discussions has been primarily about keeping our conservators and cultural heritage professionals safe by implementing good healthcare practices, respiratory safety along with our certified industrial hygienists who are on the committee and safety was using solvents. So happy to answer any questions that you might have. Okay, and then we're going to go on to Dr. McDonough. Hi, I'm Dr. Anne McDonough. I am the medical officer for the Smithsonian. And as such, I'm an occupational and environmental medicine board certified physician. So my specialty revolves around people who work for a living, the environments that they work and live in, and how those impact health in the long run. In the COVID-19 response, I'm also the emergency public health officer. And so I've been giving both public health as well as working very closely with collections and building services and ensuring that we're keeping our people safe as well as making sure that all the techniques and things that are done as a result of COVID-19 for either cleaning or disinfecting or other things are both appropriate as well as effective. Great. And then we're going to move on to Samantha Snell. Hi, I'm Samantha Snell. I also work at the Smithsonian Institution for the National Collections Program. In my capacity with NCP, I focus on collections professional development and also collections emergency management. So I'm the chair of the first collections emergency response team for the Smithsonian, the price team preparedness and response and collections emergencies. And we focus on creating training and workshop programs for all Smithsonian staff, not just collections, so that we can build relationships between our internal first responders, which are facilities, security, health and safety, IT, anybody and everybody that could be called in for an emergency response to work side by side with our collections folks. In addition to that, I'm also a member of AIC and I'm on the emergency committee. I'm a member of C2C CARES working group collections care network. I wrote down a list. I'm a member of the DC Alliance for Response and also the Heritage Emergency National Task Force. So if you have questions about collections emergency response and the activities that we're taking place at the Smithsonian to prepare and respond to emergencies, ask away. And finally we're going to move on to Priscilla Anderson. Hi everybody. I'm Priscilla Anderson. I am a senior preservation librarian at Harvard University and I also am a co-chair of the emergency team at Harvard. We have been working a lot to build relationships and open communication lines with our facilities and operation staff, who at the moment are the only people who are allowed on our campus. And so we are delegating things to them. We are making, you know, different kinds of arrangements for looking at, you know, doing security walks of collections, looking for emergencies that might be happening while we're not there. We're also working with them to deal with books that are being returned from students who have had to leave campus and are working exclusively online. So we have developed, you know, some guidelines around that. And before we left, we also worked on some guidelines about use of hand sanitizer in our reading rooms. So if you have any questions on any of those things, I'd be happy to answer from, you know, the perspective of what we're doing up here in Cambridge. I also want to say I am the chair of the advisory group to Connecting to Collections Care and I just want to say a big shout out to all our community members who are supporting each other, answering each other's questions, feeling each other's pain. I just want you to know you are not alone and you are a wonderful community and I'm just so proud and so grateful for all of your, the kind attention that you're paying to your colleagues. Yeah, I would do a big shout out for that as the community coordinator. Everyone's been sharing some really good information and this is all uncharted territory for all of us, even though, you know, I live in the Florida Keys. We deal with hurricanes pretty regularly and even, you know, we're just kind of like, I heard earlier today people were talking about pandemic was not on our high threat list when we were all working on our emergency plan. So again, this is all new to everyone and the news coming out is constantly changing and I think it's been very interesting to kind of watch how our community kind of reacts to all that news. So let me start with asking kind of a first question just to kind of see how are people, what kind of provisions are people making for checking on collections, the environment, physical security of the building? What have you been doing in that case? And I'm going to pass that question on to Nicole first kind of see how her organization prepped for this shenanigans basically. Okay, sure, I'd be happy to answer that. But first I should start off by saying, explaining that at the Midwest Art Conservation Center, we are not a collecting institution. We don't have a collection. We're a support organization. So we provide conservation treatment and consulting for our member institutions. So what we've been doing, we are in Minnesota, we are under a stay at home order currently. Prior to that stay at home order, the museum where we are, where our facility is located was closed. So we, we actually had to leave work before the stay at home order came into in place. And so because we don't have a collection, you know, our situation is a little bit different. But I can tell you that I have been speaking with a lot of our member institutions, small historical societies, collections throughout the Midwest. And one of the things that is, is a challenge is to continue to monitor your collection environment while you're under a stay at home order. And so, you know, what I would like to emphasize is two things. One is that while it is important to monitor your environmental levels in your collections areas, it's also important to keep personal safety in the forefront. We are in the midst of an emergency. And so you should defer to whatever your local guidelines are in terms of staying at home. One thing that you might be able to do if you can't access your collections directly is you might be able to drive by the facility and just check the physical perimeter and make sure that there's nothing to miss. So that is a recommendation as long as it's within your local guidelines. That's something that I'm definitely recommending that people do. And in terms of environmental control, people are often relying on monitoring systems that you have to be on site in order to access. Your data loggers might not be the kind that you can access from a way. Now there are remote monitoring systems that are available. The Hobo Data Loggers has a remote system, M2, I'm not sure about M2. And I can't endorse any specific project product, but I can just let you know that there are options out there for instituting a remote monitoring system. There's actually a new company that started a couple of years ago out of Birmingham, Alabama called Conserve and they're designed specifically for collections care and they have a remote monitoring system. So I recommend that you guys do your research and see if you can obtain some remote data loggers that you might be able to utilize your facilities, people to install those. And if that's not a possibility, talk with your facility staff. They probably have a monitoring system in place. It may not be exactly where you would have placed those monitors, but see if you can obtain some of that data remotely just to make sure that your environmental systems are where they need to be. Yeah, I would agree with that. I'd say for a lot of our institutions, remote monitoring is talking to your security guard or whoever's allowed on that facility, that's going to be who you're going to be talking to. And that's why having relationships with those groups or those people is so important when you're working within a facility. For a larger group like you guys have, Tara, what did you guys do as you prepared? So like Nicole, we had the stay at home edict put down a week after we actually were told to stay to work from home. We had a couple staff who were allowed to come in for the first couple days to do some preparation work. Our initial things that we did even the week before that was our director, Christine McCarthy, put together a series of questions to ask all of us as unit heads about getting, making sure we had an emergency number of phone tree that would be activated as soon as that was put in place. That was incredibly helpful because I have staff, for example, who have no computers at home. So their only way of communication was through the telephone. So that is the only way I can keep in touch with them. So that was huge. After that, we did some other things about talking about the possibilities when we were working from home, what projects we needed to communicate outside of Yale to let them know that we would be closing because we do a lot of projects outside with regional centers. And we needed to let them know that we'd be closing. So that really helped us sort of prepare like what if we were closed for this long, what if we were closed for longer than that. So that was an extremely helpful exercise. So once that we were actually closed down, some of the folks went in to do some extra protection for covering collections in areas that we knew were prone to leaks, things like that. And actually, when we went in that day, it turned out that the HVAC system was a little out of control and was really warm in there. So luckily, they were able to tell the facility staff to turn that down. We do have security checks daily from our security staff that come in and do rounds. That's a huge help. Our facilities folks are going in a couple times a week to check on things to make sure that all of that is okay. And we have a building management system that's online and can be monitored from home. I actually do have access to that so I can check in and look and see if all the spaces are running as they should. So we're very fortunate in that respect. So that's a lot of the work that we've done at this point. And we definitely will be talking about pandemic preparations in terms of emergency planning when we get back, I'm sure. Yeah, I think everyone remembers a few years ago when people kept writing the zombie addendums to all their emergency plans. And I feel like this is like the world grid right now a little bit. I have a friend who is going to tell me that he told me so for that. Exactly. Well, I told you so now. So it works out. Pretty much. Do any of our other panelists have any thoughts on this topic right now? Sure. Priscilla, go ahead. Oh, you need to. Thanks. I just wanted to add a couple of things about working with other people. So if you are not the person who is doing these daily walkthroughs, if you are in fact able to do walkthroughs, but somebody else is, I would advise you to have a conversation with them about trouble spots that you know of, places where there are known leaks that have happened in the past, and also maybe even talk about what are the areas that are that have the most density of collections that might be at higher risk of, let's say, a water leak and or collections that might be more valuable than others, just to, you know, if there's something that they can check just to make sure that that thing is still there. Just, you know, checking in with them about those things. And then another thing you can do, if you don't have anybody who is going in on a daily basis and you're not permitted to do that, you can be working on your emergency plan network that is outside of your institution. So you might reach out to your local town emergency manager or maybe even the fire department to just make sure that your institution is on their map, and that they, you know, if they're doing rounds of the town that they might just keep an eye for your building. So, just, yeah, those relationships, if you can build, I mean, now it's hard because we're already in the event, right? But like, this is one of those things that I think is going to be a takeaway is any kind of relationship you can build with emergency responders beforehand is only beneficial to you when we're set with these types of circumstances. Samantha, did you have something to add? I did just two things really quickly. For the folks that can still go on site, if you have facilities or security people that are allowed to be allowed onto site, you might want to coordinate with them to see if they could do a FaceTime with you while they're walking around so that they could share what they're seeing as they're going through your spaces so that even if you can't be there personally, at least you can see through their eyes and their lens what they're seeing as they're doing their walkarounds. Because fortunately, we have the technology today, so we might as well utilize it. And if you don't have great working relationships with your facilities or security staff, your facilities managers, this is a great time to build those relationships, reach out to them. If you have trainings that you ordinarily do with your staff, if you have Zoom accounts or other means of doing virtual conferencing and video conferencing, set up some times to share some of that information with them through video conferences. These are the things as collections folks, this is what's important to us. This is what we would look for if we were walking through those areas right now. So, you know, this could be an opportunity to have those trainings virtually with the folks that are still on the ground representing you. Agreed. Big time. Okay, so let's move on a little bit. And I think I'm going to get the bear in the room. So there's been a lot of questions amongst communities and everything about how to treat our objects when it comes to this virus. You know, it's there was a really good and I would recommend people listen to it a very good webinar with I am a lesson CDC that happened earlier this week that is available for free. You can go listen to it. I listened to it yesterday when I was walking my dog because you can just do that kind of thing. So let's go ahead and talk about it a little bit. So what's kind of what are the thoughts right now when it comes to the quarantining of library books or other collection material within your facility? Who would like to take start that topic of conversation right now? Go for it, Priscilla. So for library books specifically, we are recommending that our libraries there's the thing to do and then there's the thing not to do. So the thing to do is to listen to the guidance about what is the amount of time that something might want to be quarantined if you suspected that it had been contaminated in some way. And so we're listening to the CDC. So and really the great virtue of quarantining is that it does no damage to your collections. There's nothing that's going to go awry if you just don't touch it for a day or even three days. So the thing that we advise you not do is not to use any liquids, any sprays, any fubigants or fogs because all of these materials can cause staining and wrinkling. They can cause the dye in the book cloth or in the ink that it can start bleeding all over everything. You know, especially if it has alcohol in it that, you know, there are many things that that will dissolve in alcohol that don't and water. So not even the alcohol based ones are safe for spraying on books. The other thing that can happen if you put a chemical on onto your books is that there might be a future implication of wondering whether this thing is contaminated with a chemical that might have some kind of health implication. And what I can say is that in the past people put arsenic or DDT on their books because they wanted to prevent bugs from eating the books. Well now we're a lot more worried about the DDT than we are about the bugs. So if you can avoid spraying any kind of liquids whatsoever on your books that your future self will appreciate it and the books will be much more guaranteed to survive. Yeah, I've worked previously in my life with Native Collections and that's a huge issue, is the arsenic on things. You know what I mean? So I'm glad you brought that up. Does anyone else have any other thoughts on just go for it? Nicole? Yeah, thanks Robin. I just wanted to reiterate that what's true for paper based materials is true for other types of materials also. We have learned a lot about different kinds of cleaning and disinfecting and the CDC has a lot of really great research resources about how to clean and disinfect high touch surfaces and hard surfaces like doorknobs and touch screens, things that are touched frequently. This doesn't apply to your historic materials. Those historic materials are not things that are handled regularly and they are things that will really benefit most from isolation. Isolation is the safest thing that we can do for those cultural materials. If you, before going to clean or disinfect any item of cultural heritage with any type of solvent including water, so huma against please contact a conservator and really what we're recommending is isolation and as for the time period, how long will it take before the virus is completely inactive? That is something that we are still learning. So I think that it's pretty clear for paper and cardboard that 24 hours is a good guideline. That's what the CDC has been saying and so we are listening to that and we're following their lead but in terms of other materials, there isn't a lot of information that's out there yet. So let's just wait, let's hold off and let's let the research catch up. This is really new, we're in new territory and the safest thing we can do for our collections is just to isolate them and we have a good opportunity to do that now with our institutions being closed, many of us working from home and under stay at home orders leave the collections where they are and and let time take its toll. Anybody else? I I did notice in the chat someone had said that the IMLS recording said nine days maximum. I heard 24 hours for the initial like try not to touch things within 24 hours and then like a 72 hour maximum but maybe I missed her. Tara do you have a thought? So there's a lot of of the literature that's out there. I've been reading a lot of medical literature about this. So some of them are saying that it could be viable for up to nine days. I know that NCPTT when they did their presentation said that but it's based on research that is it as Nicole said it's in its preliminary stages and they're basing a lot of their information on how SARS which is a similar virus in the same family is behaving. So they can they may feel more comfortable saying something like nine days because they know more about SARS and how long its viability is on surfaces. So that maybe were some of the confusion lies and from what I'm reading it does vary on different surfaces. So if you feel more comfortable waiting nine days and we'll I mean by the time we probably return to our cultural institutions it's certainly going to be a beyond nine days. So again that quarantining the quarantining strategy is still completely viable and I think that is our best strategy at this point. Yeah we have a couple people saying in the chat NCPTT said nine days so I think that's and I think everyone's trying you know honestly be safe you want to be comfortable too you're not going to force like this is an extreme you're not going to be like hey intern go touch that thing that was just outside like we're all trying to be safe and trying to be aware of of what's out there right now. Dr. Anne did you have any comment or Dr. McDonough did you have comments? So the nine days actually comes from a hospital disinfection study and there was one coronavirus type and it was not even the SARS type of coronavirus so it was another type completely and then also some of the coronaviruses that in fact animals can live longer in the environment but the it was there was only one nine day all the rest of them so all the SARS types the common cold types those were all four days or less so out of an abundance of caution if you've got nine days go for it but for most of the infectious human viruses and all the SARS type viruses 72 hours is the longest that they have seen for a viable virus now on the flip side even in the CDC you can see that there is also a study out there and they talk about specifically about the diamond princess and that it has RNA on it two weeks and if you just think of it this way and I'll give you a fun thing and you won't ever forget it but the RNA is like a fingerprint if you found DNA two weeks later on a surface you would not worry that you were going to get pregnant from it right you're not going to worry about getting COVID from RNA that's just hanging out there in the environment so those tests were not for viable RNA COVID virus those were specifically just showing that there's some DNA or some genetic material that is out there so now you know look for viable and whether or not if it's infectious not just whether or not it was there yeah well in a big way we should always listen to the doctors and not the conservators about this kind of thing thank you thank you very much for making that point that's absolutely brilliant thank you yeah and I mean a big thing Pete too that was part of that not to totally rehash that CDC IMLS webinar but they were talking a lot about different types of surfaces too right so porous non porous metal you know like all those kind of things so I think that's something to be aware of as well a large focus of that was libraries which makes sense IMLS you know what I mean and I I was really zeroing in on how they were talking about dealing with public spaces right because that's what they need to deal with a lot so has there been much discussion amongst your institutions about how they're going to handle public spaces or have you guys been part of that discussion as more of the behind the scenes folks or is that kind of shaking her head go ahead Samantha I was just going to say that you know our public spaces are and have been closed for the Smithsonian so you know again the spaces are not being accessed except in a very minimal way by essential staff so there's very little risk if any for any surfaces and things you know it's just general cleaning is being kept up just to keep down with dust and debris and things like that and to mitigate any pest infestations not to give them anything to snack on while they're wandering around our museums that don't have visitors in them so we're just taking general precautions on regular cleaning for the limited staff that are available to be on site but leaving things alone in galleries leaving artifacts alone collection items alone is you know as we were all saying that's our best bet for just anything that could be there will be inert by the time that we actually get to handle them again yeah and that's a that's a big concern I know for those of us who are the registrar's collections managers is when we look at pest management we're really concerned about how like when these places are going to be quiet right and the pests are just going to be like oh quiet stuff to nibble on so I think that that's those are things to think about as well and as part of your facilities plans you know making sure you're talking to security and the pest people being like have you seen activity have you seen anything so before in addition to talking to your your pest people and whoever's on site it's also talking to your people that are in charge of your gift shops have your cafes of your mobile carts with snacks on them you know to make sure that all of those things have been taken care of because you know little critters like chocolate and candy and other things that might be sitting in gift shops so to take care and make sure that all of those things are packed away properly in sealed containers you know preferably offsite if possible but if not at least in an area that could be monitored and make sure that they are sealed so that all of those things are removed and you know give them less opportunity while you're not on site yeah and don't forget the employee areas sugar packets crackers you know creamers all those other things that can and the refrigerators so one thing that i wanted to add this sort of i feel like this transitions naturally into thinking about reopening yeah and what is going to happen is that okay if i kind of go there for a minute yeah i know that a lot of questions are rolling in about that so please do okay okay so um you know the world is changing faster than i think we ever knew that it could and i think that as um as public institutions and as arts institutions we need to be prepared for things to be different when we get back and i think that in general our principles are are good and are and are solid um in conservation it's all about minimizing handling and so you know i'm just gonna like i'm gonna preach that until the end of days um you know minimize minimize minimize handling if we're looking at um interactive collections and interactive materials and institutions i think that there's going to be a revisiting of that as our as our institutions open up again and again we're going to need to be mindful of high touch surfaces any kinds of screens door knobs and that there will be protocols that we'll need to put into place i think we also need to consider even before we go back and open how large are your exhibit spaces can we maintain six foot spacing between individuals in our exhibit spaces are we going to need to go to some kind of timed entry or are we going to need to manage our crowds and and i think we need to be prepared for living with this for a while and the possibility that if the virus re-emerges in a community or in the fall which they say it may that we may need to be prepared for a temporary closure um in order to isolate materials that have been handled or have been exposed we need to think really flexibly and and prepare for those kinds of eventualities yeah i i really i truly think that this is going to um change the landscape of our world for a while because that's what everyone is recommending is you know when we when places are open again um it's not going to be okay we're open everything's back to normal i think we're going to see a lot more of these here spacing here's uh interaction with things um you know i came up in the museum world in the o's basically where it was just interactive's interactive's interactive's is what everyone's pushing and i think that's going to be treated very differently um does anyone else have any other thoughts about the reopening process or kind of what challenges we might be looking at with that sure so when we closed we actually did a staged closer so we closed down many of the interactives and the surfaces that could not be effectively disinfected we closed those down first and then we closed down high touch surfaces and then we closed to the public and that's one of the things we're looking at in our reopening plan is you know having the flexibility or the understanding of how to clean those surfaces whether or not you give the visitor the ability to sanitize their hands back to the book's question because then they actually have control of how clean it is versus having somebody who comes in and wipes it on a somewhat periodic basis and some of the ways that you can actually give your patrons control over the sanitation and the exposure that they get um and then couple that with frequent or more frequent cleaning of high touch surfaces um as well as timed entry and many of those other things you've already mentioned yeah someone just said that in the chat that would probably be looking at timed entry or doing stanchions you know what i mean to approach things just because um it is going to be you know it's like i have two i own two elementary age children and i know even their world's going to be very different where it's going to be you know they've are raised in the world of hand watching but looking at things now it's going to be different you know what i mean regardless of what we do and oh yeah go ahead just regarding time to entry not not only for um you know if there is still a virus that's active or there has been a resurgence but it's also a comfort level of our visitors you know will people be comfortable being in large crowd areas again um maybe not for a long time who knows when it will be in the future but you know maybe those timed entries will be part of the comfort level that we can provide for visitors as they're coming back to get them back in the doors getting back to the collection items um but also doing it in a safe way for them and for everybody around them yeah there's a I say oh I just wanted to say a word about hand sanitizers while it was on the table um there was a study done at the library of congress about the effect of different kinds of hand sanitizer different brands different ingredients that kind of thing on books and paper and um their conclusion was that water-based sanitizers are better for the collections now again you know I am not a health expert so I'm not weighing in on what's better for human health but in terms of what's better for the collections a water-based sanitizer is going to um have less of an effect less of a staining effect essentially than an alcohol-based sanitizer um they also recommended that there be as few ingredients as possible that the more simple type of sanitizer did less damage to the paper over time um and I think the the last conclusion which I think is really important the sanitizer should be dry so you don't just rub it on your hands and then go and handle stuff you need to wait for it to actually dry and and if it's dry it's going to have a much lower chance of of affecting the collections yeah I think that's something that even I um you know hand sanitizer something I kind of got introduced to with my children and I was always like man this stuff is wet for a while like it felt like you know what I mean you're walking around you're like that that feeling so I think that's a super good point that you know it's kind of like regular handling of collections right you like want clean dry hands when you're handling collections so any other thoughts on a disinfection standpoint hand washing with soap and water is still better and so you want to keep your hands clean a lot of those sanitizers will have a residue or some sort of emollient or something to keep your hands from drying out from the alcohol and you know that's all well and good if you want moisturized hands but if you need to handle a collection piece then it may be better to start protocols where people wash and dry their hands and then glove as opposed to um using a hand sanitizer and touching anything they want yeah definitely any other thoughts well um I want to talk a little bit about emergency planning and plans and kind of how people are going to be looking at this um we talked a little bit before about how you know when we're looking at our threat levels because when you write an emergency plan one of the big things is you look at threats right and knowing that you know like I'm in the southeast hurricane was always number one because that's just what we dealt with but how do you guys think that this is going to change the world of emergency plan developing and everything else I know big question but it is and that's actually one of the things that a lot of people are working on right now because they're home right so what are you guys thoughts on that well this is Sam we've had this discussion around within the Smithsonian and with other colleagues outside the SI and you know a lot of us have emergency plans in different forms and you know different levels of detail and things like that but at the end of the day the risks and the threats are the same it's just in how we're going to approach them because we as collections people are probably not going to be the first responders on site we are not going to be allowed in until the area is safe unless you know until it has been deemed you know safe to reoccupy the health and safety folks have signed off on it the security you know police EMS all those guys have signed off on it then we'll be allowed to go in and respond so by the time that it gets to that point whether it's a pandemic is happening or it's regular time without pandemic but it's still an emergency you know you're still going to be using the same protocols maybe a smaller team would be allowed to be on site to respond but you'd still be wearing the PPE that you need maybe an extra layer of protection but that's when you would consult with your health services folks and ask them is there another layer that we should consider at this time are there things that we need to have in place ahead of time for allowing people to be on site if you know there are orders that you're not allowed to be on site unless you have mission critical responsibilities and if there is a collections emergency and you need to respond to it then that's a mission critical emergency so even though our plans may not have pandemic as a title or a word or a section in it right now all of our activities and our actions that we currently have in place should be able to be utilized regardless of you know the emergency status that we're operating in. Go ahead Tara. One thing that we just implemented as a result of this particular emergency was that myself and my director quickly got critical employee badges so in case that there is a complete shutdown but an emergency collection emergency happens we are able to go to the university and get into spaces and if we're stopped by the police saying hey you're not supposed to be driving around or going to work we can say here we have this badge we're critical employees we need to go to respond to an emergency so that might be something that may change in that the level of security that some of your collection staff have may give you the maybe instances where you're going to end up having more access just simply because things can happen and you need to be prepared for that. Exactly. Go ahead Nicole. I just wanted to add also that I think one of the things that is really coming to light now especially perhaps for the smaller institutions is the need to have a continuity of operations plan. Let's say that go ahead for extended closures it's something that might not necessarily have been on anyone's radar before now but boy it's sure on our radar now and we are all learning lessons really fast and so what I would say is again to emphasize let's take advantage of this valuable time and let's you know write down everything that we're learning because in 10 years or in 15 years there are going to be different people in these positions who might not have had the experiences that we are having so let's improve our policies and let's plan obviously you know every situation is different but trying to you know to put down what Tara was saying about having you know badges for people who are essential personnel and just thinking about what are the essential services that we need to be able to to do you know in the event of an extended closure. I think those things are just gonna I think I think that we're gonna see emergency planning have a real like renaissance and a real like improvement because of everything that we're all going through and the fact that we're all going through it simultaneously is horrible but it's also great because we can communicate with each other and learn from each other and we can we can all go through this together. Yeah I think that that's a super good point is I know after hurricane seasons it's like all of a sudden everyone has like great emergency plans in Florida because like we just went through this event and it's everyone's like we know what to do now you know what I mean because of the timing but because this is a worldwide event basically it's going to be on obviously on the front of everyone's mind and also to your point on creating coops I think in many places emergency plans are just turning into coops which they kind of should be right because coops basically talk about there's obviously the salvage part which is unique to our community but looking at just you know operations and all these other little factors that go into your institution I think of many places they're kind of becoming overall a coop as compared to an emergency plan is what you're seeing. One of the positives that's hopefully going to come out of all this is something that we preach all the time which is collections emergency management is everybody's responsibility every day so it should be part of daily collections care and management it is not just for mayday it is not just a once a year kind of thing to check the box it's in every action that we take to it's all preventative care it's all preventive conservation to take care of the collections and part of that is collections emergency management and thinking about those risks walking your collection areas and seeing you know thinking about different all the different risks that could be happening in those areas and trying to address them ahead of time so hopefully more people will be thinking about it on a regular basis as opposed to just a once a year for mayday situation. Right and I should clarify someone asked what a coop is it's a continuity of operations plan so sorry my husband's former military we speak in a lot of acronyms around my house so um so you know talking a little bit more about that is are are you all actively working on your emergency plans right now or is that something that's part of kind of what you're working on at home or so for us um we actually looked at we had a um a directive that was an emergency plan but the specific portion for a pandemic plan was about maybe three quarters of a page and it talked about many of the different things you should think of but it didn't actually bring together the various stakeholders within our museums to look at that and make it sort of realistic for any type of pandemic plan so we've all had the yearly issues with influenza and people do shots or whatever and you encourage folks to you know not come to work if they're sick and that hasn't you know and we kind of oh yeah whatever it's just another flu season but we've also gone through Zika which if you are bringing things in from other places there were a lot of there was travel bans internationally associated with that people worried about importing mosquitoes and where they had been and then we also had Ebola and that was a big concern but because of the different characteristics of each of those biologic threats the response was very different and its ability to spread was different and so people are like oh we should check everyone's temperature well that worked for Ebola but it doesn't happen to work for COVID and so as you're looking at your plan many of them should have like the decision point so why did you decide to why did you decide not to cover these particular objects with plastic or why did you decide to cover them based on where what that biological hazard is how it would be transmitted and in cases where you don't know you just need to have those lines there so you can think through how did we decide this last time so when the next threat comes through you can look at whatever evidence is there and how that bacteria or virus behaves and then make the appropriate type decision yeah that all sounds good I mean I should say real quick that like I am not a believer that when you're in the event you should be like mucking around with your plan a lot like there's going to be like things that you got to wiggle around because you got to right it's you have to react but that's not really the time to completely switch out your plan and be like this is it working you know what I mean like because that just causes more chaos so I think to your points it's like this is a good time to start going okay maybe we needed to do this differently and as we've all said there's probably going to be a resurgence at some point you know what I mean that's how viruses work or these kind of you know pandemic so something to think about Priscilla did you have something to say sure I just wanted to share that one of the things I'm working on with a few of our libraries are tabletops so ways to test your plan even in a remote situation so zoom and and and conference calls are a great way to to do a tabletop um and so we we're actually you know a little bit coveted out so we're trying to do some testing of plans against other scenarios and we're taking some of this time that we have from home to develop those scenarios so um I just wanted to offer that as some as a way that you can improve your overall emergency planning even if you're not in your institution yeah I mean and again like I think I said it before we here where I live are hurricane like focus but when I go out to institutions and help create these plans or talk to people about these plans I'm like don't get that just that fires can happen floods can happen you know what I mean anything can happen so pandemics who do so go ahead Nicole yeah I just wanted to add that I think this came up in the arcs meeting that took place um last week or a couple of weeks ago was that a lot of the institutions that had a really good hurricane plan are finding that some of that translates pretty well to the closures that we're seeing right now um and then also there's um if you're you know just interested in in guidelines if you look at the Canadian Conservation Institute has a note on winter closings closing your institution for the winter like seasonal closings that has a lot of information that's really relevant for what's happening right now I think that's note one slash three at the Canadian Conservation Institute so you might want to check out the resource too yeah and that resource link can be found on AIC's website as well underneath their COVID-19 resources and yeah that I was part of that arcs chat last week and we were talking about how like this is like a hurricane except we're all at home and we have power so it's like the big things that we're like yay that's all real positive but no toilet paper but no toilet paper so yes that can be an issue during hurricane times so well I'm going to move along to another topic which is kind of connected to all this but it's all just are working from home environments and mental health and I think that that's a really important part of kind of what we're all experiencing um I primarily work at home so for me it's like I have my setup and I'm pretty happy with it but now I have two permanent ten-year-old co-workers which have made life very interesting in the past couple weeks so I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about just do you know resources or do you know things that might help when it comes to this whole working at home deal that would especially for people who we tend to usually be at our institutions right it's that's our world so does anyone have any thoughts on that go ahead Nicole me me pick me um well I just wanted to say that you know many of us have you know already found that video conferencing is a really great way to stay connected with your colleagues we've been having kind of like a morning check-in with the staff of the Midwest Art Conservation Center which is really informal and that's just a chat it's not video conferencing but just kind of everyone sort of checking in on the same chat line and seeing how people are doing and as we kind of embrace these new technologies for staying in touch I really want to emphasize how important it is not to leave anyone behind especially in the smaller institutions you may rely really heavily on volunteers and those volunteers may have limited access to computers or limited interest in learning the new technologies and we really need to reach out to them in ways that they are comfortable with so pick up your telephone call your volunteers check in with them see how they're doing and when you do that take the opportunity to remind them how important our cultural resources are and how important the work is that we're all doing and that this is temporary and when it passes we're going to all go back to work and we're going to go back to work together and be stronger together so just to to be cognizant of communicating with everyone in your institution and making sure that everyone has the opportunity to participate in in the discussions that affect it anybody else have thoughts on working from home yeah this is Sam I just wanted to say just you know to emphasize everyone to be patient because we're all dealing with new stressors you know it's different when you're in your regular routine and you know commuting and going to work and coming home and having home time but when all of that has been mushed into one situation it's very challenging and you know everyone's trying to keep a stiff upper lip and do their best and keep projects going and keep communications going and things like that but sometimes we just need to take a break because you know it might not be your regular break time it might not be when you regularly take lunch but you just need a mental break to step away and you know some of us are getting booked back to back to back you know meetings throughout the day that there's no break so just taking a break for yourself letting a host of a meeting know hey I'll be there in 10 15 minutes but I just need to get up and stretch and do something else reset my brain for a few minutes so I think everybody as long as they're they're patient and understanding with each other and treating each other as fellow humans first before your co-workers and things like that together I think that that's most important and just making sure that you know give your eyeballs that 2020 break 20 every 20 minutes for 20 seconds look 20 feet away I think doc you probably can correct me um but um you know just to keep healthy for ourselves and our families and you know so that when we go back to work we are ready we are ready to be on site but we need that time to make sure that we're pacing ourselves and keeping regular hours so you're not you know starting at crack of dawn and going until midnight you need to spread yourself out and try to keep make a schedule for yourself for your own health and safety yeah I mean that's one thing with this is like I keep thinking you know I because I get in my head a little bit and I'll be like I get the sun I get the sun and I'll be like this is going to be a multi-week event you know what I mean like I know here in Florida they finally did a stay-at-home thing finally um so it's it's kind of we're looking you know may probably at some hopefully you know what I mean so it's yeah I know doctor is giving me some faces though the quarter so I'm going to keep thinking may just as baby steps but um you know it's stuff's going to get stretched out you know what I mean and we have to be respectful of people's times and their work conditions um kind of what they're dealing with right now any of else have any there's some really good comments happening in the comment section right now but people's talking about how they're working on yoga mats how they're taking breaks um how you know it's like sometimes don't be online all time I have to really I'm a phone checker I have to be like phones going away going to go do something else for a little bit um anyone else have any thoughts on how to take breaks or anything else throughout their day well I think breaks are very important also realize that many states and counties and cities have put up mental health checks and different phone numbers and other things so check in your local resources if you don't have an employee assistance program I know some universities do smaller locations may not but there are a lot more mental health resources out there if you start getting overly stressed or overly worried about your own health um on the second part of that is wherever your eyes are going your body is going to follow so take a good google look at ergonomics and make sure that you are not in some strange position trying to look at your computer screen for hours on end and then you wonder why you're back in neck hurt I mean honestly so look at your your chair and your you know you may not have spent a lot of time at your home office now that you are you need to make sure that you've got it in a place where it's taking proper body mechanics into place and there's a lot of resources for that yes someone just recommended to go fly a kite in the chat which I'm not taking as a euphemism I'm taking us to literally go fly a kite so keep that in mind um and that conference calls can be a good time for a walk I agree if you're on an audio conference call those are great to walk on I walk my dog multiple times a day now and um those are great times to go walking around as well um so we had a really interesting question come in on the chat that I kind of want to get your guys thoughts on so what happens if there's a collection emergency during the pandemic oh Tara do you have thoughts oh I'm mute no I don't know I'm yeah I'm gathering my thoughts um good question um Priscilla and I might be able to talk about this because you started to unmute um because I actually don't really know what we're gonna do um certainly we have our emergency plan and we know what steps we're supposed to take in case of emergency and in our particular instance depending on the emergency it's usually water um depending on the severity of it we usually contact a disaster recovery company to come collect the materials and bring them to facilities for vacuum freeze drying and that sort of thing but it really will depend on on the situation um I'm hoping that this won't happen but this is partially why the having the critical employee badge is important um so we have at least two of us that um in the preservation department that can go there were others who we were going to also schedule on I think two three more additional people were supposed to get those critical employee badges but we didn't get it in time before the ID center closed unfortunately so um if you do have to go into a space I mean it's now been several weeks so in terms of it being contaminated I wouldn't consider that to be a huge worry but you are going to be wearing personal protective equipment in most cases anyway depending on what's going on you're probably going to wear gloves if there's a possibility of mold you're going to be wearing an N95 respirator if you still have any and you didn't give them all the way to your health care facilities like we did um so I think some of that will already kind of the protocols we have in place from emergency response will already kind of lend themselves to the situation in terms of the pandemic but yeah I mean I think it's kind of like if whatever personnel you have that's available to go those are the people who you're going to have to rely on and I think it's about training in place and people being prepared and people kind of um and people following the um emergency plan that you've put in place and the protocols you've put in place um Priscilla and you probably have other comments about this I'm sure actually um we have thought it through with some of our libraries and it's very similar to what you've just said I just have a couple of things to add um one would be that our normal practice would be for our emergency team to bring more than one person on site so because when there's an emergency you have maybe half your brain power and so having two people the buddy system really works but we're probably going to cut that that to one because we want to make maintain social distancing and as expose as few people as possible um we are also we're bypassing the part of our phone tree that that you know where a staff member might discover the incident so we've actually simplified the phone tree to its operations or security that's calling us so there are only a couple of numbers that might be calling us that has that has helped us to um just make it simpler and having you know having things be as clear and simple as possible when we're already under stress is a way to help guarantee our success um we also are likely limiting the people who would respond to a water emergency to people who have been properly fit tested for N95s because um even if you have one if you haven't been properly tested um at least for our health and safety department it's um it's not recommended that we work under a situation where we have not been properly tested so we're going to limit it to the people who have been tested oh i got a thumbs up from dr mcdonough two thumbs up um i think oh yes and then about the vendors so i contacted three of our vendors and i said are you in business and would you respond to a collections emergency do you have the bandwidth the capacity uh the staffing to be able to do that and um they all said uh yes we are in business because we are essential businesses and they said yes uh we would be able to respond in some way even if it was just to assess the situation so um we know we can count on our vendors to help us and so we have now refined our plan to be even simpler to say that you know unless it's just a couple of books we're probably going to be calling in our vendor so um and then just to echo again what sam was talking about um going through with a cell phone on video and having a collection manager or some a decision maker the you know the the director on that on that call so they can see what you're seeing we're definitely going to have that be part of our practice if we do have to do an on-site response someone with two points what you said contacting those vendors is an excellent idea of just calling them and being like are you in business you know what i mean because you're right they most of them are probably are considered essential but that is a super good idea of just calling them and being like hey we were just curious if you have a prior relationship with them um the other thing is that earlier in the talk someone had commented about looking at our recovery teams and if you're making changes to them right now to see like who can access and who can't i think that's another good thing to really think about is who can you access do you need as many people as you noted and just kind of who is actually there in time in an emergency that you can get um because again i keep talking about hurricanes just because this is where i live but you know we've always talked about the deal of like if we were cut off if you're taken somewhere and you have to go somewhere else no one can have access to your institution right but we're all staying at home so it's different how we're looking at who can access the institution who can't so well it is three o'clock surprisingly i know like it was a quick hour um so just real quick i want to thank all of our panelists for taking an hour today just to talk i really appreciate it i i want to say thank you to all of our people who have been chatting right in the in the stream really appreciated it we have recorded this we are planning it i'm putting it up on the aic youtube channel probably in a day or so so keep an eye out for that and if you'd like us to do more things like this um go ahead and shoot us an email over to c2ccatculturalheritage.org we could see about arranging more of these um throughout the next couple weeks months however long this ends and i'm going to see if any of our panelists have any last minute thoughts they'd like to pass along to the audience anybody want to say anything be patient be patient pretty much all right handling yeah wash your hands stay six feet away from people all that normal stuff everyone thank you again be safe and we will see you all soon take care