 off to our host Susan Barger from the FAIC. Go ahead Susan. Hi, I want to welcome everybody. This is going to be really interesting and I'm very pleased that we're doing it. So I want to remind you that the Connecting to Collections Care website has lots of things. It has the online discussion which I'll talk about in a minute. It has more than a thousand resources and more get put in every day. They're designed for smaller institutions and they're over a hundred and twenty webinars that are available in the archives and now actually quite a few have closed captioning and there's a link in our archives to where the captions are. I wanted to talk a little bit about the discussion forum. Anyone can access the discussion forum but you have to register and the registration form is on the right-hand side of the in the in the side panel on the website and if you press this hot link registration it will take you to the forum and then you can go to discussions and if you have a question you can put it in and there are monitors and there are experts who will answer your questions and there's always someone paying attention to new questions coming in so they can get answered. If you send a question to the website and it's not in the forum or if you send it to me in my email I will just tell you to go to the forum so there's that and you can like some Facebook you can follow us on Twitter you can keep up with what's happening by getting on the C2CC announce list. This is the the web address to do that and you can get it on there and you can always contact me this is my email address and I wanted to say for everyone that participated in the Management 101 series that we just completed earlier in October I sent out the announcements for the for people that got badges which means you attended four live webinars. If you think that you qualified for one and you didn't get an announcement from Credly please send me email at this address and I will check. So there's that coming up there's going to be a webinar in December on wireless monitoring there'll be one on filmcare.org in January and care of quilts in February and we have care of maps architectural drawing after a sculpture and we're going to do a legal issues for collecting organizations which will be another Credly course those are all coming up. I don't quite have the posting for December up yet but you can head attention to the website and it'll be up there and I will be paying attention to the questions so just if you have them put them in the questions comment box and I'll make sure that they get answered at the end and without further ado we'll start. So Bethany Palumbo is going to be our first speaker. Hi everyone and thank you for joining us today my name is Bethany Palumbo I'm conservator for life collections at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History I'm joined by Fran Ritchie who's a conservator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Rebecca Newbury who's a conservator at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Food while it's so ever present in our institution whether it's hosting special events for that all important income stream or it's taking good care of visitors and staff who need to eat to get through the day some of us even have food items that form part of our collections and it's easy as museum professionals to say no food or drink allowed of course that makes everything much easier for us but what do you do if food has to be permitted as we probably have all experienced and how do you manage it well this is what we will be discussing with you today. For clarification this webinar is going to cover two areas of discussion on the topic of food management. The first section is going to be covered by Fran and myself and we will discuss the management of food for consumption within collection holding institutions. This will focus on a best practice document written by ourselves on behalf of the Conservation Committee for the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections otherwise known as the SCNHC. This document focuses on several recommendations one of which discusses where the best location might be for your special events as seen in these photos here. In this example we're in the Natural History Museum where a couple are on a first date and we can see them enjoying a few beverages in front of the grizzly bear. It appears sweet and innocent but what if they get too excited and spill their beers on the grizzly bear? Well there's a high risk scenario. The photo on the right is a much safer scene with the specimen safely displayed behind glass and where you choose to hold your special events makes a big difference to the longevity of your collection and this is just one of many examples we will be discussing. We'll also show you an example of the best practice being put into action when the Michigan State University Museum who incorporated our document into our own institutional policy. The second part of the webinar will discuss how to manage collections which contain food. This is a topic that came up from the creation of our best practice document and we felt this webinar would be a good opportunity to address this very unique issue. Rebecca Newbury will take the reins on this area. She is a conservator with some very rare experience on this subject and she will deliver a brief guide into how to preserve and protect collections of food. Before we go much further what is a best practice? Basically there are a set of recommendations or guidelines that are generally agreed upon within a field to produce desired results of professional standards. There is a best practice committee within the SPNHC that defines best practices as techniques or methodologies that reliably leads to a desired result. These methodologies have been proven through experience and are generally agreed upon in a field but not necessarily legislated. Best practice is a standard at which all institutions should aim to achieve and although many exist in areas of conservation and collections management the arrival of food into our institutions is still quite a new phenomenon. The consequences of which are only we just beginning to be fully understood and this is why we wanted to write on the subject and why we want to share it with you today. Managing food for consumption in collection holding institutions. The next few slides will show you how the best practice document was conceived and researched and we decided to include this in our webinar because we feel it's important that you have a greater understanding of why and how these recommendations came about versus us just telling you what they are. In 2011, conservator Kathy Hawkes from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History went to survey to a small number of colleagues in an attempt to find written guidelines for food in museums. However, results were near nonexistent. She then asked Gretchen Anderson, the conservator and co-chair of the SPNHC Conservation Committee, to identify members of the committee who would be willing to research further and eventually write guidelines on the subject. That's where we three came in. The best practice document was written using a three-step process and the final document is short and concise, providing seven recommendations for institutions to consider applying to their own food management policy. And if you're interested in reading this for yourself, you can find it at the SPNHC Wiki, followed through on this address. As I mentioned, the document was written using a three-step process, which we devised in the course of our research. And we want to briefly mention this process because it was quite integral to the final recommendations. Firstly, as with any research, we needed to review existing literature on food management and collection holding institutions. This revealed only few resources. There were publications by English Heritage and the National Trust, and they outlined food management procedures as part of special events. And other publications included it as part of integrated press management, IPM. There were no overriding publications with firm recommendations. All agreed food items should be completely separated from collections objects with a focus on good housekeeping. And however, none of them addressed methods of managing in-house food vendors, such as restaurants, or even how to deal with potential staff issues. The lack of a comprehensive document that dealt with the full range of food management issues solidified the need for the development of a best practice document. Secondly, we wanted to conduct a survey in order to gauge an understanding of the current condition of food management in collection holding institutions. This would open the doors of communication with our peers and allow us to see what was going on in institutions at present. The information provided created the foundations for our document, with many of the concerns expressed forming our final recommendations. And we also used this opportunity to collect case studies. We wanted to see what kinds of issues institutions had regarding the presence of food and how it was effectively managed and resolved. A few of these horror stories are included in this webinar. Thirdly, once complete, we took a working draft of our document to three international conferences to present it to conservation colleagues in the field. This was the most important step as it allowed for feedback from the people who would be using the document, suggesting edits and methods to make it more accessible. At each conference, the attendees responded to the talks with lively discussion and feedback about their own experiences with food management. It was the survey section of our research that really provided us with the most useful information. Not only did it demonstrate the need for a best practice document, but it showed us particular areas that required consideration. The 16 questions survey was uploaded to surveygizmo.com for free, and it was live from April to June 2014. We asked a range of food related questions, such as where is food allowed in your institution? And do food services affect collections? Many of the questions included space for writing answers. This gave us more detailed responses. In the month and a half, the survey was live. We received 351 completed surveys from 21 countries. It's pretty amazing. The United States had the highest rate of respondents, but we did get a lot of international participation, which is what we really wanted. The survey gizmo software could then generate a report that listed percentages for each question. The table on this slide is an example of this. It shows that although 40 percent of institutions said they had guidelines for food management, many of the writing responses indicated that these guidelines were more word of mouth rather than written. Seventy-five percent of respondents told us that they have food in office spaces, and almost 50 percent have food in galleries during special events. More proof that a best practice document for this area was much needed. We also asked for and kindly received 12 written policies already in place at institutions. We were keen to see what they were doing already and how it might be beneficial to our document. However, it was the additional comment section of the survey that proved to be the most useful, for gauging a deeper understanding of very personal or individual issues. Comments mentioned an array of areas of frustration experienced by institutional staff. Many mentioned a lack of responsibility and feeling underappreciated and tired with not being listened to. Many mentioned that they would like formal guidelines on the subject, especially those so they had something to present to their superiors. We then decided, mostly out of curiosity, to gather up the additional comments, over 200 of them, and organize them into groups with one being the issue that was mentioned most, the seven being the issue that was mentioned least. And we soon discovered that almost all came under one of several categories listed here. The people themselves had chosen our areas of focus. Each of these areas would be addressed through our final recommendations. They include, one, a lack of official food policy, two, special events, three, staff issues, four, fine inch for visitors, five, location of vendor food, six, designer food, and seven, design of kitchen. That's the background of the best practice document. And now we're going to go through each recommendation in more detail. So, pens at the ready. Our first recommendation is the general main statement that all institutions that deal with food in any capacity should have a written policy on food management, standard preservation practice. Now we're going to have our first poll question, which is basically going to ask you, yes, do you have written policy for any of these things listed? Official written guidelines in any area of collections care, create more regulation, consistency, and oversight. Institutional management should encourage the creation of a food policy and enforce its regulations, which must be agreed by all parties invested in the collections. As we found with the sample written policies that were submitted through the survey, the more detailed and specific to your institution, the stronger the policy will be. These photos demonstrate the types of situations in which food will be present in your institution, and if you have any of these, then it's really important that you have an institutional food management policy. When writing your policy and procedures, there are several points to consider, and we advise you to address the following. Firstly, consider restricting food from all collection storage and work areas and from collection display areas. So, food and collections won't even have an opportunity to see each other. Secondly, include clear instructions on food preparation, consumption, and disposal for in-house and external food vendors. This includes institutional staff, both collection and non-collection employees, as well as contractors. The policy should especially address individual responsibilities for staff, visitors, and vendors. All staff should be well informed regarding the policy and procedures and be able to effectively communicate them both internally and externally. You might want to include an agreed list of areas in which food can be prepared, consumed, and disposed, and annotated formats are a useful addition to any policy. Highlight housekeeping and integrated pest management IPM are affected by food management negligence and how potential issues will be resolved and costs covered. Frown will be discussing this in more detail. Consider including clear guidelines on how staff should interact with the public to explain and enforce food regulations. Your own policy should be upheld in all situations, even when faced with special requests. I'm talking to museum directors. And if the policy or procedures must be compromised to accommodate special situations, then correspondingly extraordinary collections risk, mitigations measures, mitigation measures should be enacted. And in addition, your procedures could include a list of trusted caterers who have agreed to the criteria of the food management policy. Contracts for caterers could also include provisions for fines if they do not do not fulfill policy and procedure requirements. The second recommendation is in regards to special events, and these are everywhere in all institutions. It would be ideal if the special events could be held in a specifically allocated space that is isolated from collections. We understand this can be very hard to do, especially in smaller institutions. However, it's not impossible to remove vulnerable collections from the allocated space if you feel they are at risk. The special events must be held in the same areas as collections, then additional effort needs to be made to keep the two separate. And the event space could could be easy to clean and it should also be easy to maintain. Think about separating food and collections. This could include adding temporary walls or panels, redesigning the flow of visitors or moving collections inside a secure enclosed cases. Consider also how food and how the food and the catering staff are getting to and from the space. What is their route? What will they encounter on the way? Consider designing a route for them so it's always consistent at every event. A few other preventive ideas include sealing hardwood flooring or covering historic flooring with temporary carpet. Consider providing additional waste baskets and or creating strategic positions to set drinks and plates away from collections, as seen in this excellent picture from Rebecca. Got a lovely little T-rex there telling you you've got your hands full, your beverage here. Think also about how housekeeping routines need to be altered to accommodate the events. Where is the extra waste going? Is there going to be cleaning directly after an event? This slide shows us a few more brilliant pictures about how signage can be used to direct to visitors to put their food and drink in the correct areas and away from collections. The picture on the top right shows what happens when there's nowhere to provide guests to set drinks, the aftermath of which is shown in the photo below where a member of staff is cleaning up a spill. See, food management really can be simple putting signs around. It's really making Now throughout these recommendations we'll be giving you case studies, horror stories, and here is one on the subject of cleaning up on the night of an event or the morning after. One institution told us that they often hold special events in the main galleries. However, no cleaning was completed directly after the events. Instead, it was left for the usual cleaning staff to do in the following morning. Since the institution is located in a large city, which won't be named, the leftover food rapidly resulted in a rodent infestation, which began spreading to other galleries. Oh, it sounds pretty grim. But as a result of this there was a change in policy and thorough cleaning now takes place directly after each event. Responsibility is shared between the contracted vendors and the institutional housekeeping. And all of this, of course, is included in their policy. So everyone knows what they are responsible for. I'll now pass you over to Fran. Excellent. Thanks, Stephanie. All right. I'm going to start in on the third recommendation and that involves the very people who keep everything functioning in any institution, the staff members, so all of us. Many survey respondents reported not being provided with a clean, safe place to consume food, which resulted in food being consumed in collection spaces. The well being of staff at your institution is extremely important. And so we recommend that the staff be provided at minimum a designated space to store, prepare, share and consume food that is safe and hygienic. This space should have proper waste bins, which are emptied regularly. So that something to coordinate with your housekeeping staff. And in my own experience, you also need to empty the fridge on specific days. I think we've all worked at a place where the fridge gets a little funky, and that can also lead to some issues. The staff should be trained on the risks associated with eating within collection space, both for their own health and safety and for that of the collection. Some of you might work with collections that have residual pesticides that are on the actual object. So you know that protecting yourself is just as important as protecting the collection. All staff, including contractors, part-time people and interns should be trained on why food management is required. And if applicable, consider applying incentives for eating in those designated spaces, like discounts for staff to use at available canteens or vendors. The case studies that we received shared instances when staff was not well equipped or informed. One example is that a museum did not provide a break room or designated area of food. The curators and professors ate lunch in their offices among the food and, I mean, sorry, among the collections that they studied. And that was until a red legged hand beetle infestation spread from one office to a whole floor of collections. At first, not all the staff believed that the designated space was needed even after the red legged hand beetle. But when a line of ants was also discovered marching through the museum's front door and into a nearby trash can, everyone was eventually supportive of the regulations. So sometimes it just takes seeing what happens to recognize that you need something. Our fourth recommendation is to address the potential visitor issues. Visitors, of course, are an integral part of any institution. And since they're human as well, they also need to eat. And for this, we advise that there be a designated area, especially if they are permitted to bring their own food into the institution. Managing visitors and their food will be significantly easier and more efficient if the preparation, sale, consumption and disposal are all centralized into one allocated space. Signage for visitors also needs to be clear and concise to demonstrate and justify why such rules are in place. We also recommend that custodial in-house food vendors and other appropriate staff enforce those regulations. One case study we received was about an institution that is visited predominantly by families. They were often experiencing visitors eating within the galleries, which was not permitted. While custodial staff were instructed to politely ask offenders to stop, complaints often followed due to a lack of understanding and clear explanation. New signage was designed using photographs of pest infestations on objects as a deterrent, an example of which you can see on the screen. Along with an official statement agreed by the institution, staff are now better equipped to speak to visitors and with photographic evidence of the potential for damage, all visitors so far have been compliant without complaints. The fifth recommendation involves vendor food, such as vending machines, coffee or sandwich carts, etc. This type of food is becoming more and more common in our institutions, and therefore our first recommendation for this is that they should only be in purpose built areas and not crammed into existing collection spaces or galleries. And that's unfortunately often the case because they weren't designed to have these types of food vendors to begin with. Placing vendor food in purpose built spaces not only decreases the risk of damage, for example leaks from carts or spilled coffee near collections, but it also demonstrates to visitors an institutional priority and expectation for proper food management. So if an institution takes it seriously, the visitors are more likely to take it seriously, which is surely what every institution wants the public to think. Waste disposal in these particular areas is paramount. They might even require more housekeeping than the galleries themselves. Consider where food is being stored and how and where the waste is being disposed of. Our case study for food vendor location wasn't very good for a collection of dinosaurs. Despite objections from collection staff, a restaurant was located between two galleries in a new museum building. Access between the restaurant and the main catering kitchen and the waste disposal areas required passing through a carpeted paleontology gallery. After a serious ketchup spill on a dinosaur, a procedure for moving food, supplies and waste exclusively in covered carts was implemented, resulting in less risk and better relations between the food vendors and collection staff. So fortunately, that one was pretty easy to solve. Just using a covered cart helped prevent future spills. The design of food can also make a difference, too. We recommend that the types of food served within an institution are designed to take into consideration their impact not only on resources, but also the mission of the institution. So by that we mean that you should consider offering food choices that are less complicated to prepare and simpler to consume, such as serving order that can be eaten with one hand and no deep frying of food that can splatter hot oil and is greasy. Also consider prohibiting foods that stain or are difficult to remove, such as gum, red wine, ice cream, popcorn, etc. So for example, cleaning up a mess that occurred because of peeling each shrimp, one museum hires out certain galleries for special events and relies on that extra revenue. Although a full dinner is not served, a previous choice of complicated finger food still presented a problem for the museum, and that was cocktail shrimp. Guests were required to use two hands to peel the shrimp, meaning that their plates and cups needed surfaces to rest upon. There were not enough tables, so guests opted to rest plates on object pedestals. The shrimp shells required additional bowls or plates for collection and disposal, and a few ends up on the gallery floor. The sticky hands of guests were not cleaned thoroughly enough, and fingerprints were also discovered around other areas of the gallery. So as you can imagine, at the next event, the museum served non-sticky foods that can all be eaten with one hand, much better. Our seventh and final recommendation, it is important that food preparation areas for staff in-house food vendors and outside food vendors be hygienic and easy to clean and maintain. When designing these food preparation areas, consider the frequency and responsibility of cleaning, who's cleaning it and how often. The ease of cleaning, if you are designing the space, don't pick a tile that will catch all the food scraps and then be difficult to clean. The quality of packing and feeling food, especially for longer periods, so how you're going to store the food while it's waiting to be sold or prepared. You need to make sure that there are sufficient extraction for excess humidity, oil vapors, or odors, and you need to locate it at a position far away from collection spaces. And of course, you need to make sure that it complies with local regulations for food preparation spaces. There might be particular laws for your exact state or country. If possible, prepare this food off-site so that it enters and leaves the building on the same day, thus decreasing pest risk. Our food preparations area case study came to us from a museum that featured two restaurants. One was a full-service cafeteria with a large kitchen located away from collection areas, and the other was a snack bar with limited food preparation and no ventilation located near the gallery. The snack bar's original menu included hot dogs cooked on heated rollers. This cooking method produced strong smells. The collection care staff requested the removal of the hot dog roller as the smell indicated that cooking oils were present in the air and thus they were in the galleries and depositing on objects. Many visitors added complaints about the strong smell, so eventually the roller would move and the hot dogs were then cooked in the main kitchen and held in warming trays at the snack bar. And I would like to think that the institution moved, implemented this change after the collection care staff requested it, but I have a feeling it was probably the complaints from the guests that ultimately made them change it. Sometimes that's who has more sway unfortunately. So to recap the seven recommendations. You number one, you should have a written food policy specific to your institution. You should plan for food management during special events, so you're not surprised. You should educate and equip staff with proper food management procedures and educate visitors via signage and instructions. You should ensure vendor food locations are away from collection spaces. Design food for events that is easy to consume and doesn't stain and design food separation areas to be easy to clean and control. Now that you've heard our best practices recommendations that we created from a survey of our peers, let's move on to sample policies. As Bethany mentioned, we previously asked institutes to send us examples of their own policies for food. And we noticed that the 12 sample written policies sent to us had similar themes in common. They all included restricting food and collections areas, the importance of good housekeeping, and the fact that they needed to deal with food at special events. And as you just heard from our recommendations, our best practices that we just discussed, we included those themes in our own best practices. Detailing exact, we also noted that the strongest policies were very specific to the institutions, and they often detailed exact locations where food is allowed and the items that are forbidden. One interesting example that we all thought was funny, it actually wasn't food, but it was glitter. There was one museum that restricted glitter, so we've been wondering what exactly happened to cause that restriction if there were a lot of glitter bombs or something going off. But this is a good example of the fact that these best practices we developed are not specific, they don't give specific examples like that, like you should always outlaw glitter because you never know what the exact institution will need. If you're the national museum of glitter, then maybe you should not outlaw glitter, you should go ahead and have it. So we do recommend that you work together with your staff and come up with the best practice, with a policy that is best for you. And then I also want to stress that a food management policy for the consumption of food does not replace an integrated test management or IPM policy. IPM is the actual active management of tests and it's an essential part of collections management. Through the use of pest traps, frequent visual examinations and routine cleanliness, an IPM program aims to prevent, monitor, identify and mitigate pest infestations. Ideally they prohibit any food from institutions but of course that isn't likely to happen. So on the other hand what we've been talking about food management focuses on procedures to deal with situations that require food. We advise that these food management procedures should be incorporated alongside the IPM procedures as a way to mitigate the risks associated with having food. Your, this means that your food management policy will help prevent pest infestations and then your integrated pest management policy will help you identify any infestations that may occur. If you still need to develop an IPM policy for your own institution, a really good place to start is museumpest.net for more information and guidance. Now we are very fortunate I'm very excited that we have an example of a food policy that was written using the recommendations that we outlined in our best practices. The Michigan State University Museum recently re-accredited and they decided to revise their collection policy during the process and I could see on their collection policy that it was first revised in the spring of 1994. So I have a feeling that maybe special events were not promoted as much as they are today so the policy really was in need of a food section. The collection manager told us that the best practice recommendations were an essential resource for the development of the new food policy and that planning this section prompted a lively discussion among staff and that was really good to hear because you want everyone to have a voice in this planning. The more people who are involved in the process the more buy-in that you'll have from staff across the museum and their policy is not available online but we were given permission to show you excerpts of the food management portion. When we look at the table of contents here you can note that the food and beverage policy is separate from the integrated test management procedures. Their food and beverage policy then fulfills the first recommendation from our best practice which is all institutions that deal with food should have a written policy. The detail of details of the MSU Museum's food policy are modeled for their own specific spaces and needs so yours will have different details but it's nice to see what a certain institution has done and their food policy will also sound familiar as they used a lot of wording from our best practices recommendation only adding in specific details for their museum. So the first section of theirs oh there we see that the integrated test management procedures and food policy are separate. And then moving on so their first section the document lists specific locations where food is and is not permitted both for special events and for staff. You can see that food and beverages are not permitted in collection storage repositories or collections working areas or processing areas. The multi-use areas in the museum are spaces where collections and food may be present but not simultaneously. So for a hypothetical example there could be a nighttime lecture in the auditorium displaying some collection pieces but there could not also be dessert served in that space at that time. But then the next night there might be another event there that does not use collection pieces so food would be allowed in that area during that event. There's also a whole section outlining the food policy during special events. Besides stating when and where food is allowed the policy also dictates that there should be additional tables to prevent food and beverages from contacting the exhibition furniture so that visitors won't place their items on the exhibition cases like we heard in our case study. And the image that we see is a good example from another museum that had a drink table outside of the gallery to collect bottles during a beer tasting event. And I actually want to add to this we just heard another case study it was emailed to us a couple days ago and someone had a a special event over the weekend and although they had drink tables set out everywhere they had more visitors and they thought they were going to have so the drink tables became full and they didn't have extra staff to clear them during the event and so eventually they were too full that visitors then started to put them anywhere they could find a space so even though they were somewhat prepared they weren't completely prepared and they really needed more staff during that event. So it's good to hear these kinds of things so maybe you can help plan for that as well. For this policy they also had a cleaning deposit fee that was collected as part of the facility rental agreement to cover post-event cleanup so that could cover extra staff if you do need to hire someone to help clean the tables during the actual event or hire extra people to work after the event to clean. And the MSU Museum's housekeeping staff is also aware that they may need to alter their normal activities to accommodate these special events such as extra waste disposal and cleanup directly after the event. Caterers are advised of the cleaning policies for their own responsibilities so they can advise visitors if they are acting in violation of the policy such as setting food on exhibition furniture instead of the provided tables. They can be the ones to help them for. And this here's where the policy pulls directly from the best practices and they encourage food that is easy to eat with one hand and discourage foods that stain or are difficult to remove such as fried food, gum, red beverages including wine, juice, or punch, ice cream and popcorn. And popcorn doesn't seem dangerous but if you've ever had give or seen had little kids over to your house and seen them eat popcorn and everywhere it goes you know it can get messy really quickly. Now as we all know food is present in institutions even when there isn't a special event because we all need to eat. So the MSU Museum policy addresses this in their staff responsibilities section which ensures that everyone working at the museum knows what is expected of them. The policy states that staff is responsible for either cleaning the multi-use areas after events themselves or they're responsible for coordinating cleanup with facility staff. Staff is also expected to maintain a clean and tidy space where food is prepared but there's no common area for food consumption so the staff is allowed to eat in their offices. The collection and other staff collection care and other staff are to deposit their food daily and the waste is then taken to the dumpster at the end of the day by the custodial staff. So that means everyone in the museum their roles are clearly defined when it comes to food management. And then finally there is a section outlining the visitor responsibilities. I really like that the museum now has signs that educate the visitors on where they're allowed to eat and drink and it also mentions that there's a sign for visitors to read posted near the information desk that summarizes the food and beverage guidelines for the museum. Staff and contracted caterers are authorized to remind visitors of the regulation. So thank you again very much to the Michigan State University Museum for letting us present their food and beverage policy. As you've seen it's possible to adopt the best practices recommendations to fit your specific institution. The food policy from this museum was concise clear and written with input from several museum staff members. But what do you do if food management means taking care of actual pieces of food that are cataloged and in your collection? I'll pass it off to Rebecca to help advise on that situation. Rebecca. Thank you Fran. So what do you do if food, your collections actually are food? We received a few questions about food collections during the survey but we decided not to address them in the best practices document in order to keep that document as broadly focused as possible and also as concise as possible. So now we'd like to take the opportunity to discuss the food collections and to answer some of those questions. So let's take a moment to answer a quick poll question. It's poll number two. Going to move over. Here we go. All right. Do you have food in your collections? And it's okay to mark if you're not sure because sometimes you might not realize you have food in your collection. So food cataloged into a collection raises two main concerns. There's an increased risk of pest infestation due to the presence of the food. So food collections are extremely vulnerable to a wide variety of insect and vertebrate pests. The rest of the collections are then an increased risk because of the attractiveness of the food collections to pests. So for example, a mouse may not be that interested in your wool textile collection unless there are commemorative boxes of breakfast stores excuse me unless there are commemorative boxes of breakfast cereal stored nearby. The food source attracts the mice and then invites them to nest in the vicinity perhaps in your textiles. Later with the food source exhausted the mice may die and their carcasses may become food for insects which are likely to infest protein-based collections such as the wool textiles. Of course that's a completely worst case scenario. A solid IPM plan then in graded pest management directing the sealed storage of food and regular pest monitoring will greatly reduce this risk. Food may be sealed from pests in tightly sealed cabinets or in sealed bins on open shelves. Food safe plastic bins made from LDPE that's low density polyethylene or polycarbonate are economical storage options if you can't afford cabinets. You also should consider the preservation of the food itself. Food products are perishable and may require extraordinary care to preserve them. Dry food such as the maple sugar and the bread sculpture shown will do best in dry conditions. Sealed from pests and held at a stable temperature in relative humidity they will last a very long time. When displaying food collections make sure they are in sealed cases to protect from pests and displayed under low light levels to protect the natural and dyed colors of the food. You wouldn't want the icing on this bread sculpture for example to fade under high light. Make sure the temperature in relative humidity are controlled while on display as well. Sugar as shown in both examples is both hygroscopic and temperature sensitive. Hygroscopic material attracts water so high relative humidity will cause the sugar to soften or to get sticky and then sugar decomposes at high temperatures and at high relative humidity. Even elevated room temperatures may cause the sugar to melt, ooze or recrystallize. Wet foods like canned food or beverages must be closely monitored for deterioration and may require long term cold storage. And remember if food is part of your collection your food management policy should take that into consideration. So when dealing with food based collections you should consider the condition of the food. Examine the food and the packaging. Is the food reacting with the packaging? Take into account the value and the meaning of the food and the packaging. Take into account your ability to store and to display both. Are you able to Hi everyone. This is Mike Morno from Learning Times. Please stand by while we get Rebecca back on. Sorry about that. Can you hear me now? Okay. Sorry about that. I will back up and restart the beginning of this slide if that's okay. All right. So to consider the condition of your food based collections is important. Examine the food and the packaging. Is the food reacting with the packaging? Take into account both the value and meaning of the food and the packaging. And take into account your ability to store and to display both. Are you able to keep the food from deteriorating and interacting with the packaging? Will they both be safer if stored separately? Is the package more important than the food itself? Is it necessary to preserve the food along with the packaging? These are a lot of questions and here are two examples to show different ways to answer those questions. So on the left these cakes were acquired from China in 1904. The cakes and the original packaging were separated which led to the long-term preservation of both. The cakes are stored in a sealed dry jar which protects them from pests and from fluctuations in relative humidity. And good collections management procedures have kept the cakes and the original box associated so the information is not lost between the two of them. And the soup can on the right still contains the original soup it dates from the mid 20th century. It shows signs of rust and it should be monitored regularly. Storing this item in cold storage will prolong its preservation. Make sure you seal the can in a humidity controlled container to reduce the risk of humidity fluctuation while in refrigerated storage. You can use silica gel to control the relative humidity. Now we're going to look at three common approaches to storing and displaying food based collections. So if the food and the package appear stable one approach is to retain the food in the original packaging. On the left there's an actual slice of cake from Queen Victoria's wedding. So that's pretty amazing it's preserved in a special box and both the cake and the box are obviously showing their age but the dry cake is preserved pretty well in the box and keeping the cake in the box together is obviously very important preserving the object's meaning. Storing the contents of the box the box and the contents together in dry sealed storage will preserve the excuse me prolong the preservation. In the middle image we have a bottle of patent medicine that has a deteriorating cork and the cork is currently sealing the bottle adequately but it may be a good idea to consider removing the contents from that bottle in the future to reduce the risk of evaporation and spilling and the bottle then should be monitored regularly for any changes. And on the right this is some more maple sugar it's stable in the basket in the current storage climate so removing the sugar from this basket would really drastically affect the meaning of the object so they should remain together and the cavity storage mount that the basket is in can serve to catch any loose sugar crystals that may shake out during handling. Make sure you monitor store food stored in its original packaging frequently for any condition changes. Food may be better preserved when it's removed from its original packaging. In this case this dried beef is from 1823. It was originally stored folded in a paper note and it's now more securely stored in a ziplock baggie. The note is folded back into the original it was found and the items are stored together in a box so the beef now will no longer leech fat into the paper as you can see it has done in the past and there's no longer risk of the beef shaking out of the paper enclosure. This technique is also often used for liquid or wet food items. The food is removed and can be stored in a stable container and then the separated contents and package can be stored together or separately if they require different storage conditions. Separating food from its original packaging is a decision which should be made in consultation with curators, collections managers, registrars and conservators and that process should be very well documented. The locations of the separated food and the packaging should be well documented and tracked as well. Separated food and packaging can be stored in different environments for long-term preservation. For example, liquid foods may last longer in cold storage while the packaging may fare better when stored at room temperature. Be sure to consult a conservator to remove food from packaging and to clean food residue from the original packaging if necessary. And some food may not even have any original packaging. In a later slide, you'll see a bunch of ears of corn. So if that's the case, you can store that. You're free to store that in any sort of sealed stable container and you don't need to preserve older storage methods or older storage mounts unless they're integral to the information of the piece. And finally, you may decide that the container is more important to preserve than the actual food contents. And this decision again should be made in consultation with curators, collections managers, registrars and conservators and be well documented. Make sure you document the food before you discard it and you could decide to save a small amount of the original food in a stable container for the long term. But be sure to document what you did and why you did it. And so hypothetically on the left, if you decided to collect a pint of ice cream, let's say, but you have no freezer to store it, you could discard the ice cream and catalog just the empty container and you should carefully document that food product, of course. And if you're super thorough in your documentation, you could describe what it tasted like, I suppose. In the image on the right, this bottle of novelty soda, the staff decided to remove the carbonated beverage from the bottle for the safety of surrounding collections. It's stored in a cabinet with mixed collections of all kinds of things, food and non-food items. So for the long term, the importance of the container was a lot more important than the beverage inside. Make sure you do consult a conservator to remove food residue from the containers. So to summarize, if food is part of your collection, your food management policy should definitely take that into consideration. Make sure food stored in collections is protected from pest infestation and from deterioration. Seal food tightly in cabinets, as seen in the photo, or in sealed bins to be isolated from pests. Monitor it regularly. Document condition changes and decisions to change the storage conditions. And cold, not frozen storage should be considered for some foods. Don't freeze foods, especially if they're in their original packaging, do the risk of the food expanding within the packaging and damaging the package. Control the relative humidity in cold storage by sealing the food and packaging in a container with silica gel and monitor the relative humidity with RH indicating strips. Keep the humidity under 60% if possible. Be sure to consult a conservator when you're preparing food collections for cold storage. So with good procedures, you can successfully preserve food in collections without raising the risk of pest infestation. So let's review what we've covered today. Food and collection holding institutions is not ideal, but it's often necessary. And for the most successful food management policy and procedures, you should make sure you meet with staff from many departments. That's collections management, conservation, custodial, restaurants, facilities, etc. in order to discuss the specific needs of your institution regarding food management. Create a written food policy within your collections policy that explains the roles of vendor, staff, visitors, etc. in managing food. And once again, here is the website for the food management best practices. And you don't have to worry about copying it down yet. You'll see it again and it's also in the handout. You should tailor your food policy to the unique specifics of your institution. Explicitly state where food is allowed and is not allowed in all areas of your buildings and grounds. Implement food management procedures alongside existing IPM procedures. And if you don't have an IPM procedure, I would say go to museumpest.net for IPM policy templates. And we have included the website in the handout as well for museumpest.net. And make sure you educate all staff on your food policy. Buy-in is really key. Everyone eats, so everyone is responsible for managing food in your institution. And finally, when handling food cataloged into your collection, make sure you keep your food sealed to prevent pest infestation and consider both the food product and the packaging when planning for preservation. And make sure you monitor frequently for signs of infestation and deterioration. So thank you so much for your attention today. And we really want to thank you especially if you're one of our survey respondents. And also thank you to Laura from the Michigan State Museum who's in the audience today. Your help in sharing your food policy with us was really awesome. We're extremely grateful to everyone who's contributed to this project. As you can see, it's quite a few people. Please feel free to email us. We're happy to answer any questions or take your comments. And we hope you'll be able to use the best practices document for your own policies. And we'd also encourage you to add to the discussion on the SPNHC website, WIKI website. And here's the website. So that looks like and now we have time for some questions. Okay. You're actually worked a lot of questions but there was a lot of discussion about different things. There was a discussion about emptying waste bins and recycling bins to make sure that there aren't sugary drink residue and food contamination which can attract bugs. I would add to that. Yep. I would add besides just emptying your recycling bins and your waste trash bins is also to make sure that the bins themselves are cleaned frequently. Oftentimes if you just remove like if they're in a plastic bag and the plastic bag gets removed it can be torn and there can be residue left in the bin. So making sure that you have some way to clean the actual containers as well as removing stuff regularly is important. Yeah. And then there was a question about what suggestions you have for living history and food waste programs. It says we have a kitchen in the main museum that's used for food preparation but it's a short shot down the hall from the exhibit space. Most of the actual cooking is done in the historic buildings away from collection items. I can address this one too. I think it's really important to have good housekeeping procedures in place and good food storage procedures. So if you're actually saving and storing any of the ingredients that you might need in your near exhibit spaces make sure they're tightly sealed in containers and that you've got good IPM procedures in place. You're monitoring that area frequently and that you are cleaning it well. In my institution many years ago before we were in our current building we actually had a small kitchen inside of one of our galleries and they would actually fry food every once in a while in there but there was a hood to extract fumes and there was really good procedures in place to make sure that the food was kept sealed up when it wasn't in use. I don't know. I guess good housekeeping, good housekeeping, good housekeeping. And the fact that you're doing the actual cooking away from the gallery is already... Yeah, there's a... Anita McKelvey in Philadelphia said with more than 30 years of hospitality experience that I often recommend that historic house museums and other collections do not allow catering inside their facilities. Instead they should create an off-site location a tent on a platform for instance for special events. That's a good suggestion. Yeah, that is good. And I know especially with these historic homes they weren't built. We like to say that a museum is an envelope that's hard to penetrate when you're building a new museum building. But these historic homes they probably have a lot of little small crevices and places for pets to get inside when they smell that food. I know I'm certainly dealing that with that in my own apartment because I live in New York City and we're always constantly plugging these holes that we didn't see that we had. So that's a really great suggestion but then of course if you really can't get away from that you can just follow some of the guidelines that we've presented to try to help manage it. I'd also add that... Oh, the English Heritage document that we included on the food handout has some good procedures specifically for historic house museums and special events including things to think about with filming or any other kind of thing that might happen in a special in a historic house that's not just about food but all sorts of events. So it's a great document if you can't get away from hosting things within your historic house. Right. And Laura from the university said that she will get me the policy and I will post it with the recording for this webinar. So you don't need to batter her. It'll all be together and it'll be posted in a few days. What's the procedure for to display rice or other grains to prevent attracting insects? And then I have a question about cornmeal that's put in native collections to feed the pots. I think those two are related. I think it's of course the first thing that we have to recommend is to try to have fake food where possible on display but I know sometimes that's difficult to implement. So I think this is another case where feeling off everything is the most important. So if you have real food on display, try to contain it as much as possible. So make sure that it's not going to spill out into other areas of the display case. And then also make sure that your display case is well filled and make sure that you have people who monitor it regularly looking for any signs of pest infestation. If you can, you can even put a sticky trap inside of the case. If it's easily accessible or if it won't show too much to the visitors, you can have that inside. But just make sure that you look around frequently to see if there are any insect casings or dead insects or anything at the bottom of the case. And I think that that's also related to having things like offerings for Native American collections or different Native collections when you need to feed the objects. That's just another situation where you have some responsible for monitoring that as much as possible. Sometimes the food needs to be kept actually in the collection storage. So if you can, try to have it in a place that can be opened easily. If it's in a cabinet, open it frequently and put pest traps in the cabinet so you can monitor if there are pests in there. Or if possible, if you have a designated room for this to happen, for these offerings, make sure that room is also well sealed. There's no opening pipe openings for pests to get into and just make sure that you outfit it with sticky traps to monitor the situation. And I would add too that especially if you're introducing new material to feed objects like tobacco or cornmeal that if you can provide that material, you can freeze it ahead of time as a pest control measure. Oftentimes there are stored product pests that may be present in food that you buy at the store. So if you can freeze it ahead of time to kill off anything that might be in there and then have that on hand to offer to people who want to use it to feed the collections, you reduce the risk of infestation. Yeah. Then there's a question about housekeeping practices. We use a vendor for cleaning and would like to give detailed guidance about what products, chemicals, non-chemicals to use to clean areas we haven't been able to find documentation for this any resources to recommend? I can recommend one that just is flashing by and that's the housekeeping manual from the Minnesota Historical Society which is posted on the website. Do you have any others? That's my go to as well and I see someone in the comments also just posted the link to that, the PDF to it. Yeah. A test. Do you have any suggestions on removing beverages from unopened containers? We have beer in unopened cans from a local bottling company. Opening the can would damage change to the original package? Yeah. You could, depending on the long-term preservation if you could keep those in cold storage, they should last a lot longer than kept at room temperature. Otherwise, I don't know. I think that's something you need to talk to a conservator about. You could potentially open a small hole in the bottom of the can rather than popping the top of it. You know, doing it carefully could relieve the pressure and remove the beer if you're not interested in saving it or you could save the beer in a separate container. I don't know. What do you guys think? You could also put two tiny holes in the bottom that would allow it to drain out the bottom. Yeah. That wouldn't be visually distracting. Yeah. If this is still a local bottling company that exists today, you might ask them if they have any tricks as well. Sometimes that could be good and then sometimes they have no idea what your goals are and they might tell you to just pop the top. But you never know. Sometimes local places will have some ideas. Yeah. Do you, Stokes Lee said not frozen? Why would you not freeze food collection? Well, I wouldn't freeze something that's liquid if it's in a sealed package. So like a canned food, I would be nervous about freezing it because the food would expand within the package and it could damage the packaging. I mean obviously if it's food that came to you frozen, it can stay frozen or if it's separated from the packaging, it could be frozen too. But you want to make sure you manage the, you want to tightly seal that so that you can manage the relative humidity. You know, both freezing and refrigeration are high humidity environments so you want to make sure you keep things dry. Okay. Do you have, have you ever dealt with push back from leadership where food and drinks are allowed and how did you deal with that situation? I can't grab that one. Bethany. Well, not that I, the situation is still impending the situation. It's been a lot of compromise. You know, the, Bethany we're having a hard time hearing you. Can you hear me now? Hello. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Just that we've had a new restaurant canteen open in our museum and it's just been a lot of compromise. Everyone wants it to be a different way the management wants a lot of things that we know are not suitable for the museum and the collections but obviously they're going to go ahead in many ways and just do things anyway. So all you can do is sort of the best you can. Yeah. And I would also recommend proactively recommending procedures in order to deal with it. I know that in my institution we host 21 and over events and there's been a great pressure to expand the places where beverages are allowed into different galleries where we don't usually allow drinks on our normal opening hours and that's when we came up with the compromise of adding high top tables to galleries so people have a place to set their beverages. If we have an event where there's going to be a lot of disposable beverage containers like beer bottles or things like that we add extra recycling containers in the gallery so places people have a place to dispose of the beverage container and then we also make sure that we have additional catering staff on hand to sort of collect empties and to be aware if there's things that need to be cleaned up for spills and stuff like that and it's been pretty successful. People have been good we maybe average one spill per event you might have seen on the slide that the custodian cleaning some carpet from a spill during the event so it's just suggesting the extraordinary mitigating circumstances to keep collections protected so being proactive about what you can do makes you look like a good team player and also preserves the hun protects the collections. And Daniel Hobart in San Francisco says I have a question about bottle feeding infants near collections on view breastfeeding is allowed in all public areas but bottle feeding presents a different situation if anyone has bottle feeding policies in place I'd love to hear them and she gave her her email address but I thought that was an interesting thing to discuss. Yeah definitely Yeah that's a great question and I know I haven't really heard anything about that if anyone has had that as an issue or not I would think that that would be the same as having food and snacks for toddlers and any other kids and families as well and you would want to have that in the more designated space because hopefully you have a space for people to bring in outside food if that's allowed and if it's not allowed you probably would want to make an exception for bottle feeding infants that's it's just it's tricky because of course you wouldn't want to walk up to a woman feeding her child and tell her to go to a specific place but if you have a lot of signs that are around that point people to the designated areas hopefully they would recognize that they need to go to those spaces in order to feed their children yeah I find that I'm just sat here thinking about it you know I am a breastfeeding mother and yet I am a conservator and I'm not sure if I would be offended if somebody came up to be and asked me to move I don't think I would because I understand the significance of the collections and what it involves but I'm sure some people probably would be offended yeah I well you could always just train your staff to have some polite spiel yeah and please don't forget the evaluation they're really important I look at them um okay what are some ways to saturate communication in a culture about the importance of of IPM and ultimately that it's everyone's responsibility we've tried MAMO's emails posting and still would like to be more effective about sustaining the communication around IPM I think this is similar to the case study that we gave where there was an infestation in one portion of a university museum in someone's office a red-legged hand beetle that spread to a collection space but people still didn't really have buy in until they saw a line of ants marching through the front door of the museum I think sometimes people respond to visuals so maybe if you have photos of the the impact that infestations can have on the museum or even spills or knocking into things that I think people respond to visuals a little bit better but it says a thousand words yeah exactly yeah and I would add that I think using all of the communication methods that you have available to you to communicate with your staff whether that's emails or memos or if you have like an online newsletter or you have regular meetings or stuff like that try to get your voice heard and I always find that using humor works really well so you can't just say don't eat at your desk don't eat at your desk don't eat at your desk but you can say did you hear the story about so-and-so who had a mouse in her drawer because she left a granola bar on her desk you know like it's sort of you know obviously you don't name the person but just to to sort of liven things up maybe make them funny maybe throw us some cartoons in if you want any of these cartoons email me and I can help you get in touch with the artists and we can see if we can get these for you if you want to use them within your own messaging for integrated pest management stuff but I think just being consistent keeping your voice heard and keeping it interesting is probably the best methods yeah as museums and there's been a lot of comments about that some insects are too hard to see but a photo of a dead mouse might be effective on or a pack wrap for that matter and we're finding that mobs an infestation of mobs can derive from a dead mouse so yeah you know mice might not seem that bad to you but if you have a textile collection and a bunch of webbing clothes mobs that originate from the mouse you're going to be in trouble yeah on as museums increasingly emphasize visitor experience how are collections management departments finding suitable solutions with other departments mandated with increasing fundraising and attendance so that's a big problem I think this just speaks no go go for it okay I just it speaks to the issues of you're needing to do more and more special events it just because people have found that they can make money on them so it's making sure you have your events policies and procedures and your food policy and procedures in place and making sure that you can you get good housekeeping good ways to separate proven collection and good communication yeah the communication exactly I was going to say really try to insert yourself so you can be in the room where it happens so you can be where the discussions are taking place so that your voice is heard and you can really work with those people and you might even want to bring your images there to show them the dangers and what can happen and it's not just pest infestations there was a story that came out I think it was at the beginning of the week or just a few days ago there was a museum that had a a statue and the thumb was broken off because a caterer went by and knocked the thumb so you know that's that's direct damage to to the institution that's easy to see and it happened right away so if you can if you can get there and and really work with the other people in your department and show them that you want them to be successful as well you know set it up so that everybody is doing well then I think they would appreciate that yes yes and I I think that's about all the questions sorry let me just make sure I haven't missed any please I wanted to say I want to say I want to say I want to say two more little case studies I know someone mentioned they they stressed in the comments that yes it's it's really good to make sure that you talk to the contractors who are coming in all those people who aren't permanent staff they need to be aware and we had one case study that we didn't mention where it was a contractor who was working up in kind of like the eaves of a place working on the electricity and ate his sandwich there on break and then never cleaned away the crust and so weeks later when they had an infestation they were wondering what happened and they were able to trace it back to that location so that that one contractor caused the problem and then Rebecca I really liked we mentioned this when we were giving our presentations during conferences but you had a case where you were trying to even though you were offering alcohol you were a tactic for making sure that people didn't get too drunk do you want to talk about that oh yeah so we you know because you want to you want to use the opportunity to have a adults event to raise some revenue through selling drinks but with our over 21 events we check IDs at the entrance with an actual uniform police officer so you come to the event they check your idea as soon as you walk in the door and we have one of our security staff and a police officer there so people already know that if they get a tenation and again they're the laws on hand and then we make sure that the drinks are priced at a point that people will want to buy them but they're not going to want to buy a ton we're not offering like any sort of happy hour pricing for drinks so and then we also hold the events on Thursday nights because we figure people won't get as drunk on a Thursday night as they might on like a Friday or a Saturday night and that way it sort of puts a level of control on the events already so we don't have to worry about selling you know having people who are obviously intoxicated in the event and one horror story that I heard from a colleague from a historic house museum was an event where a patron drank too much red wine and was sick and managed to vomit on some of their historic white marble and they still haven't been able to get the stain out so so really being able to control the consumption of your gas I mean everyone's heard horror stories of museums that had you know drinking get out of control so keeping you know having to make sure you have enough security and you have a way to control the amount of alcohol that goes out I think are really important for special events yeah there was so famous the horror story in the midwest I think where they had some kind of cocktail party and and it got out of hand and people were climbing on the sculptures yeah yeah that one yeah that one they they didn't let their security staff know that they were having such a large event and then it was advertised more than they so they ended up having a lot more guests show up than they had anticipated kind of like the the case study that Fran mentioned about the event that they had things in place they just didn't have enough staff and enough tables in place to to handle all the empties from all the you know all the guests who were there so yeah it's making sure you have the correct amount of staffing on hand is really important to control stuff like that okay so I think we're done on like I said there'll be a webinar in December and I'll get it posted as soon as I have all the information so check on the website and we will also this will get posted very soon please do the evaluation and um if you have any questions the contact information for Rebecca Fran and Bethany is in the handout and so I think that it for today thank you so much this was great all right thank you for having us thanks for having us Mike just posted the evaluation link again and um so thank you so much and we'll see you next month