 Connecting to collections online community. You're a lot of online with us today if you're joining us on April 24th But we also like to welcome your colleagues from the future who will be hopefully enjoying this webcast as well This is a large and thriving community and we're glad that you're making some time to be with us all today My name is Jonathan and in just a moment I'll be turning the floor over to Kristen Lays from Heritage Preservation and from the Connecting to Collections community To welcome you officially But we do these sessions live because we want to hear from you and we want to hear your questions And so do note that over on the left side of the screen There is a say hello here box and right now you're welcome If you haven't already done so jump in and offer a greeting to your colleagues joining you from around the world today And in a moment after we get your greetings collected We're going to go ahead and move to a moderated chat mode And you'll still be able to communicate with us and with each other, but this will help us I help you if you have any particular Technical questions or whatnot we can then address those one on one. So when I Open up the moderated chat box And you submit a question or comment when that comment or question gets released for everyone in the session You may see it a second time But just note that it's only you who is seeing it twice everyone else We'll just see it that one time when that comment gets released. So nice to see people Telling us where they're from and where they're joining us from today So I'll leave that up for just another moment more if you need any technical assistance as I mentioned You can enter it in that box or you can write to help at learning times com and we'll keep our eyes out for Any technical inquiries you have about the webcast itself. We are recording today's webinar as I mentioned And you will find a link to it in the near future on the Connecting to Collections website and with that it gives me great pleasure To turn the floor over to our featured expert and host of the Connecting to Collections community Kristen Lay's vice president of collections care at Heritage Preservation Kristen Thank you so much, Jonathan. This is Kristen Lay's from Heritage Preservation in Washington, D.C. And if you may know Heritage Preservation is a national nonprofit organization that connects preservation information and expertise to museums libraries archives and others in our field And to the public and we began the Connecting to Collections online community with funding from the Institute of Museum and library services and in partnership with the American Association for State and local history and we want to think learning time for all their help in helping produce the site and to getting these webinars live and of Broadcasting and out to everyone out there today If you haven't already joined the online community, we invite you to join us We just welcome this week our three thousandth member, which is very exciting and it grows every day So if you join a community, this gives you an ability to post questions on our discussion board and To respond to questions or comments that you see coming up on the in the conversation But at any time you can always go to the site, which is www.connectingtocollections.org and get access to a whole host of links that are trusted great preservation Websites under our topics menu. So we have a full range of information You'll find there including outreach to the public which we'll be talking about today and you can always go to our meeting room and find Your way into any one of our live events or to an archive of one of our past events And we were always record them and we've done more than 30 at this point So it's also a wealth of information for you or a colleague that you want to help with preservation and Right now I want to wish everyone a very happy preservation week if you don't know already, this is preservation week we're right in the middle of it and This was a wonderful Event that was begun by the American Library Association and the Library of Congress in 2010 they did it in response to the findings of the Heritage Health Index, which was a 2004 study Conducted by Heritage Preservation that provided the first comprehensive data on the condition of the 4.8 billion artifacts held in more than 30,000 US Museums libraries archives historical societies and scientific and archaeological research collections and The Heritage Health Index just really revealed the risks that these collections are facing and many federal agencies Associations and all of you have joined Heritage Preservation in stepping up to meet this challenge So ALA and Library of Congress decided to launch Preservation Week to help with this effort and they're Encouraging libraries and other institutions to host community events to demonstrate what can be done individually and together to preserve collections across the country and You may have produced or Participated in one of the preservation week events and if you haven't there's a map on their site This is a link to their site and there's a lot of great Events going on around the country and if you haven't ever done an event That's why we thought we would do this presentation for you today Involving the public in your preservation efforts Heritage preservation thought why not go ahead and do something like this as our preservation week activity And we hope that you'll be inspired by some of the case studies. I'm going to present today But at first I want to learn a little bit more about you I see that Jonathan's pulled away the hello box, but if you could just tell me statistically About who's gathered here today First question is just what type of institution Do you work in or if you don't you can say that as well? And I know that many of us wear many hats and so you might be a historical society with an archive or a public library with an archive or a Historic museum that has a historic site, but just pick your primary function Whatever you consider your most important function to be if it's possible to limit it to one That would be great And it just sort of gives me an idea of the audience today and I can highlight some different points depending on who you are See lots of museum folks and welcome everyone and Handful of libraries to I you know noticed when I was pulling these case studies together that have a lot of examples from universities and It's interesting because a lot of this has to do with education and obviously their education institutions So I found that to be really interesting and hopefully we can all learn from that That's great. So I'm going to go ahead and close and hide this poll and bring over one more And that's just to say have you done any of these types of activities just specific to preservation? So who have you educated or done preservation activities with and it's okay to say none None of the above is down below and that is great Don't have any worry about checking that box because that's what you're here to learn today and And if you've done some of these activities, you see that's a nice spread of types of activities That's great too, and I hope that we'll have the moderated chat going now But Jenny is going to help us with that and if you've got ideas on On You know if I talk about a type of activity and it's something you've done at your institution Feel free to chime in in the chat to say yeah We did something like this and and tell us how it went or if I don't mention a tip something that you thought works really Well with your program. Okay, that's terrific. Thanks everyone. I'm just going to go ahead and See close this and hide it and we'll get right into it So I'm your host today as well as your primary speaker and I am your featured speaker because I've worked with heritage preservation for 15 years and I've become aware of some really excellent case studies and my colleagues and I have collected these stories from so many of the programs that we administer here at heritage preservation such as the conservation assessment program the Heritage Emergency National Task Force Save After Sculpture the Heritage Health Index, which I mentioned and then the report that we issued which had case studies our connection collecting Connecting to collections forums, which were an IMLS initiative and we help them with their workshops and webinars and And heard some really great stories out of that process And then we've pulled together capitalized on collections care Which is a which is a whole publication about fundraising for preservation and it features a lot of great case studies As well as caring for your family treasures, which is a book we produced So all of these projects have given us a great opportunity to to learn about what's happening in the field and To really help emphasize something we think is really important Which is that you really need to communicate preservation to the public to donors to decision-makers and really bring conservation preservation out of that back room we believe if the public really understands all the hard work that all of you do every day That they'll really step up and help support the field in a greater way either morally or hopefully also financially So that's always been a message we've Advocated and it's something that we're seeing happen a lot and we're really excited about that So one of the great examples was the London Conservation Center in the early 2000s The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC closed the public for massive building renovation So this gave them a great opportunity To pull the public and see what they were interested in seeing in the new exhibits that would be in the renovated building And when they asked they found actually that behind-the-scenes type of activities ranked very high on the list It was even surprising to them Not surprising to me, but surprising for them and so they really they really ran with it and raised additional funding and Created the London Conservation Center, which opened in July 2006 and it became the first permanent exhibit in the US that offers visitors a unique Opportunity to see conservators at work so as you can see in this picture They have glass walls and that gives you a look into five different laboratories and studios and then outside of those glass walls You can sort of see it in the foreground of this photo They have interactive kiosk and special displays and then from time to time guided tours And talks with the conservators It's been very successful and many museums around the world are replicating this model And I encourage you to go to their website. They have Full explanation of what they do and one of the pages I really like on their site has their visitor comments So it's like the virtual Comment book and I really like to read what people have read and how inspired they they are by seeing this in action another great example is Was at the Minneapolis Institute of Art They had two exhibits because they had two really large paintings in their galleries that needed conservation work And they work with the mid Midwest Art Conservation Center on their site But the paintings were too large to really even get in the studio So they took the studio into the gallery and this gave them an excellent opportunity to have an interactive exhibit And give visitors a firsthand look at what goes into conserving a painting They had talks with the conservators the docents were trained on how to answer questions from the visitors And they developed an excellent companion website that you can still find online And I'm throughout this I'm going to just be telling you over and over again. I put all these links as many Most of the things I'm going to feature today do have some web presence And I put all those links on the page on the Connecting to Collections website So you can access this later and look into it in more detail And then if this if these stories are interesting to you you have Actually see one of these exhibits going on right now in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania Museum It's called in the Verartifact lab and it opened in September and features a working conservation space Where a conservator is treating Egyptian mummies and related funerary items Visitors can use samples of new and deteriorated materials under Magnification and learn about conservation through other exhibits that they have and Twice a day the conservator speaks with the public and answers questions and you can see they got a really adorable Thank-you note to Miss Molly the conservator By one of their young visitors and they also have a really excellent Blog that goes along with this and I've linked to that on the site So these are some really great examples, but you're probably thinking to yourself. Yeah, you know easy for them to do They've got a huge exhibit spaces. They've got conservators on staff. They probably have an exhibition budget Well, you know what about me at my museum or library? We don't have any of that sort of support And that's where the rest of my examples come in I've just sort of showed you what I consider to be sort of the Rolls Royce Examples in engaging the public in preservation But I want to give you some encouragement that there's a whole range of activities you can do on any budget with any staff size So I'm going to start with the story here about the Missouri State Museum They had Since their founding in 1919 Had collections stored in the basement of the Missouri State Capitol So maybe less than ideal, but you know it was there on site In 2009 they found out that the Capitol building was going to be Going on undergoing a huge renovation and that they had to move collection storage at the basement Now the good news was that the state did provide funds to retrofit They don't warehouse and bring it up to excellent museum standards with environmental controls environmental monitoring But the last good news was that it was now going to be off-site didn't have any exhibition space there and They just sort of thought well, you know, that's what happens, but in fact, they didn't just take the whole home approach They had Leadership of their director, director Linda Endersby got inspired attending one of our connecting the collections Workshops and went home and decided she was not going to let the fact that they just had a utilitarian building Prevent her from using it to engage the public So they organized pretty quickly they moved into this space in August and by October they had organized a Gala Celebrating the new facility which they call the Riverside collections facility. They Wanted to use this opportunity to expand their audience from what you know They're sort of usual museum goers and supporters to reach out to local businesses business people arts organizations state and city officials and Invite sort of a new group of people in and also sort of wanted to answer the question on well Why couldn't just the museum stuff be moved to any old warehouse? Why did all the state funding have to go into renovating it? Bringing it up to museum standards. And so what they did they had You can see their invitation here. They have at the bottom special thanks to the following sponsors. They got sponsorships to to cover the catering and In one area of the building was not a collections area. They were able to have Some refreshments and then opened the area to this group about of 80 people that attended and They had a chance to interact with staff as you can see here look at some exhibits that the staff laid out And they even went as far as having a little table that explained The damage that was done in the old facility and what's able to be done in the new facility I even like the fact they talked about inventorying and all the tools and forms that are used enough in an inventory And the tools they need to use about it So that's I mean doesn't get any more day-to-day behind the scenes than inventory and I love the fact that they they Told this audience, you know, this is what we do. This is how we spend our time. And this is why it's important This led to a community group called Friends of the Missouri State Museum being Established some folks got involved with that that never would have been involved with the museum before they've gone on to successfully raise funds for preservation and They went ahead and did another gala the following year for new legislators coming into to Missouri the Missouri capital and They're doing another they were did another one in 2012. So, you know, small idea. That's really paid off for them The Duke University Library Is doing great things and I like the fact that their conservator best and head of preservation best oil is a great Promoter of what they do. So if you haven't found them on Facebook, I encourage you to do so They have a great blog called conservation underground, which I think is a nod to the fact that their lab is In the basement of the building. I'm not sure but They have also they do a lot of great things and one thing they did was a small exhibit Outside of their lab in the library Called help wanted you can help keep our collections in good condition and it was intended to reinforce Information they present at their annual care and handling training and here you see the star of the show called the banana book if you can see how that banana has rotted nicely into the pages and Sadly, I think many libraries and archives could easily put on such an exhibit But very effective visuals and really made their point on how it's all our Responsibility to help with preservation So you may have noticed that some of the examples I've shown already Tend to feature artifacts are in need of conservation treatment and that's a really compelling visual I'm a lot of people use it But I do want to emphasize that you need to carefully consider whether you decide to put a Collections object that's in need of treatment on display. It may be too fragile to do that So you want to be very careful. You don't want to make the situation worse And then I've also heard people Be a little bit concerned about doing a type of activity like this because it seems like it's always bad news, you know Are people going to trust my museum or library or archive if they don't think we're caring for things appropriately? So you don't always have to convey a bad news story like a banana in a book But you can also convey good news stories And it's just a matter of how you decide to present it and this is a great example of a good news story So the New York City Hall had very historic building had a portrait collection that hanging hung in its Rooms for about 200 years Obviously needed came to a point in time when they needed preservation And so when they did that project they also Produced a really beautiful image rich brochure and website called Conservation a careful course between our history and our future Which explained the step-by-step process that they went through and the conservation work And so the brochure has many images like the one you see here where it's been Sectioned off into what's been treated and what's not been treated So the far left is just removing surface grime that sort of narrow strip in the middle removed Additional varnish and then the the other brighter strip shows after treatment And so a lot of detail on what they went to do and of course the end of the story is good news All of these great portraits have been Conserved and they're back in in the City Hall, but it also took people on that journey of conservation And if you don't have a conservation treatment to report on what do you do then? I mean I've shown you lots of things with before and afters But you know what if that's not something you happen to be doing right now? You don't have to wait around to talk about preservation I love this example from the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida They Created this really bold and colorful brochure that talks about all the steps of preservation and Including, you know, why do we tell visitors not to touch things? What about pests? and they go through all of the preventive conservation measures that they do at their museum which educates the public on All the great work that's happening behind the scenes I They're linked to this brochure on the website and then they also did an exhibit And they talk about the preservation of the materials in the exhibit. So there's two brochures up on the website that you'll see So as I said the dramatic artifacts the before and after pictures are really great to connecting to the public But just keep in mind too that the public loves to know Detail and they love to know the materials that are used and that the tools that are used at the Historical Society of Iowa. They've been conserving their state Civil War battle flags and they have a companion website about the project And I love this page that talks about the tools they've used and along the side is too small to read here But I'll read you some they have some facts and stats Such as it takes up to two hundred and forty hours and forty eight hundred dollars to stabilize a flag and Up to four thousand stitches per side or individually cut to remove damaged cause from capital flags And the most unusual thing found on a flag was a section of wallpaper with a red strawberry on it So again, you'll see the link on our web page to this And I just think it's a great way to sort of let the public sort of be in the know This is what this is what we do. These are the tools of our trade and I think the public really enjoys seeing that So speaking of websites, you can see a lot of the examples I've already mentioned had a web presence and that's a really great way if you have a limited physical Location or if materials are too damaged to exhibit Doing an online exhibit is a great way to either add to your project or to to present your project so Here's the University of Chicago library example. They've had a in a Exhibit that are actually in the library But a huge part of it is this online component and so it's got a lot of great pages it goes into some of that detail on tools and process and How conservators do their job and it's a very rich site and I encourage you to go look through it and get ideas and It's you know potentially for you to could be a lower budget option Then producing an exhibit in person But just do remember that you're gonna want to do excellent publicity that goes along with it and make sure people are able to find it online so I talked a lot about exhibits up till now and I'm going to transition now to talk about Public programs and again if I'm saying something that You've maybe tried at your institution and want to chime in about what worked for you and or what you know challenges you had please put the question in the Q&A box and and either I'll address it or Maybe one of your colleagues can help chime in and and address it so Miss Goot Farms Had also attended one of our connecting the collections workshops and they're in Westchester County, New York And they're their living collection on a working farm And so that's really attractive especially to children and families to come to see the animals and see how the farm works But they really wanted to highlight the other portion of their collection Which were non-living materials in the historic home and and associated artifacts So they decided to create a public program to do that and what they did was one public program a month for four months That really targeted children and families, which is their primary audience So in September they started with a treasure hunt which engaged families in solving riddles and made them more closely observed And notice the historical collections on their site in October They hosted the stories behind the stuff program during which they Told the stories behind the items that were discovered in the treasure hunt In November they reinforced the stories by using a storybook reading time And so for example, there's a book called the ice horse by Candice Christensen And it describes the business of ice harvesting on the Hudson River And after reading that story the curator showed the items in the collection that were used for art ice harvesting So after those initial programs raised awareness in December the fourth and final program was called treasures and tea In which they took a limited number of visitors up To their second floor of their main house which had been up to that point Not open to the public so there's a lot of interest in that and they had a conversation about What will happen when they do open this portion of the house? How will they care for the artifacts? and while having them on display and Really got visitors engaged in the decisions that have to be made in and caring for artifacts and They were so successful with that tour that they were planning additional tours that they were going to actually charge an admission fee for And it hopes to raise funds for their collections The Peot County Museum in Monticello, Illinois Also produced a public program that and they did what a lot of people do and it's a great idea And that's to help individuals learn how to care for their family artifacts They sort of reinforced all the work that the institutions doing to care for collections by telling the public how they can care for their own personal collections So in 2010 the museum had a new facility and it had so they had to close some of the exhibition area and You know that was a challenging time to sort of keep people engaged with the collections So they had an annual barn tour which invited the public to tour private gardens and farms and pioneer cemeteries and historic sites throughout Peot County and decided that they were going to create an exhibit on caring for quilts so they displayed some of the quilts in their collection and then produced had a table with as you see some some great Resources on how Individuals can care for collections. They produced a flyer on how to care for your family quilts and Of course, they put out a jar for donations to care for quilts of the museum's collection And and this is just another hook to sort of get people interested in how they can care for their own family heirlooms and Understand the work that happens Museums caring for for the community's heirlooms. They attracted really great media attention for this and got Coverage in local County publications as well as two regional newspapers And if you're you know like that idea about maybe having a conservator curator and archivist talk to the public You maybe ask ask an expert type of an event That's a great thing to think about and if the idea is a little overwhelming to you It's a great idea to get together other institutions in your area other museums and libraries And maybe that jointly you could pull together a program like this Maybe someone has a conservator on staff or one of the institutions has hired a conservator To consult on a project and they could be hired to do a public outreach event in Pittsburgh for many years They did a preservation fair and this was a joint effort between the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the University of Pittsburgh Libraries, so it was a one-day public information event Which conservators archivist librarians discussed what individuals could do to save family treasures They had 30 exhibitors for the events including conservators specializing in books documents paintings works of art on paper photographs and films Have lots of handouts to give to the public and Encouraged members of public to even bring in items to have a conservator giving them basic advice on care I would note that if you do an event like this and they did this in Pittsburgh You do have to make clear that no appraisals or evaluations will be given a little bit of an antiques road show you know Mystique about these types of things and and it's not good museum ethics for for museum staff to make Those kind of evaluations. They do have to make that clear, but they were really able to Draw new audiences in Again, we enforce that point that this is all the work we're doing behind the scenes every day for you and then they also made an excellent excellent point that It showed that that really should leave some of these activities to the professionals to conservators to train people and it's not always do some things yourself, but You also should know how to find a conservator if you need to and I will just hear pause to tell you about the Find a conservator link on the American Institute for Conservation website So if you were looking for example to have a conservator help you with a public program This is a great place to start if you don't have a relationship with a conservator already so You can take you can Have a preservation fair, but you can also take preservation to the fair and that's what the Illinois State Museum did They had this great little interactive activity in a tent that they had at the Illinois State Fair and They asked people to touch these two pieces of material and then lift the board to see What untouched pieces looked like so you can imagine they have members of the public with their Cotton candy fingers and their deep-fried Oreo fingers touching these materials and how grimy it probably got to be but They did really excellently, you know give the point that That this is why we ask people not to touch things in the museum and in fact this was also based on a I'm going to show you now another just a little bit more elaborate presentation that was done at Colonial Williamsburg they had a Exhibition called conservation where art and science meet and this is a little more high-tech where they had a variety of types of materials and Then half of that you see the top half About more than the top half is covered in plexiglass So it was protected and then they encouraged the public just to touch away on the exposed portion And it just made the point for them very very nicely very quickly very visually that this is why should not ever touch an artifact and If the idea of pulling together and hold another public program in the middle of your really busy schedule is Overwhelming I will tell you about this next idea and that is to see if you can get Preservation worked into something that you're already planning. That's already on the calendar. It's already on the schedule So the Worcester Museum of Art in Massachusetts does an annual auction to raise funds for the museum And you've probably been to those you might have helped organize similar auctions. It's a very popular fundraising event and They had goods and services donated by the community and they were auctioned off They decided that they would put some of their prized Paul Revere silver collections up for auction Now hope I caught your attention. They were not sewing off their museum collections They were putting up the preservation of those objects up for auction And it was very popular It was the last item of the evening and they showed a few slides of the current condition of the collection and what they Wanted to do to preserve them and within a few minutes raised 50 percent of the cost of that preservation activity And there's just an example of their before and after pictures and one of the pieces of silver So they raised $7,500 within a matter of minutes And it was very very popular and very effective and was just part of an activity They were going to be doing normally, so I think it's a great example. So think about what you already have going on and how you could work preservation into that Mayday is something that heritage preservation is a part of with the Society of American Archivists, it's a day and then hopefully the entire month of May in which we encourage Cultural institutions to do something to prepare for an emergency Mayday is a great opportunity to involve the public and to tell them about What your institutions doing to prepare for disaster and what maybe they could do and thinking about their family heirlooms, etc so often these Mayday activities do involve the staff doing drills or Other planning activities, but just keep in mind. This is a great way to bring in the public and you'll want to think too about How you can reach out to special audiences With these activities so you can also get a hook by the sort of audience who serve or the people that you think will be sympathetic to your cause This is an example from the Washington University in St. Louis. They had An effort to raise funds for the preservation of their book collections It's called Legacy of Books and they had a fundraising appeal and adopted a book option So just a 50 percent fifty dollar donation would go directly to the preservation of a book And you would get this memorial book plate that's shown here and they Sent this out to alumni and to parents. So that was a natural audience Who would understand what they were trying to do and they educate them about preservation and helped raise funds? Troops Girl Scout Boy Scout troops are constantly looking for activities. They're trying to earn their badges and They have volunteers scout leaders who are trying to keep them busy. So why not think about how preservation activities could work for them? Heritage preservation save outdoor sculpture program Developed an SOS badge and we developed companion materials that that give ideas for service and other activities here. We have Group who are working on they're looking at the coloration of pennies and making notes on that We're in the process of updating these materials. So that's something you're interested in just drop us an email at info at heritage preservation.org and We would be happy to let you know when they're up on our website, but otherwise It's on the SOS website on our homepage and that's a great idea to help if you've got Troops in your area to either use our materials or develop something similar and you're welcome to use our materials to sort of get inspiration As I said from what I understand from scout leaders. They're always looking for new ideas Think about the way preservation can also be worked into your current a membership structure if you have members Especially of museums the Kimball Museum of Art has as one of their members benefits like exclusive tours with curators and other museum staff So why not include preservation staff in that? and if you don't have membership or or Are sort of a natural way to fit this into the structure of your institution Think about other ways that this you could use preservation as a thank-you gift either to donors or To board members or to volunteers. Maybe you would give them a book about preservation as a thank-you gift or If you've done a recent conservation or preservation project use nice photographs from that and make a limited edition card or Posters some other small giveaway that would again emphasize what you are doing to some of the most influential members or contributors to your institution and Tell them a little bit more about preservation. I think they'll like it and it gets your message out a great Donor highly effective donor membership benefit is a behind-the-scenes tour and I have a lot of examples of this this example is actually more than ten years old But it's really one of my favorites because I think it is just so simple and really effective and really worked Well for the Museum of Northern Arizona and flag staff They were embarking on a project to rehouse the archaeological artifacts So that's not so exciting and I mean all of us have done similar type projects It's it's the grunt work of preservation. It's not a beautiful portrait with before and after Images it just has to get done and has to be done well, but they did not just keep this in the back room So they took people on a tour. They showed them this Something like this, which is a cabinet before any work was done then after rehousing we've got from metal To wood box from bags to boxes Very effective very easy to see The benefits doing this kind of very careful and deliberate work And then they showed in the hallway of everything else that had to be done So again really driving the point home of this is important work It has to be done carefully by professionals and it keeps going and going and going down like this down this hallway And they did have I know at least one surprise donation from a donor who was on this tour and they may have had more So I think it's a really effective tool That said I have over the years Read a lot of discussions on listserv about doing behind-the-scenes tours And I think there are a few things that are important to think about This is just my my list of tips that I've called from these discussions as they've gone on over the years And that is security is paramount It's pretty tempting to say hey, let's just take people behind this tour scenes But if they are going into especially collection storage, you really have to think carefully about the security ramifications So for this reason some institutions plan so-called behind-the-scenes tours to just sort of staff work areas And they'll sort of set up little exhibits or little Scenarios and once you can see how staff do work or see they bring some items out of storage and display them nicely And this is a great solution It gives people a sense that they are really behind the scenes are not in the gallery, but you've got some control over The collections that they're going to see and their access to those items But if you are willing to take a group through collection stores You just want to make sure that the files are wide enough that they can walk through without bumping into shelves or disturbing any artifacts You'll want to limit the number of people on the tour so they can safely move through the space And so they can be observed by staff at all times So usually for the security reason Some places do consider behind-the-scenes tours a premium benefit So they'll limit it to people that they know say donors or members high-level members And just think about who that might be for your institution Or they'll limit the size of group by charging an admission the $25 seems popular Something slightly higher than normal And limit the group and just say you know the first 30 people who get a ticket great And in this way they can sort of control this to keep it a little bit manageable You want to make sure to have staff on hand to answer questions for a couple of reasons for security reasons as I mentioned First of all you want to highlight your staff's expertise. They're one of your greatest treasures And you don't want to have a donor say you know why are you doing it that way and not have an answer so That's that's an important reason to have staff on hand And you're also going to inevitably going to get a question like well, why isn't this all on exhibition? You want to be ready to answer those questions? I suggest paying attention to the timing As I mentioned, you know lots of staff on hand means you're going to want to pick a time when the staff Are not working towards a big deadline and trying to get an exhibit opening where they're going to be stressed So we want to be respectful of that And also think that about sort of scheduling these at a time That's a really good benefit for your institution So maybe you have a don't a donation campaign that's beginning or to torque getting towards the end of the tax year Or your membership renewal letters are about to go out or some other time of the year That's of a particular benefit to you and maybe Catching people right at this time Will help inspire them help them really connect to all the hard work that your institution does As I mentioned before show what you do in addition to what you have so people are always like Oh, I want to see behind the scenes to see all the stuff. That's not an exhibit. Well, I think it's also great to sort of emphasize careful handling procedures or special storage enclosures or other aspects of How preservation work is done in addition to just what they have and It's the idea of a tour is kind of intimidating. You're not really sure how it's going to go how your staff will respond, etc Consider dry doing a dry run And if you're in a larger institution that could be other members of the staff could be the development office Which is never a bad a group to educate on preservation and the importance and an interest of it If you're at a university could be other faculty or staff members Could be just with the volunteers so That's never about those are never bad groups to to educate and to in sort of include in your circle So that's a way to test your tour and also You can get more friends so I'm going to just I'm gonna have a couple more tips on working with the media and social media But I there's been some really great conversation going on. I want to catch up on doing a little reading I See if he can was saying some of our archaeologists on staff seem a little reluctant to share information about preservation And a couple of you said something similar like I guess the idea is that you won't really want a conservator be involved And that is something I hear a lot and I think that's all the more reason to tell people about Conservation and preservation and the work you do and what where they should draw the where they can draw the line between What they do themselves or what you do yourselves and when you bring in conservator so Really telling people and if you can feature a conservator in a program or event It's even better because then they can talk about their training their specialized training. They can show say specialized Handling techniques or investigative techniques and really sort of raise Awareness of the fact that this is this basically it's scientific and artistic as well as Practical so so that's a great thing to show And so I think the more of this that you do the better and I mean hopefully If there are other institutions depending where you are I mean if it's possible for the staff members to see what others have done Hopefully some of the websites I've shared with you today sort of bring people Into the fold on you know lots of people are doing this and it's and it's a really good opportunity And it's up to you. I mean you have control ultimately of all of your messages So so do something that you feel good about What about for small all-volunteer organizations again, I hope a couple of these ideas are throughout here are doable I'm coming up in the social media tips. I think you'll you'll find some ideas that that could be done at any time So putting on an exhibit or adding a new website is you know like oh We're all volunteer That's okay Look also on the web and see what others have done There's some great on the American Institute for Conservation website. They have some great brochures about the care of materials So you don't have to invent these things from from scratch, you know, and they're they're great References on the web that just share basic tips on care for family heirlooms So if the the lease that you did was create like a flyer about say again like quilt Just it would just show what you do at your place and what people can do for their own materials That's just that's something That you weren't doing before so anyway, you can like sneaking vegetables into foods for kids Anyway, you can get that preservation message into what you're already doing. I think it's great. So be encouraged by that and then we heard from Emma Anderson in California about getting the younger generation involved and so hopefully you've got some ideas already through say scouts And other groups that story time example from a scoop farms So those are good examples of using young people They might you know, you might talk to them about collections and what made they collect Are they collecting figurines or they collecting shells that they got at the beach and talk to them about what they do with their Collections and and what you do with yours. So that's a great way to think to hook in youth and coming up You're going to see a great example of that too. So stay tuned so in all of these Stories that I've told you and a big part about it is getting the word out You want the word out about your program about your exhibit about your website and so that means you're going to need to connect to the media and heritage preservation through our Connecting to collections workshops and then those leads led to webinars We worked with a great public relations consultant named Anne Edgar And you can find one of her webinars online on the connecting to collections homepage And I really encourage you to watch it because she is a great speaker and had some really terrific tips that we've learned from her So here's just a quick compilation of Anne's tips and that's the cultivate journalists watch bylines and newspaper and magazines and See what TV and radio stories that you hear appeal to you and make note of who those reporters are And where what those publications and venues are and keep that running list and a lot of email address are available now through Through websites, so you can usually track down who those reporters are and you should just always have a running list of people You think that would be Sensitive to your types of stories, so they could be Journalists covering history science community affairs human interest anything Then you'll want to be very concise about what you're going to pitch to them your story Just the classic how win where why what? You'll only have a minute maybe on the phone with them or in an email with them So you really have to hook them and I would watch Anne's webinar She gets into more detail about this than I'm going to right now, but she has some some good ideas One of them is to just be unique. You're going to get a more attention if you've got the word first or rare Or never been seen before, you know something to that effect so That is a hook and so think about how your story can be Can be tied into that those types of words one thing I love from her is Connecting to events that might be a hook so perhaps you've done Oral histories with veterans in your community and that would be a great story to tell To a journalist who's looking for something to run on Memorial Day or Veterans Day But think about those less Less less are known holidays such as Arbor Day or flag day. Is there anything in your collection that could maybe connect to those days? And you could sort of use that as a hook or if you have sports memorabilia Maybe opening day for baseball season or during the playoffs of a certain sport That would be an opportunity to get some attention to collections that you have and that you're caring for to talk about the preservation or Leaning up to Thanksgiving Talking about you know, maybe you're doing in a due event on how to care for family China and silver With a conservator by timing deciding to time that public program in early November You're gonna likely get media attention that would be sort of gearing up for the holidays in their stories so think about timing and then Also think about evergreen stories the things that aren't related to any necessarily any particular time you know, there's going to be a slow news day someday and You may as well have cultivated a journalist and have sort of a story that they could run at any point An idea for that could be something As simple as a profile of one of your staff members your conservator your collections manager your archivist or curator You know, where did they get their training? What sort of things do they do? It's a day in a life of a curator like it's your institution. That's just a sort of a really Interesting human interest story and could run any time so That's a that's a great Example of an evergreen story and again if you watch aunts webinar, she goes into some more of those You'll want to consider lead time. So when you cultivate journalists kind of take note On what their lead time might be so for example, if it's a magazine it might be several months out Even some newspapers if you're trying to say get into the Sunday paper their deadlines are several days out from Sunday So you want to get a sense of what sort of deadlines they? Deal with and at the same token you're going to have to realize that you could get a call at three o'clock from a Journalist and their deadlines at five that day So you also have to be ready to move fast on their deadlines if that's the case And you want to be ready with visuals. You've seen through this entire presentations pictures pictures. They're worth a thousand words It's possible a media outlet will send a photographer or a camera crew But maybe not and you're going to be want to be ready with visuals that they can just take and run with so Every single time I've talked to a reporter. They've asked for images. So I Would get them ready in advance along with your story So here's a great story of how newspapers helped Spur preservation activities at the Marion County Historical Society in Fairmont, West Virginia They had just a story run by local Journalists decided to talk about what was happening at the historical society and as a result of that article They got improved attendance Volunteers started coming out of the woodwork offers for help came in and my favorite part of the story is that local school children got involved some history teachers got interested and started doing things in their class and This is a follow-up story. In fact that shows sixth grader talking to his classmates about a historical railroad tie and Actually several elementary school middle school classes started doing their own fundraisers and raised at several hundred dollars each for the museum Now, how did I read this story? I'm not reading the Fairmont Newspaper every day. In fact, this got picked up by the AP Newswire and I read it in my local paper So that's an example of an epigraine story. It's gonna be a slow news day AP wire and other wire services are looking for stories like this so Cultivate those relationships because it could have excellent payoff for you and then Harris preservation also in connecting the collections of web webinars and workshops Did one on using social media and Nancy Ravenel who's the conservator at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont? Did two workshop presentations for us and a webinar and again the link you'll find on our site And in fact, she did this was in 2010 she had to revise her talk twice Or three times because social media was changing so rapidly So I'm sure by now a lot of you are involved in social media But if you're not or you're thinking about expanding it just hear a handful of tips from Nancy first consider your limits so you'll want to make sure that You say I know we'll start a blog that you're really going to have the time to keep that up and it's a great project for For a summer intern, but they tend to go back to school. So keep that in mind if you're starting something new Select your services carefully, you know likewise Facebook seems to be pretty user-friendly and pretty universally popular Twitter is great too, but if you can't tweet on a regular basis or interact by Twitter It's just another social media mouth defeat So think about what services are out there and what you you can realistically use again be ready with visuals as I've said before It's a great way to get people involved and even if you're not showing something Involved in preservation you can show things they a historical photograph get people to interact with you on What do they remember about that building or that event or even can help you identify things in it? Invite your visitors to help you say four square or another sort of interactive social media items That you can now use you don't want them taking pictures of your artifacts But maybe if you have an interesting historic structure or a garden Having a photo contest using Instagram would be a cool thing to do and just may ready be right ready to maintain it As I mentioned before it's great, you know to start a new website or to start a blog But you just want to make sure that you can Keep things current and going because it's social media moves very very quickly people are always looking for new content And you may need to at your institution depending on your institution have a social media policy about who post to it and and what the message is so that's basically my talk and If you've got questions or again if you want an update on the SOS hand out Drop us a note. Here's the again that URL where you can find a lot of links to what I talked about and We're great to keep the conversation going and hear about what you're doing at your institution Through the Connecting to Collections Discussion board we're gonna as I said this is recorded so you can Refer others to this recording and I'm happy to answer any quick questions that you might have I know we're just about at 2 o'clock So I don't have any co-host today to help me feel airtime, but Just tell you what some of the people are saying So yeah, lots of historic. What is it kind of thinks in the public and I've seen that in the press too People run it in the newspaper if you depending on the size of your your Newspaper in your town they might be willing To to run those kinds of historic photos for you So if you have a chance today, I've just put up on the screen our evaluation link and if you wouldn't mind going to Survey Monkey and and just at this link and Letting us know what you've which you thought about this presentation and especially what other topics would be helpful to you Heritage preservation does about one of these a month and We're looking forward to doing more than for you Okay Don't see any more questions. Just lots of hopefully some inspiration and And I hope that you in enjoyed this and have a great rest of the day and a great rest of preservation week There's actually another webinar starting at 2 o'clock about Archival materials, I believe that's to the ALA site So if you're going to join that I will let you go But have a great week everyone and thanks so much for attending