 This is Susan Manning from Learning Times, and I'm thrilled to welcome you to our final webinar in the Connecting to Collection series. And today, I'm always excited when we do one of these to see who's coming in from where, everywhere from Phoenix to Alaska. And you're introducing yourselves quite well. You'll use that same chat area as we work through our webinar today to ask our presenters questions and to leave comments that we can follow up on then toward the end of the event. If, for some reason, you find yourself in need of technical assistance, I hope that you will feel free to email us at that address. Be very specific so we can help you out. And after the fact, you can come back and review this archive or others from the previous sessions. And to do that, just follow through that website, the same one that you came in to register. And you'll find copies of the slides. They will be available from today, as well as the other webinars earlier in the series. And right now, I am going to introduce you to Bob Bede from AASLH. And Bob's going to continue with our welcome. Welcome, everybody. We're so glad to have you here. Some of you in very, very frigid and cold places. And some of you in my former home state of Florida. We're very excited to have you here. If you notice, we're just asking you a couple questions as we get started. Where are you from? And then what type of institution do you represent? Just gives us a little bit of an idea on who's coming from where and from which type of institution gives the presenters a chance as well. AASLH has been involved with the Connecting to Collections Initiative for almost, I guess, over three years now. And it's very exciting that we've been able to be a part of it, along with Heritage Preservation. Of course, our good friends over there at the IMLS. And real quick, let us know how many people are joining you together. We typically, a lot of folks participate solo. And then we get smaller groups of people and smaller groups there. So we appreciate that very much. Thanks, everybody, for letting us know from where you come. And I appreciate that very much. And AASLH has been so proud to be a part of this. And one of the, if not the, linchpin for this entire program is Nancy Rogers, special assistant to the director, office of strategic partnerships at IMLS. And Nancy has become a good friend, a fantastic colleague, and just an absolute delight to work with, and a warrior for the cause of Connecting to Collections. So Nancy, we will turn it over to you to do your magic and welcome people. But AASLH has been very pleased to be a part of this with you and with Heritage Preservation, this last of the Connecting to Collections webinars at this point. Well, good afternoon, everyone. At least it's good afternoon where I am. This is Nancy Rogers. I've had the pleasure and privilege of coordinating Connecting to Collections, a call to action over the last four years. It's been a huge initiative. Underneath all those polls, you can see the cover of our recent report on the initiative, which was based on the appalling of statistics uncovered by the Heritage Health Index back in 2005. I, of two, want to thank our partners, but including Learning Times, who have all of our partners have been absolutely splendid on this project. And in fact, the project has been so successful, culminating in these webinars where we've had such a strong response that we are planning to continue a kind of online Connecting to Collections family in the future. And you should be hearing something about that perhaps in January. Everybody who has participated will learn. I think Susan's going to pull up a poll right now asking you if you have been part of Connecting to Collections. And we're very interested to see whether you have or whether you have not. And if you haven't, you have now because you are part of our family. And I'm going to move on to the next slide to show you the URL where you can go to see this report or to get up. You can, there's a hot link there that you can go to right away, hyperlink, rather. And I hope that you will do so, so that you can have a clearer picture of all the resources that are available to you about Connecting to Collections care. This is a slide on IMLS purpose and goals. I'm not going to go into that very, just to tell you that there are three critical goals for the IMLS and this Connecting to Collections meets all of them and is important to all of them. And Susan, if you'd put up the next poll, which lets us know what part of Connecting to Collections you have participated in, if you have. As you can see, almost 75% of you at 79 is at it have participated. Now we want to find out how you have participated and this slide tells you all of the different components of the initiative and including the statewide planning and implementation grants, which if you haven't joined yet, I hope you will and I'm going to be checking to see what percentage of you have participated in the statewide planning and implementation grants. The map that is up here underneath this poll also shows where Connecting to Collections has taken place. Now when we update this map, we'll be putting all of our webinar attendees on it. So the map's going to be filled out much more completely than it is right now. The initiative is almost over. These webinars and the ongoing online community will be the last major facets of the project, but the resources are going to be there for you for a long, long time and I hope you will go online to our website and look at the guide to online resources, for example, which is an excellent, it is an excellent resource for you. So let's just finish this with a thought about IMLS anyway. We're going to move on to our presenters here and here's my great friend, Kristen, Blaise from Heritage Preservation who is going to lead this webinar. Kristen is the Vice President for Collections Care at Heritage Preservation Collections Care Programs and she directed the Heritage Health Index. She has been so important to this bookshelf project both in selecting the text and in writing the questions in the back of the user's guide. If you don't have the user's guide, it's available online too and I hope you will get it. Our commentators today are, I'm sorry my phone's ringing, I don't know how to get rid of that. They'll just go away. We have three commentators for this project, for the webinar today. Julie Page from California, she coordinates the California Preservation Program and the Western States and Territories Preservation Assistance Service and she is an expert on disaster preparedness and preservation education, especially in libraries. Our second presenter, well it's not going that way, our second expert is Jean-Louis B. Gourdon. He's a research scientist at the Image Permanence Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York and he is an expert in photography, conservation of photographic materials. And Mary Jo MJ Davis is an art and paper conservator in private practice in Vermont. She has a private conservation lab, she's freezing up there and she is also a surveyor for CAP for the Conservation Assessment Program and has worked with all kinds of institutions. So those are our experts today and I'm now going to turn it over to Kristen Lathes. Thank you so much Nancy. This is Kristen Lathes from Heritage Preservation. Hope that any people having audio issues, hope it's better but certainly just put in the chat if you're having any problems. But today we're going to be focusing in on the bookshelf but connecting to collections prepared and specifically how it can help you with the care of paper, photographs and audio visual materials. The bookshelf as Nancy was mentioning is our attempt to get authoritative texts and other resources literally physically on a bookshelf in the hands of, I think it was over 3,000 institutions across the country. We particularly wanted to help small to mid-sized museums and libraries and historical societies and archives who are busy, everyone's a busy with their institutional responsibilities and you sometimes don't have a lot of time to do a lot of research on these issues and so we wanted to give you those texts at your fingertips so that you would have the information you need to do your job as best as you can. Today we're going to just give you a bit of a boost. It looked like when we pulled you just a few minutes ago that a lot of you have received the bookshelf about two-thirds and we're going to review the texts, give you some tips on how you can quickly find information in them, give you some information on some other resources that came out of the project and then we'll have a chance to talk with our three experts and point you to some additional information sources. So, but just some background, how do we get from just the hundreds and hundreds of books and websites all about conservation down to a nice, tidy set for your bookshelf? Well, first thing we did was we talked to, we pulled about 66 conservators, archivists, collections care professionals and we asked them for their recommendations. Then we brought together a group of about six experts and asked them to really narrow down the list and then IMLS made the final choices. We also had four experts consulting with us on some of the texts just to do with living collections because there are a different set of needs than paper and photographs and paintings and archives and artifacts. So this is the list of sort of the core collection that over 3,000 people received and then a group of additional texts for people who are more artifact collections based and then a set for people who are at museums that have living collections, zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens, et cetera. So imagine all these super texts, but wait, there's more. We actually wanted to do some additional resources to make this an even easier way of thing to use and so we made this bookshelf users guide and we're gonna take a look into that in a few minutes but that's what guide you all through all of the texts give you a quick summary on them and then we went to also online resources. I mean, some topics, it was very challenging to find a book that really gave you the up to date information on preservation, digital preservation is an excellent example of that and so online resources are really gonna be the preferred resource and so we wanted to pull everything together. There's lots of also great resources online and so we've done all that hard work for you. We've chosen resources that are from reputable places and we've put them all in this sort of well organized place on the IMLS website and we'll be going through that in a minute too. So where are all these bookshelves now? Again, this is the map that Nancy showed and it's all these red dots and this website on IMLS can point you to exactly where those places are because if you don't have the bookshelf, you might want to contact one of your colleagues in your area to see if that's something you can borrow. In fact, I'd like to do a poll quickly. Since it did seem like we had about two thirds of people on this call did have the bookshelf. If we could just Susan do the poll on if you have a bookshelf, would that be something you'd be willing to share with your colleagues in your local area? So there's a couple, there's also online resources as I've noted here and again, the archive version of this entire point, all these links will be active hyperlinks so you'll be able to do some, these are the resources that are on the bookshelf that are also free and available online and there are few others as well. So it looks like a lot of you would be willing to share your bookshelf and I have on the next slide some ideas on how you might consider doing that. Some groups have already started sort of a book club where staff volunteers from other organizations in your area could get together monthly, maybe over a brown bag lunch or something and someone could look into the bookmark carefully and present it to the rest of the group. If you're in a library, you could potentially put your bookshelf in your reference collection so that it would be easy and available to members of your community. We certainly want you to use it too so we sort of think maybe you shouldn't go in the circulating collection, you'd hate for them to get lost but in the reference collection, maybe that's a great place where people can have access to them and you can keep them for yourself as well. And then perhaps the bookshelf is a catalyst to develop other collaborations or other get-togethers among your cultural institutions in your area and you can develop other cooperative supply-buying or exhibits or events or any other types of creative ideas like that. So this again is the Bookshelf Users Guide that we developed just a quick reference to help you sort of tackle all these big books on your bookshelf. And I just want to quickly poll if you've used the Users Guide and if so, actually Susan, I'm sorry, let's see the poll first on how often people are using their bookshelf and then we'll poll again on how often people are using the Users Guide. This looks like a little bit similar to the poll we did in our last bookshelf webinar. Seems like most people are just occasionally picking it up and in fact, I have a follow-up question on this. If you're just using it occasionally or rarely, sort of why, why that is? Do we have that poll question? Susan's just gonna be dragging that in. Sorry, I was talking to you and I had myself muted. Oh, that's okay. But here's the question for everyone. Yeah, this is what we also found the last time. It's hard. I mean, you're busy and it's even, even though we've given you a nice synced group of books, even just trying to find something in them or take some time to browse through them, do some research of your own in them, it's kind of hard to fit that in. So, we understand that. We're hoping that today's webinar is gonna just help jumpstart that process for you a bit. Okay, Susan, let's close these polls and then just bring in the question about how often people are using the Users Guide. When we developed the Users Guide, that was our goal, that for the occasional user or the user who might only use those books on a rare basis, that maybe the Users Guide could be sort of that gateway that helps you find information quickly. It's a bit of an index. We organized it so it has a set of frequently asked questions in the back. So it looks like a handful of you are using it at least occasionally, which is, that's great. Well, let's just take a look at one of those FAQs as an example. So, for example, you wanna replace poor quality storage enclosures in boxes with improved materials. Which of the resources on the bookshelf we're gonna have the most and the best information on that topic? I think one of the best ones is the Museum Handbook for Collections through the Park Service. This is an example of one of the resources that was in the bookshelf, but it's also free and available online. And this is what their website looks like, and you can try to zoom in a bit, it's a bit fuzzy, I'm sorry, but you can download that whole PDF, the whole handbook, and then that's a searchable PDF. You can look specifically for topics that you are interested in, say, if in this case, storage, and then they also have tendencies. So to dealing with the topics we're talking about today, you can get to some pretty direct information specifically on types of collections. And even though this was a handbook that was developed for National Park Service sites, it contains excellent information and it's useful for everybody. I mean, we all hold these types of collections in our institutions, and so what was developed for the federal government winds up being really useful for all of us. So that's a terrific resource and available for free, and that's that website for that. They also online, you can also download a quick reference, and this is a really thorough index on every single topic that you'll find in the handbook. So I think that's a great place to find some quick information. And then Jean-Louis will be speaking some more about this later, but again, back to our FAQ on storage, this is another great resource specifically to do with photographs and audio-visual materials, tape and CDs and DVDs, et cetera. It's relatively short, handbook, spiral bound, you got it on your bookshelf. That's what it looks like. But again, the PDF is available online. So if you didn't get the bookshelf or you wanna share it with a colleague, that's an excellent way to go. If you do have the hard copy though, you do get this nice wheel. And that's a great, quick resource for information. You look up the type of material, CDs and DVDs, for example here, I've got the pointer. And then the issues that you might wind up having, if they're not stored correctly, recommendations for temperature, humidity and some recommendations on the type of storage that you might consider for it. So Jean-Louis, we'll get into that in a little bit more detail in a minute. Another one I'd point out for this topic, and especially we were thinking about our FAQ on storage, a new publication, relatively new from Society of American Archivists. They published this book and it was written by conservators and they have a great section on preservation and storage materials for photographs. So let's turn now to the guide to online resources. We're gonna ask a poll here about whether you've used the guide to online resources. That's found through the Connecting to Collections webpage on the IMLS site. Okay, it looks like people, we'd love for you to become a weekly and monthly habit that you would feel confident that that had good information that you could find quickly. And we'd love for you to bookmark it. Looks like right now, sort of rarely, even a lot of people saying never, why is that? Let's ask another question that just sort of gets, maybe we can zero in on why you haven't used it or haven't used it more often. So I think it's just a different, you know, again, people are busy, don't have time to sometimes delve into these things even though they're there. Or, you know, you forgot it's there and that's true too. There's so much information on the internet, it's easy to forget it. Or you haven't heard of it and this is the first you're hearing about it and that's great. We will, in the chat, I can put in the URL, the direct URL so that you can, if you haven't already downloaded it or, you know, bookmarked it, I'm gonna put it right here in our chat so you can do that now. And then also, this will also be in our archive of this webinar. Great, so we can clear those polls. I'll just give you a quick tour and actually, Susan, I'm gonna go live online here just to tinker around in it. I think you'll, everyone will find it's fairly straightforward. But I'll just give you a quick tour of some of the topics we cover. And here we are. So if you just go, I wanna go back to the main screen. This is our opening screen that you'll see and so let's, still thinking about, you know, you've got a question about the best way to manage your collections environment, which your storage question was. You click on manager environment, you can get general information about air quality, light, temperature, relative humidity, storage. Let's just click on temperature and relative humidity and these are a list of resources. This is one I brought up earlier. Preservation leaflet from the Northeast Document Conservation Center. Now, their webpage is full of great information. It's a great place to browse on its own, but at the same time, if you are, you know, short on time or you really wanna get to some targeted information coming through the, this Connecting to Collection site, you can use our indexes and get to information very quickly. So we'll go back to our webinar here. Okay, remember up at the top where it's red and it says stop sharing. Thank you. Okay, there you go and we're back to the slide. Great, thanks. So I've just covered these pretty quickly. So I'm gonna turn it over to just a conversation with our experts. These are folks who are working in the field every day, who are helping people like you every day and they have two of them are authors. Julie Page is an author on one of the books on the bookshelf and Promoting Preservation Awareness and Jean-Louis was a contributor to the Image Permanence Institute Media Storage Quick Reference. So they have written books and MJ's contributed to a lot of activities like that too. So they've written texts and they do presentations all the time to groups and are a great resource and they have their favorite resources and they'll share that with us. I was just gonna start off with just giving them some warm up questions to get us going. And Julie, one thing I know you've worked so much on is disaster planning. And when we had people register for this webinar, they were asking some questions about what they hoped that this would answer and we had some questions about what resources are available to help with disaster plans. Can you answer that? Sure. You know, there are really some excellent resources for you either to improve an existing emergency plan that you have or to start, to write a basic plan. Resources as part of the bookshelf are the emergency response and salvage wheel. That's one of the key ones and it could be that Kristen will be showing that to you along the way. It's one you wanna have right at hand to find reliable information right when something happens. And something that's kind of a companion with it is the field guide to emergency response. This is a really compact yet detailed on the phases of response and it also includes an excellent DVD covering salvage operations and demonstrating different salvage techniques. Now, you heard about the National Park Service Museum Handbook, chapter 10 in that. So this is an online resource. You can, even if you don't have the bookshelf, you can take a look at it. Chapter 10 is focused on emergency planning and as mentioned earlier, it's an excellent resource for all types of cultural heritage institutions. So take a look at that. Now, available for all of you, there's quite a bit more on the guide to online resources. The entry is prepare for and respond to emergencies. So you can take a look at that. There are over 30 resources listed that cover a variety of issues. One of my favorites is the Pocket Response Plan developed by the Council of State Archivists which I've adapted for all kinds of libraries and archives. It's called the PREP. It's a very simple little double-sided template and you can use it. I will add that link into chat in just a minute. And Northeast Document Conservation Center developed D-Plan, which is an online disaster planning tool that's comprehensive and especially useful for larger institutions. NEDCC also has a worksheet outlining what are the components of a disaster plan and key elements to include. So take a look at these and I think you'll find some excellent guidance for starting or supplementing an emergency plan. Thanks so much, Julie. That's great. And some of those resources, as you said, they're in the guide to online resources or we can make sure to make links to them. They're not already there. Shalma, I was going to ask you, when people registered for the webinar, we also had a lot of questions about the storage of photographs and films and DVDs and CDCs, DVDs, which the IPI Media Storage Quick Reference addresses. And I just wanted you to give us a little overview of that resource. OK. Well, first I would say that it gives me an opportunity to mention that actually IPI celebrate its 25th anniversary this year. And if you look at the evolution of the place, basically the overarching story there is you start to study the stability of materials and media in the mid-80s. And now IPI is focusing more and more, in fact, on the quality and how to manage the environment. So the MSQR, really, because it's about storage fit in this. And when it has been developed in 2004, basically, before this, if you want to know, OK, what kind of condition would be suitable for such and such media recommendation? Usually, we're media-specific. And the documentation and the answer to this question was very spread. It can be the international standard. It can be other publications. So there was a lot of information there available in a very concise and handy way for museum and caretakers and so forth. So this is the first thing we wanted to do is to provide the maximum information with the fewest words as possible. So you can look at this basic application and look at what specific media require. And you can use the wheel to have those answers earlier, where you will be aware of the type of decay that are really of concern for this particular media. The doing so, too, in the human library will basically preserve one type, nobody. So everybody has kind of mixed and tried to guide the people about the problem of what my collection environment. And we tried to characterize and basically tried to help the people answer three questions. OK, what is the specific need of the media, in particular? What is my mixed media collection net? Or also, as a first, what's my current storage, for example, is doing? We have a table which is inside the guide, which is codecoded and so on. But the apportion here, by using simple words, will mean something in terms of temperature and define those four different storage, which is room temperature, this is where we are comfortable, and some cooler ones, some cold one, and frozen one. And what you see here is basically the potential impact on the collection. So depending what you have, it gives you a first thought if you're planning to keep the thing for the long term. So nothing like that at the time. And I think the mixed collection problem was not really approached at the time. So the other thing that you might find here, I understand, is also that in some case, the condition of the collection, in particular, material like acetate base, like nitrate base. More and more here, we try to really answer this question about your collection. So it's up to you, the people who have this will use it. But it's starting the conversation about storage. And it's more and more a current, really, concern. Because once you know, I will not answer to that right now. But if you're interested, we can talk about how do I get there? How do I implement my cold storage if I need one? How I manage my storage environment in a more sustainable way, et cetera, et cetera. So there is a lot of questions there that we could discuss. And I could give you some direction to help you with that. Just quickly, though, when you say frozen storage or cold storage, do you happen to, just generally, what are the temperatures you're talking about there? Well, that is the frozen storage. It's easy to define, because as soon as it's below the freezing point, 32, you are in frozen storage. And now, in the storage guide, you will see there's a little scale there. And we will help to define what is right, in a way, at one particular degree, right? There's a kind of gradation there. And that is always a discussion. And, well, I need to know where to stop when I become cold after being cool, right? Right. And that is a tricky point, because in this kind of zone, for example, it's 54 Fahrenheit, OK? For cold, it's 40. So if you know roughly where you are, the closest to one of these temperatures should define your storage and help you carry this evaluation. That's the idea. It's kind of, too, it's a quick, really neat, in which direction you must go. You can see, looking at that charter here, that if you have ever think compromised if some kind of cold storage would be something like between 40 and just above the freezing point. And if you go closer to the freezing point, it would be even better for the chemical stability of the materials. Well, I know it's a big topic. And we don't have a lot of time to get into a lot of specifics. But just quickly, does this book or does something else that the Image Permanence Institute has developed, would that get into issues of what you would put, what kind of housing these materials would need before you'd put them in cold or frozen storage, how you interleaving, other things like that? Is that in this tech store? Is that something else that the idea is? No, it's not in this one. There is some discussion of graphic color materials that IPI also, a few years ago. This publication will be actually downloadable online. So there is a discussion. There is also other sources that I could mention. For example, you talk National Park Service, and how to implement cold storage and for photographic collections. So what they touch here, for example, if you use household freezer, because your collection is so small that you don't need a big vault. So they give you a lot of practical tips if you wear. There is some other website. You can go also in the PMG. Maybe it's in the Topics and the Last Topic. That's Sarah Wagner. It's really about cost of various options. To cost storage, then it's a kind of customized approach. And it can be the big vault, the multi-million vault, if you have a Hollywood studio type of collection, or it can be one household freezer. Just the difference requires different types of materials. OK, well, thanks for that. I was able to find that Park Service links. I put that up in the chat. And even maybe you and I can trade emails afterwards, and we can make sure that the Guide to Online Resources has all of those resources handy. That is something I'll mention is that the Guide to Online Resources is something that Heritage Preservation helps IMLS maintain. So if it's part of this conversation, there's something you can find that it's missing or that you like. You can feel free to email me, and we can make sure to add it to the resource. I was going to ask MJ a question. Jean-Louis referenced the issue of institutions struggling with multimedia collections. I mean, you have lots of different types of materials, and they have maybe different storage needs, and it's hard sometimes for a smaller institution with limited space and limited technology to deal with. And one thing in particular that's challenging, and we know people have asked questions about in the past, are scrapbooks. And they might have photographs in them, and they might have paper and ticket stubs, and any number of baseball cards, any number of things. MJ, can you give us a few resources that you like that can help people negotiate this really sort of challenging type of artifact? Oh, I think scrapbooks are, they are multimedia, but the important thing with scrapbooks is the information that's in them sometimes, which is more important than the actual items themselves, that there's a chronology that's involved, and that first and foremost needs to be preserved. The simplest thing I always tell people is just a new box. Put them in a box, and that will provide good storage within the institution. And then if it's an item that becomes heavier, it's an item that is used frequently in your institution, then you can consider maybe going to some form of digitization so that the original doesn't get used as frequently. But certainly, good storage up front, it doesn't have to be high tech. And just a good archival box will certainly help. There are some good online articles about scrapbooks. There's a wonderful book that was done by the American Institute for Conservation Book and Paper Group called Preservation Options for Scrapbook and Album Formats, which is available on the AIC website. And there is also a really good little section in Caring for Your Family Treasures, which is part of the bookshelf. Just talks about, again, that storage component, which is so important with scrapbooks, and leaving them in the format that they are, as opposed to taking them apart. Thanks, that's great. I think sometimes I think people want to get in and do a little bit more than it's probably best for an artifact. So just even less is more. Yeah, less is more. Scrapbooks. Yeah. Really is. And I was just able to post the link for that AIC publication. And so that's us. Now I'm also going to, you sent me a few other links, and we're going to make sure to get that on the guide to online resources. I think a lot are there, but we'll just make sure that they're all referenced. And then this is the Caring for Your Family Treasures that Heritage Preservation published. Some other simple type of tasks like that. Julia, MJ, do you want to chime in on other resources that you liked that? Well, I think one of the good resources for people is if they haven't had a CAP survey, which is the Conservation Assessment Program, is to get themselves a good survey as a starting point. It's sort of a twofer in that you end up with a consultant, a conservator, coming to your institution to carry out a survey for you. And then you have a relationship there that you can ask questions of as you go along. I think most CAP surveyors are more than happy to stay in contact with the institutions that they work with and can make further references. Another area would be, again, the American Institute for Conservation does have a select conservator option. And you can call these people in your area. The meter's not going to be running if you just call to ask a simple question. And it's a good way to maybe they know of some other things that are going on in your area that you can be a part of. Certainly another would be like your state historical society. Or for archives, every state has a state historical records advisory board, better known as a SHRAB. And there are people on those boards that are usually pulled from cultural institutions. And if you feel that you need some additional help and suggestions or even want to qualify something that you've heard, they would be good resources. Right? Ask that question, because on the table that we looked a little bit earlier from the MSQR, where you have the various type of media and sometimes film music, nitrate and acetate and so on. So also in the guide, in particular in that reel, there is two sides on the reel. And with only one side, a little bit earlier, we'll give you information about how to preserve. But the other side, I'll give you some information about the chronology, the nature of the plastic support of those materials. So often, this is the other side of this reel, often are mentioned where to identify when you don't know. It's looking at when that material has been produced. And so this should, in many ways, help to identify if you don't know. For them, if you talk about audio tape, magnetic tape, so there will be only a period in the 50s where some quarter-inch tape where on acetate and everything else is on polyester. Once you know that, you can read that particular table. If you talk about, I don't know, how movies, a small format, for example, 16 and smaller, there was never nitrate-based products. Audio tape helps you to really identify the materials. Kind of crucial because, as you can see, some are more stable than others. As you look into the collection and you see some decay appearing and when you have this experience, this first-time experience, those materials decay in a certain way and you learn to identify basically that it's the only advantage of decay, the nature of the material, by looking at the type of degradation you see. So that's come over time. But the main rule here, I think, is when you provide this colder and colder temperature, basically you will stabilize those AR. And even the polyester, it's, well, you will not harm by putting and keeping it in cold temperature. So that is the idea. So the idea and if probably for the new digital print materials and AR are basically susceptible to different that it becomes very key to be able to identify them. So that is another topic that IPI is working on. And to keep up with this, you can go to the Image Permenance Institute, blah, blah, blah website. And in that one, you have a particular website which is dbtweeproject.org, I think. So this will give you insight about the technology and data is developed. It will also keep you up to date about the handle and what to pay for some other technology, as very, for example, susceptible to abrasion, or there are not. And some are susceptible to ozone, or there are not. So this will be a resource I'll probably add in the online guide, too. And so when you say digital print, give us a few examples of what that is. Well, for example, inkjet print, inkjet print, but the inkjet print doesn't mean much because it's a big family there, right? Right, right. So sometimes the students with a binder and sometimes it's a porous material. Right. Which is like a mineral, basically. And so there's a lot of different technologies. So if you go to the website, you will have, okay, I don't have a here, but. I just change, yeah, just share that link. Okay, you put the link. So you will have a foster description about what is out there and technology because the ink may change and so on and so on. It's an evolving technology, but there is a few family that is important to learn about it. And because, for example, if the ink is on the top of the materials without any protection of a binder, like on porous substrate, that is very susceptible to abrasion. So more and more probably the caretaker will have to be, even get the information about the material when they get it or be able to identify and handle, for example, person more carefully, put in different sleeve, et cetera, et cetera. So then there's a lot of data which has been developed, but there is a lot more to develop to some really strong guidelines for collections. Yeah, thank you for that. And I just want to reiterate that I do have the IPI media storage quick reference in front of me. And I'm sorry, I don't have a picture on the other side of the wheel, but it is extremely easy to use. You have all the years, and then you just slide it around depending on the type of film, motion picture film, x-ray film, still photographs, et cetera. And then you very quickly can see what kind of material you're probably dealing with based on the age of the photograph. So I recommend it. I don't think it's available and in your online format, right? It's just, I'll be in there. Yeah, not to the wheel. Yeah, so I just shared the, if you haven't gotten the bookshelf, I just shared the link on how, if you want to order it, you might find that, you know. I don't know, it could be possible, but it's kind of a tricky thing to do. It is, well, it's fine. That wheel is a really nice format. I wanted to do a page, so there I wanted to ask you to give us a little overview of the Promoting Preservation Awareness in Libraries. Sure, yep. This book includes about 35 case studies to raise preservation awareness for all kinds of libraries, special collections, et cetera. You can educate, get ideas for educating both staff and library users. You have ideas for reaching young children who are, in fact, of course, the future users of our colleges and universities and archives and special collections, as well as ideas to engage young adults and adults. So the book helps with how to create preservation education programs as well as how to evaluate them. So if you're looking for outreach activities for preservation education, I'd highly recommend that you start here. What you're seeing on the screen is a companion website. This book came out in 1997, and Jeannie Drews and I, who are co-editors, encouraged the publisher to provide updated information on the appendices. So again, if you don't know the book, you can still look at this website and see updated links. A lot of web information, obviously a lot's come out since 1997, but the basic information of the book is very solid and still very relevant today. One thing I wanted to mention too, Kristen, if I could, is, in talking about outreach, is considering doing some activities in relation to the annual preservation week that will be coming up in April. It's April 24th through 30th this next year. This has been an effort by the American Library Association, others. And it really is an opportunity to focus on your collections and preservation within your community. And some ideas are offered there on the screen. I also thought an example, if you have someone who's more of a media expert on your staff, or you can use some of the bookshelf resources, maybe you can give a talk on media preservation and some of the things John Louie's been sharing with us so that the public know how to take care of and store media in their home collections as well. The Library of Congress as well as the IPI websites obviously are good resources for this information. Maybe you have some staff or volunteers who repair your circulating collections. Bring them out of the back room, which is usually where they are, and show the public what you do to take care of their community's collection. This would also be a good opportunity to display your bookshelf for the public to review and to allow them to ask questions. They may have things like, what should I do if I have a wet book? Or how can I take care of a favorite book for my childhood? I think encouraging them to think of the libraries as resources for preservation of their own collections is really important. So I encourage you to look on the Library of Congress, I'm sorry, the American Library Association website, the link that's shown there, they'll be quite a bit more, they're examples from this last year's Preservation Week, as well as new postings as there are new options and new ideas across the country for celebrating Preservation Awareness Week this next April. Thanks so much, Julie. MJ, I was gonna toss a question to you. And again, we don't wanna get in too many specific how-to questions. Really trying to just focus on what resources are helpful. But you're up in Vermont and you've worked with a lot of small museums and historical societies and archives that are in government buildings and whatnot. And I'm sure you've run into the fact that not many places have year-round heat in their buildings. Is that right? That is very true. Yeah. So is that the same thing as Jean-Louis Cold Storage? And if not, why not? And what are some ways people can sort of tackle, tackle just improving storage conditions in general? Well, it's been interesting in working with the small institutions in Vermont. And I would say at least half of them don't have a furnace. They might be just buildings that are opened during the summer. And if they do have a furnace, they usually don't use it in the winter. Or they would turn it on sporadically for a meeting or something like that, which is not a great idea. We kind of encourage them to go somewhere else. But cold is not a bad thing. And it's amazing how in good condition, many of the collections are that go through this type of life cycle. And what we try to do is to help them prepare these collections, again, working with good archival boxes and preventative care, more or less, making sure things are organized and in boxes and tissue. And as they go into the freeze cycle, it's usually a gradual situation. So we don't have necessarily the build-up of frost that you would have when you plunge something into a freezer, which is more dramatic. You know, it gradually ramps down through the fall and gradually comes back up in the spring. So the collections actually do quite well under those conditions that you don't necessarily need things to be at 68 degrees, 55% relative humidity to have them have quite a good life cycle itself. But I see someone's wondering about a cool basement. But that also happens. Well, it's gotta be cool and dry. I mean, that is the big caveat. You can have a science project in a heartbeat before you know it if you put, especially collections that are more organic in nature as opposed to inorganics. Some of the small museums, you know, who are just desperate for storage space, I will recommend that they put, perhaps maybe more of their glass and ceramics and you know, stone and things like that can go into the cooler, slightly more damp basement area if that's the only option they have. And then put things that need a drier cooler climate in the winter, you know, they're on maybe the second floor of a historic house museum. Location, location, location. So that goes to sort of understanding the materials that your artifacts are composed of and what types of climates they're most susceptible to. Okay, thanks. What you said is a perfect example. We really underscore the fact you need to know the material and both storage, your environment, the better you are and you win. I saw that in your online guide for live. Right. This idea, basically, exactly what was described and how, depending if you put in the hat-tick or the basement, what you get. Right, thanks. I'm gonna share that link right now. It's a really, especially if you've got a board or other people you're trying to help convince that you need to improve the storage collection's institution, this is a great tool to use. Linking it now. Well, the IPI's new, the new ER preservation monitors are, they are just amazing. And, you know, as one of my colleagues says, it's pretty much like getting a conservator in a can. They, the amount of software support and it's free online, which is great. These small institutions don't have to maintain the software or store the data because I've had situation two instances now where we had set up monitoring programs. There was a change in staff. Computers were updated and all the data was lost. So with the new preservation monitors, you can get a sense of what's going on in your spaces. Then you can decide what collections will best live in those areas. So it's for, I think they're about $350 a piece. It'll be the best $350 a small institution can buy. So you said, huh? I didn't say anything. It's true. They're fabulous. And the other thing I like about them is that there is a, their password protected, the information on the IPI website where your data is stored. And I have one client now who is downloading her weekly readings. I can, she's given me the password. I can go online and check the information and then she and I can talk about it. So, the plan also to jump a little bit has that same component that's password protected, but you can get yourself a consultant or a colleague or somebody who can look at your information online and give you help with interpretation. Hey, yeah, this is also something which is in the online guide, basically. If you go to environment management, you have the link and a discussion and so on about the IPI systems, the PM2 that we talk, which is associated with with the software, really to understand what is going on. But the ultimate goal here and project is really yes to document, yes to understand and to improve the environment and to put the right object in the right environment, but also now there is one more step here which is doing all of this in the most sustainable way that is possible. So, there is, for those who are interested in this and this, there is also a website, I don't know, Christian, if you have it, but it's www.ipi-sustainability.org and what you will find there is only information about this kind of philosophy, but also I know it's a series of, can I make a plug here? A webinar? Sure. Also, I think it will be something like a nine or 10 webinar starting, the first one is next week, actually. And the idea is really to use this system to your advantage and also customize your institution, your problem and so on and so on. So, the first step is certainly to monitor what you have, not only for big institution, it's also for small places and in many ways this is one of the ones who struggles the most. So, that's it would be okay, but this is basically the new frontier there and once you have the technology, you have to teach the people how to use it with the environment management. Save money and the environment. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And okay, when we're talking about Vermont and the environment in which the collection was stored, okay, and it's cold in the winter and it's the environment changes and probably in the houses where there is no furnace and so on. Now, the big question is what's the material or was the object inside the house? The answer are much material there is. So, there is here again a lot of knowledge to understand what is happening at the object level in a way. And in many ways, those materials are mostly in good condition or many are in good condition. And if you would show the profile who goes up and down on the temperature to somebody who all his life thought, I want a flat line. Right, right. With my temperature, I will not believe you. But in, or with the humidity, you will not believe you that those materials. But in fact, they don't fully or those to manage when you have an HVAC system to manage differently. Right. And create some changes that will not harm the environment. So, generally, we had a question on how a PM is different than a hobo monitor. Is it just a, I don't want to go too far into it, but is there a brief? Well, what is different? The PM2, where I see the big difference is the calibration, where they are calibrated. Or every single unit, the nature of the sensor, every single unit is calibrated. Through a cycle will go from low dry condition to humid condition to dry again. And every level of humidity, you give some measurement and five point, basically. So this is a very, very high degree of accuracy for those particular units. So we spend a lot of attention and a lot of time to do this. The key has a display, or show you the level of temperature and humidity. It also, you download the data with a USB key, and then you go to your computer and download. But the key, the PM2 has the software that we were talking a little bit before. So it's really not only the data logger, but this is a whole system. It's also the software where you can download your data, the data store on a server, which is RIT. It will be always there, you can access anytime. You can have a limited number of files there, et cetera, et cetera. So it's more than the data logger itself, I would say. Right, so you get the whole software. It's very accurate. Christian, one of the biggest things that I've found for the small institutions with the PEMs is, or the Hobos, and Jolomites, correct me if I'm wrong, but they were sort of designed for the frozen food industry to monitor a particular set point of information. And the software that comes with them only allows you to download a month so that if you want to look at a whole year, you have to go back and knit all that data together. It's really time-consuming. These are the Hobos you're referring to. These are the Hobos, whereas the PEM just automatically adds it all in. You get great graphs, you get analysis, and it's all based on museum standards, whereas the Hobos and their graphs that they present is really more for just a snapshot in time. Right. Yeah, it's true that the history of the PEM came from, you know, as I said, studying the materials, always decay, then the environment is important. We want to track it, we want to understand, so it has been created. I think even if you forgot about it, but you should not forget about it, I think you will store 10 years of data. Wow, that's great. So that is the thing, of course, need at least one year. Right, in everything. Through the years. Yeah. I had something in this, IPA is working with five, not located in the south, five region, northeast, southeast, and so on, take advantage also of my local climate. Right. How my climate will fit, or actually, and really the purpose of this is is to train people and also develop some methodology how to save energy and how to save money that we can use for... Right, right. Yeah. This is a basic idea. Okay, well, so we'll be looking, we'll be looking for the Image Permanent Institute website to look for more references coming out about sustainability and we'll be adding those to the guide to online resources and publicizing them as they become available and also with the webinars coming up. I wanted to just change directions a little bit. I saw several questions about materials. They either were used to store collections in, someone asked about Xerox paper, et cetera, and I know when I get in the mail or go to conferences, and I see supply catalogs from the different archival companies. They will often have good information in them and I was gonna ask the three of you as experts, is that in general, is that a good place for people to read up about different types of materials and to learn about what's safe to use with collections? Do you like the information that you see in archival storage catalogs? Yeah, I think for the most part, they're right on and my experience has been with, sort of the, I guess you would call them the big three, university product scale or light impressions. They've always worked very closely with the conservation community and probably 95% of their items are things that we would use. I know there's a slight difference in approach to materials between libraries, archives and fine art, let's say. There's some things that are considered that you would do with a library collection, a circulating collection that you certainly wouldn't do with fine art. But I think their materials are good quality, well vetted and they also have good customer service and you can call and ask lots of questions of them and unless I knew Gaylord had somebody actually that they could call and if you had a particular type of collection you wanted to store, they could give you suggestions on materials. Which is nice. Yeah. Yeah, from our hand, I think I could say that they observe what is happening and what kind of research is going on and so on and try to integrate in their product or how they explain things. Right. Many of those also ask for some time to test the materials like in the photography activity test you see them mentioned on the catalog, okay, this box of this, okay, it's compatible. I think they certainly do a good job and I'm sure there were some part of the board actually that is up to the point they're interested in what is going on. Okay, great, yeah, and I know what photographic activity test was mentioned in the chat and I know, and I think it was Gaylord but I know I've seen in the catalogs they also do a good job describing what they mean by those different terms and so that's also a quick place where you don't, to learn about them. I was gonna also ask the panel, in general, you know, we were saying earlier you can put into Google, you know, care of photographs and take your chances and we try to do our best, you know, getting some good hard copy resources out on the bookshelf and finding the best online resources on the, I've been putting that on the website but, you know, we're not, can't promise to be 100% thorough so what are some ways that the audience can help kind of evaluate information that they might find especially online? Just some ways that they might evaluate that as being a credible or non-credible resource. You know, I would say look for respected sources such as Library of Congress, National Park Service, Heritage Preservation, the Smithsonian, those that are well known and then turn to professional association websites such as Society of American Archivists, American Institute for Conservation, American Association of Museums, et cetera. Those would be reliable and the resources provided by Regional Preservation and Conservation Centers. These would include one we've looked at before, Northeast Document Conservation Center and EDCC, the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia and one of my favorites for disaster response documents is the Minnesota Historical Society. So sometimes it'll be state or local links. So those would be some, I'll put a couple of links into the chat as well. Yeah, I just put the WRAP website into the chat. Yeah, we can add the Balboa Conservation Center too in San Diego, right? Right, yes, that's part, that's one of the members of the Regional Alliance for Preservation, which includes many of the outreach and conservation centers throughout the U.S. All right, and I'm gonna put in the link about AICs. There's one discussion with the Association of Moving Image Archivists. Yeah, obviously. So I think it's amya.org is the website and then amya.el, the discussion list. So there is a lot of people really help each other. Yeah, thanks, that they are really good and active group and it can be a lot too, especially if you have a collection, your small institution, you have a collection of a lot of different things and then you have some moving image film or video and you're just overwhelmed the Association of Moving Image Archivists is a great resource. I want to go into how to, you said, but just several question about of the National Park Service, right? Basically, to store those material and freezers they use and demonstrate and show how to do it, aluminum foil of materials. Right, they have cold storage packing. I'm just looking at their site now. Right. How to do it in upright, feeders and vaults. Right, so that's where, the other thing is some of the suppliers, conservation suppliers who sell kits. Okay, good to know. Where you don't have to do it yourself, but you are kind of limited in terms of size and so on. So, but it exists, you can always adapt to the thing. The principle that the people have to keep in mind is those freezers don't control humidity, so you need to wrap, to fill the materials, to avoid moisture to go into the materials. Right. It's a basic idea. And then somebody was talking about that this freezer, because if we talk about the frost-free freezers, once a day, something like that, the temperature is going just above the freezing point, next to the cold, just to make the ice melt. In fact, if you have a freezer, one, if you have a freezer which is packed with stuff, the temperature will never get there. Because you have such a thermal mass there that the temperature will never get to the, there is some cycle of temperature, but for too many to freeze, those vulnerable and stable, chemically unstable materials, this temperature change will not harm the material because they don't contract and it's safe to do. Okay, well, thanks. Well, there's been a lot of good questions, a lot more than- Yeah. Hard to get into and even into some detail, but it does lead me into something that Nancy mentioned earlier, which is that Heritage Preservation, ASLH and I Plus are investigating our options for continuing these conversations, having live chats with conservators or sharing podcasts or other types of things in an online community. And I was just gonna pull the group here to say, is that something we asked you when you registered and you might not have understood exactly what we meant or what we were talking about, but now that you have been on a webinar, you've had a chance to chat with each other, is this something you think you might be interested in? Looks like a pretty good group. Then Susan's gonna put up the next one, which is just to give us a little idea of where you might be getting information now and what sorts of things might we utilize if we build an online community. So we're actively investigating it and I think pretty soon right after, right in the new year, we will be sending you out more information and maybe doing a little bit of a survey to get some specific feedback on things we might do. Kristen, I also wanna mention that I put up a link for the evaluation and if that is not opening in a different browser window for you all, there is a direct link there, the Zoomerang link will take you to an evaluation for today's session. That's great, thanks for doing that. Would you mind quickly in the chat everyone who's said other, so your other methods for professionals with development or networking, and I'm thinking they are just of like online methods. Do you mind if you just don't mind putting that answer in the chat, then we can get that in our log and think about that. I know most people try to go to face-to-face meetings when they can. We've found that people have liked the website webinar series that liked the convenience of being able to log on from their desk. So it looks like other webinars and online classes are mainly the way. So, great. Well thanks everyone, thanks to our experts for their information and as we mentioned earlier, this whole webinar will be archived, so all of our chat will be archived, is that correct Susan? Yeah, when they lock the archive, they can follow through that. And so you can see all the links we might have mentioned. There are a lot of links in the PowerPoint. That will also, when you view the PowerPoint in the archive, those are hyperlinked and you can go to those. And the slides from the PowerPoint will be available just as slides as well. That's terrific, thanks. And then, hopefully now you're a little more familiar with the guide to online resources and we continue to update that. So, and of course, Heritage Preservation will be happy to answer any questions if you're having a hard time putting your fingers on something. But hopefully soon we'll be together in the online community and that'll be a great place to toss out questions and get feedback. And Kristen, also more than walk up, people can email me a question. I'm happy to answer questions about particular material or the way to store something or whatever. This is MJ, by the way. So, that they should feel comfortable in contacting us. That's, or contacting me for sure, that's fine. Okay, thanks so much, MJ. Sure. Same for us at IPI, okay? This is what we do, basically. Yeah, you're really good at it. And I know, Julie out in California, if you're in California, you don't have a disaster plan, you don't know Julie, get to know her. Yeah, or all of the kind of Western region, I just put my email address in there and I don't know if others, if you already have or others, but anyway, they're now preserved for posterity. Okay, great. Good, well thank you. But at what temperature? Yeah, right. Yeah, don't ask that question. Not in San Diego. Right, not in San Diego. Good, well thanks everyone for your time, and we'll hopefully stay in touch.