 We introduce to you our host, Susan Barger. Go ahead, Susan. Hi, everyone. We're glad to see you all here and see people signing in. I have a few slides. The best way to keep in touch with us is to use the C2CC Announce List. It's just a list of its renouncements only. Usually it's only one or two announcements a month. But they've been quite a lot lately because there are a lot of changes going on. So but if you want to be part of that list, just sign in and you can join. If you need help during a disaster, you can call this a 24-hour hotline to get the National Heritage Responders. I know we have several storms and hurricanes going on and fires, so keep that line in mind. Our forum has changed. Our discussion forum has changed. It's now on this new platform. And so even if you were on the old forum, you still need to join the new one. And that's where you can ask questions about collections care in a nice, conservative world. They help give you answers that are reliable and quick and that are geared for our audience, which is small and mid-sized cultural institutions. So you can go to this link on our website and learn how to join the new community. You can always contact me. This is my email address. I'm happy to hear from people. Good, bad, or indifferent. So please go ahead and use that. Next month, we have two webinars. The first one is about feathers. And so it'll deal with caring for feathers and also legal issues with feathers. And we also have courses starting. And our first course begins the end of October. The courses cost money unlike our webinars. And don't worry, our webinar is still going to continue and they'll still be free. If you register early for the course, there are discounts. And you can find information on how to register for the course on our website by clicking on this slide. And so now we're going to go right over to our speakers today. So take it away, Karen and John. All right, hello, everyone. I will say I have a bit of a technical difficulty. So if I could have someone advance the slide for me, I will do my introduction. And then I'm going to pop out and see if I can get back in to control the slides. Thank you. So my name is Karen Butler-Clary. First of all, I just want to thank you guys for participating in the webinar. I know we all have many hats that we wear and a lot of responsibilities. So I just appreciate everyone spending a little time with us today. I am currently at the University of Denver. I work in the Beck Archives. So like any good collection professional, I am in a small room with no windows. But that is where you will find me. My background is in art history. And I've also got a degree in museum studies, both from University of Kansas, which is where I got the opportunity to meet John and learn from him and work with him. So throughout my career, I've got about 10 years of experience in museums and cultural nonprofits. I've always hung out with the collections, doing collections management and registration, and a surprising amount of data entry. And perhaps I am a glutton for punishment because I have decided to go and get another degree now, too. Working in an archive that's actually part of a university library has just kind of sparked an interest in understanding how the library works a little bit better. So I am also a student, again, at the University of Denver, working on a master's in library and information science. And I will have someone advance for me to have John introduce himself. Hi there. My name's John Simmons. I'm a museum consultant based in central Pennsylvania. But I also serve as the adjunct curator of collections at the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum and Art Gallery at Penn State University. Although I started my professional career as a zookeeper, I at this point have more than 40 years of experience in museums as a collection manager and a consultant. I'm currently on the board of ARCS, the Association of Registrar in Collection Specialists. And I'm in my last year as chairperson of the Collection Stewardship Professional Network of the American Alliance of Museums. And like Karen, I'd like to welcome everyone to the seminar, to the webinar. And thank you all for participating. I believe we have some poll questions now. And John, I'm going to have you go ahead and lead those since I am still having trouble. OK, no problem. So we have four different questions up at the same time. So number one is what size institution do you work for? And these are based on budget, just to give us an idea of who's the audience. And number two is what type of collection do you care for? And we tried to group these up into general groups. So please pick the one that is most like what you have. And there is a category for other. Question number three is where do you get most of your collection care information? And we're curious about this before we get started into the meat of the webinar. And our last poll question number four is how often do you participate in professional development opportunities? And we will let you define what a professional development opportunity is. But we would include webinars and things like that. So it looks like we've got some results coming in. It looks like most of you appear to be in medium or large collections, then overwhelming number of people that are in art collections. It looks like people are beginning to favor the internet as a source for collection care information. And it looks like most of you do participate in professional development opportunities several times a year, which is very good. And that's one thing I've always liked about the museum profession is that we are encouraged to do continuing education as we go through. So I'll give people just another minute or two to deal with the poll questions. And then we will move on. Karen, are you able to control the slides now? I am not. I am only able to log in as a visitor and not a presenter. Oh, OK. Well, I think I can run things while you're talking, so. Oh, here we go. And I'm back. Fantastic. OK, very good. All right. So thank you all for taking the time to do the polls. So we'll start out with what are we going to talk about today. And what we're going to do is talk about where you can find good information on the care of collections and what are good collection care resources. There is a lot of information available, both in print and online, but not all of it is very reliable. So we're going to try to give you some ways to help you figure out how to separate the wheat from the shaft. We'll also give you our personal list of essential references and some tips for connecting to local, regional, national, and international collection care communities. And of course, this is one of those topics that everyone has an opinion about, and everyone is probably equally right in their opinion. So this is the opinion of Karen and I. And I believe the screen just disappeared from my view. I'm not sure how to get that back. I have a screen up that says, share my screen. Yeah, that's also what I'm seeing. OK, we'll get Mike to take care of that. And I'm sure he will get it fixed in one moment. So there are three basic categories of sources for collections care information. The oldest is the traditional way that we learn things, and that is we learn on the job by talking to our colleagues. And so you might call this the oral tradition of museum work. And of course, part of that is still very important because we pick up the cultural memory of our institutions that way. Originally, this oral tradition of museum work was limited to the very few people who one museum worker might encounter at work. But the oral tradition with the internet is now much broader because we can now pick up information from people that we don't actually work with via listservs and websites. The second category is probably the best known. And this is the publications, which historically meant things that were in print, such as books, journal articles, and pamphlets. But there is a fair amount of published information now that is in electronic form only. So publication no longer just means things printed on paper, but things that are made public, including through the internet. And then this brings us to our category number three of information. This is the information that we get through the internet from web pages and Wiki pages and how-to videos and webinars like the one we're doing now. So I still don't have slides up. And I don't know if our participants do or not. So I don't want to get too far in advance of our slides. So we'll give Michael a moment. He's working on it. Yeah, I'll give Michael a moment to see if he can get this restored here. Yeah. OK, so I see some of the people are saying they have no slides either. So we'll get this back up in just a moment. OK, it looks like we're slowly getting it coming back up. This is, of course, one of the great things about the internet is it works really well when it works. There we go. So we are back. So these are what we're going to talk about today. And we just discussed our three types of resources. And this brings us to where do we find the most credible information? And it would be nice if we could just trust all three of these sources, the things we learned from our colleagues, what's published in print media and what's on the web. But unfortunately, we can't. Good information can come from all three, but you can also get information that isn't very good. And what we're going to focus on in this webinar, you might think of as the place where all these meet and this VIN diagram. This is this overlap between information from colleagues, publications, and web resources, information that is supported from many other sources, all three sources. And so before we get into these contemporary sources, we need to take a quick look at the history of museum information to see where it came from. I think it's always important to know where we have come from in order to chart the course about where we are going. So the collections are much older than museums. They predate museums by thousands of years. And in that sense, collections have always been cared for, just sometimes not very well. And if they had been well cared for, of course, our collections would be even larger than they are today. The basic principles of collection management go back to the early 1700s with the birth of what we would recognize as the modern museum. The first comprehensive book on managing collections was published in 1727 by Casper Nicolle, which was a pseudonym for a dealer in museum objects named Caspar Friedrich Geinkel. The book was written in German. I will not attempt to pronounce the German name, but the English translation was museography are instructions for the better understanding and useful organization of museums in chambers of rarities. And this tells us several things. The fact that there was a book published means there were a lot of museums around, many of which are now gone. And it also tells us that there was concern among the people that ran these museums in maintaining their collections in the long term. The book was really an impressive undertaking, because even at this early date of 1727, it provided guidelines for the acquisition and organization of objects as well as for collections care. Some of the advice in the book sounds very basic to us today, but was probably groundbreaking at that time, such as the need to maintain an accession book and a catalog, the need to store objects in dry conditions and protect them from sunlight. And it was even suggested in this book that you put a table in the center of the room where objects could be examined to minimize the handling of the objects. So those are all fairly advanced ideas. The next big breakthrough came about in 1753 when a man named David Holtman, who had been a student of Linnaeus, the gentleman who invented binomial nomenclature that we use in scientific collections, published a book on collections care that the title that was in Latin, it roughly translates as instructions for the natural museum. His book recommended that museum buildings be made of brick so that they are fire-resistant, because at that time, making buildings out of material that couldn't burn was the best they could do to avoid fires. He also recommended the buildings be longer than wide with north-facing windows so that rather than getting direct sunlight into the building, you got indirect light. At this time, museums were run by private collectors, and the bulk of the work of cleaning the objects and arranging them was usually delegated to fairly lowly assistants whose only training was training on the job. Most of the early museum manuals then focus on how-to instructions, and many of these how-to instructions would make us flinch today, but this was long before the idea of preventive conservation had been developed. There were a number of other books published, mostly in Europe, over the next century or so, but they didn't really add a lot to what was already known at that time. The basic message was to keep collection objects dry and keep them out of direct sunlight. Training for museum work is another big issue. The collections care profession, as a profession, got started in the 20th century, so it's fairly new. And this is when training for museum work became more formal. The first training course for museum workers in the United States was started in 1908. And this sort of formal training for the museum profession did not really become common until the 1970s when museum studies programs began to appear at American universities. And I love this photograph. This is the newly trained museum professionals coming out of one of the early training programs at the Newark Museum in 1926, all ready to go out and work in the profession. Another important factor in developing resources for collection care was the formation of museum organizations that shared information about collection care among their members. The American Association of Museums, which is now, of course, the American Alliance of Museums or AAM, was founded in 1906 specifically to advance professional standards. And there were similar organizations started in a number of other countries. The AAM began publishing its first journal in 1918. It was called the Museum Work. It later became Museum News and is now just called Museum. The American Association for State and Local History, the AASLH, was founded in 1940. In 1946, the first significant International Museum Organization, the International Council of Museums, or ICOM, was established. And the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, commonly known as the AIC, was founded much more recently in 1972. The following this, the next big thing, was the appearance of more modern publications. And the next really major step in the care of museum collections, and probably one of the most profound, was the publication in 1958 of Museum Registration Methods. And this was written by Dorothy Dudley, who was a registrar at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Irma Beasle-Wilkinson, who was a registrar at the Newark Museum. And so this was the first edition. This book played a major role in defining the profession and defining what were professional standards and best practices in museums. This book is now in its fifth edition, which came out in 2010. And it's still called Museum Registration Methods. The fifth edition is called MRM 5. And it has become the standard reference in the care and management of museum collections. Some other significant publications in the United States include Introduction to Museum Work by George Birkhaugh in 1975, and Registration Methods for the Small Museum by Daniel Rabel, which was first published in 1978. So these are some of the founding publications that really put museum collections care on the map and united us all as a profession. The next big game changer in this was the publication of Gary Thompson's book, The Museum Environment, in 1978. And it's probably best known from its second edition from 1986. This book had a profound impact by emphasizing the importance of maintaining and monitoring stable storage environments. It was, of course, known before then that the environment affected the objects. But Thompson was the first that could really put numbers on this and give us some really good guidance to it. And this stimulated the incorporation of the principles of preventive conservation as a basic part of collections management. So these are some of the major publications that have come about over the years. The next one I'd like to mention is a one that only tangentially relates to what we're talking about today. But this is the breakthrough publication of Marie Malaro's Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections, which was first published in 1998 and is now in a third edition published with L.D. DeAngeles. And so this is another one that emphasizes the legal obligations of museums to take care of their collections. And there's another one that you'll find on most lists of collection care workers standard bookshelf. Well, the profession is continuing to advance. And the American Alliance of Museums has taken the lead in trying to establish standards for U.S. museums. Their first publication for this came out in 2008 in the book National Standards and Best Practices for U.S. Museums. And section four deals with collection stewardship. The collections care recommendations are still rather general. I hope that AAM will proceed with this and put out more specific things. But at this point, that is all that has appeared in the United States. There is a similar publication that is available in Great Britain called Spectrum 4.0 that comes from Collections Trust. And this is available on the internet if you'd like to take a look and see what people in the UK are doing. Well, one thing you'll notice if you go back and review this literature is that the standards and recommendations for things like museum collections do change over time. So why do these standards keep changing? Well, the main reason is that we keep improving our knowledge of how to care for collections. The standards have evolved rapidly as we've learned more and more about how objects interact with their environment. And advances in our knowledge of collections care are the result then of years of research, observation, and practice. And the more we learn about the interactions of objects with the environment, the better we understand how to use preventive conservation in our collection. So it's really important to keep up with the literature and know what are current recommendations. And I'll give you an example. Back in the 1970s, the standard recommendation for most museums for a storage environment was maintain a steady 50% relative humidity at 68 degrees all year all the time, which is nearly impossible unless you live in a very few climates where this can happen. The current recommendations are very different. For most materials now, a range of temperatures and humidities are recommended with the emphasis on reducing the fluctuations. But you might have one range of humidity and temperature in the summer and another one in the winter because of the problems of maintaining a steady one. And the reason for this is materials react differently to the environment. This is a musical instrument from South America that's made out of wood, glue, hide, and bone. It's got an armadillo shell on it. It has inlay and nylon strings. Well, all of these materials react differently to environmental changes. And we now recognize that most objects do best over a range of conditions rather than trying to hold them into these really narrow frames. And this does not mean that the recommendations from the 1970s were wrong. It means that we have just learned more about how to take care of things. So that's our caution is to make sure when you do access the literature and older information that it is still valid information. So the biggest change that has occurred, in my opinion, in collections care in the entire history of museums, which goes back quite a way, is the introduction of the principles of preventive conservation. And this goes back to the mid-1970s. Now, it's important to emphasize that collections management is not conservation. And conservation is not collection management, but the two are closely linked. And they share a large area of overlap in preventive conservation. So this is an area where those of us who are not conservators do need to pay attention to what the conservators are doing and saying and apply this information to our work. So preventive conservation refers to the things that are done to prolong the useful life of the objects in the collections. The useful life means the life over which we can derive information from the objects and interpret them in our museums. Preventive conservation was developed when it became obvious that traditional object-directed practices were not really slowing down the deterioration of objects. So preventive conservation emphasizes the importance of stable storage environments, the identification and understanding of the agents of collection deterioration, and how to make the best use of the limited collection care resources that we have. And all of these work together as a holistic and integrated way to manage collections. So this is a pretty good definition of preventive conservation, actions taken to minimize or slow the rate of deterioration and to prevent damage to collections. This includes activities such as risk management, development and implementation of guidelines for continuing use in care, appropriate environmental conditions for storage and exhibition, and proper procedures for handling, packing, transport, and use. These responsibilities may be shared by collection managers, conservators, subject specialists, curators, and other institutional administrators. So we will go with that definition. That's a relatively good one. So the goal of preventive conservation is to avoid deterioration of objects or at least slow that down as much as possible. One of the advantages is it's very cost effective compared to the expense of conservation treatments for individual objects after they have deteriorated. So you're better to spend the money up front to prevent the deterioration. Most preventive conservation measures in collections care are involved in providing a good quality, stable storage environment for the collection and by understanding the factors that cause collections to deteriorate, we can make better use of our collections care resources. So this brings us to these resources. This is how can we tell good resources from bad ones. So this is a time we can give you a few hints in this direction. And the first question I would ask is, what's the source? Is the source of this information that you're looking at from a peer reviewed publication, for example, or is it something a friend told you? It's always better to check the source yourself because despite the best of intentions, our colleagues may leave out some factor or get information wrong. So we should never rely just on oral transmission of information. Did the information come from a website? If so, is it a website that's supported by professional museum organizations? Does the information sound too good to be true? If it does, it probably is too good to be true. Another criteria is, are you familiar with the source? Is this an organization or a publisher that you're familiar with that is experienced in this area? If is the source a for-profit company that is trying to sell you some product or technique? Generally, information from nonprofit museum organizations is more reliable than information from commercial sources, but there are some exceptions to this. The third category is, who is the author? Is it a known professional or is it someone you've never heard of? If you're not familiar with the author or the source, this is the time when you need to really check with your colleagues and check around to make sure that the information is reliable. The last one is, does it sound reasonable? Based on what you have read and what you have experienced, does the information follow the principles of preventive conservation? And you think about the ramifications of the recommendations. Are there mentions of chemicals that you know to be too acidic or too alkaline or procedures that you know are damaging or materials that you know are not really inert that are recommended? Now, I'll give you some examples of bad information. I'd like to call this raw potatoes and whiteout, because there are some traditions that out there that these, I've noticed that a lot of this information, although it's long been debunked, is still around. One of them is, you can label objects using a base code of whiteout correction fluid and then write your number on it and code it with clear nail polish. No, you can't. Whiteout and clear nail polish are not stable materials. They will damage the object. They often cannot be removed. And they do not hold up over time. And I keep hearing stories that this is taught in a particular program, although I have never been able to run down the source of this really bad information. Another one is that you can clean the surface of a painting with a raw potato. Just cut it in half and rub it on the painting. Well, a moist potato might remove some dirt, but it's also going to ruin the painting. It's going to cause abrasion. It's going to leave behind starch and other organic matter that causes deterioration. And using half a potato is really not a safe way to clean anything. Another one I hear frequently is that the database we use at our museum is the best. Well, no one database is right for everyone. You can, for instance, list your collection information in Excel, but that doesn't make it a database. A good database will do far more than duplicate what you're doing with pencil and paper. So in short, you should be extremely careful about these sorts of quick fixes found on the internet or passed along from person to person and be very suspicious of them. We have some handouts, which, presumably, many of you have downloaded already. We have four of them. One is our list of basic print resources. Another is basic online resources. Some basic video and webinars and museum professional organizations. We do not intend for these lists to be comprehensive. Instead, these are the resources we think our Karen and I are most important to be familiar with. If you know of other resources that you think are worth adding to our list, we would request that you please send us an email after the workshop and let us know about them so we can check them out. We don't have time to discuss every resource on all four handouts. But we are going to explain a little bit about what is on each of the handouts as we go. And as I said, these are not intended to be comprehensive. You may know of a better source, and if so, let us know. So there we go. Basic print resources. The number of useful museum publications has increased dramatically since 1980. I got my master's degree in museum studies back in the early 80s, and I remember how sparse the literature was at that time. Those of you entering the field now are very lucky that this is a time of really rich resources. So we've attempted to list the most basic books that we find useful in collections care on our list. And of course, the first one is Buck and Gilmore's Museum Registration Methods, fifth edition. This is invaluable, fondly known as MRM-5. It's more than 500 pages of work by 60 authors covering almost every phase of collection, acquisition, registration, and management. There is a new edition being prepared, which will be MRM-6. And we hope that will be published sometime in late 2019 or early 2020. Another basic one is that in museum work, we offer run into hazardous materials and sometimes without knowing they're hazardous. So we have included in our list Help and Safety for Museum Professionals, which was a joint production by the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works and the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections. And this is another big, fat compendium of knowledge with multiple authors on museum safety issues. The Image Permanence Institute of Rochester Institute of Technology was founded in 1985 to do research on preserving images. But it has extended its work to preserving far more than images. And it's now the largest independent laboratory devoted to preservation research. And you will probably notice their name appears on three of the four handouts because of the quantity of material they produce, and both print and electronic publications, videos, and webinars. This includes an image that you're seeing a screenshot of, which is their online dew point calculator. This is really useful if you are concerned about a collection storage environment. And I have, in my experience, found it really useful when you need to talk to your building engineer or to a heating and cooling specialist, because this really gets the point across. This shows the relationship between temperature, relative humidity, dew point, and mold growth. And so this is really a really useful tool to play with. And I highly recommend you go to their website and take a look at it and play around with the numbers. They have a book, IPI's Guide to Sustainable Preservation Practices for Managing Storage Environments that is also very useful. And it's based on a series of 12 webinars that are available for free on their website, along with a lot of other helpful stuff. That's a good one to keep in mind. This is a fairly new publication. Angela Kipp's Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections, a Practical Guide for Museums. We hardly recommend this. This was published in 2016. And she has also done a webinar on the same topic that is available from the Connecting to Collections website archives. And this is the book you need if you're confronted with a collection that has never been managed before or never been organized, will help you through it. Or even if you are working with one that is only mildly in shambles, it's a big help. The legal aspects of managing collections can be daunting, but we have included two books that will help you figure out what to do and what not to do. We've already mentioned the standard reference, a legal primer on managing museum collections, the third edition. But we would also like to recommend Coravella's book, A Legal Dictionary for Museum Professionals, which was published in 2016, which will help you understand some of the legal terms and concepts that are in the legal primer. I find this another very useful book. And here we have your tax dollars at work. A lot of people don't know this, but the organization that has the largest museum collections in the United States is not the Smithsonian, but the Department of the Interior. The Smithsonian's 19 museums and galleries combined have about 154 million objects. The Department of the Interior has 202 million objects, housed in 1,720 collections and 910 partner institutions. So to manage their share of the stuff, the National Park Service has developed some really useful resources. And this is your tax dollars at work. These resources are free and available in PDF format. I think the most useful of these is the Conservagram series. These are short, focused articles on specific collection issues available as PDFs. There are currently 183 of them in 22 different categories. And these have all been vetted by conservation and collection management professionals, so the information is reliable. There is also the Museum Handbook, which is available in PDF format. A lot of the handbook is Park Service Regulations that are not relevant to the average museum, but the rest of the information is very good. So if you skip over the part that has to do with Park Service Regulation and that sort of thing, the information on collection care is very good. And so both of these are available on Park Service website. I want to mention one publication that is actually not yet available. It will be published later this year. And this is Preventive Conservation Collection Storage, a new book coming out. It's going to be a little more than 800 pages long. It's a joint production of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, the American Institute for Conservation, the Smithsonian Institution, and George Washington University. It's edited by Lisa Elkin and Chris Norris, and we think this is going to be available later this fall. And this will be an extremely useful book. It addresses all sorts of collections and storage issues related to them. In terms of basic online resources, the list contains a lot of references. So once again, we're only going to mention a few of them here. We're not going to go over every reference. Online resources can be very good, but they can also be very bad. You need to pay close attention to the source and to the organization hosting information who is responsible for it. Our list is very carefully selected to include only sites that we know from personal experience are reliable. Just a few of these, the American Institute for Conservation publishes a print journal and an online journal for paying members, but it's a highly technical publication, so we're not including it here, but they do have a really useful conservation wiki and a series of brochures on caring for your treasures, information on disaster preparedness, recovery, health and safety, and they also have a stash, the storage techniques for art, science and history collections, all of which are useful both for beginners and experienced professionals. The Association of Registrar and Collection Specialists is a relatively new organization that is working on getting more information available on its website, and they just launched a new website. There are currently short articles, including a list of state laws governing the laws for things found in collections, information on how to choose academic museum study programs, how to find a job, recommendations for basic references, a discussion forum, videos and many, many links. The Canadian Conservation Institute website has a lot of excellent information on collections care, including a series of short articles similar to the Conservagrams called CCI Notes for Canadian Conservation Institute, and these are written for a broad audience. They range from general information on storage environments to very specific information on the care of particular kinds of materials and objects. The site currently lists 125 CCI Notes in 19 categories, and again, these are available for free download as PDFs, so a very useful site. Of course, the Connecting to Collections Care Online community has many good resources. They are producing this webinar. They offer a virtual library of collections care resources, discussions, webinars, and other valuable information. If your institution does not have an integrated pest management program, it should, and for this, you can turn to the IPM Working Group, which hosts museumpest.net, which is a fantastic website with information on designing and implementing integrated pest management programs in museums, advice on monitoring and identifying pest solutions to outbreaks, all sorts of other pest prevention and control information, and you can actually send in your photographs of your museum pest to get them identified. Those of you who work in natural history collections are, if you have natural history objects in your museum, will find the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections to be very useful. The most current publications on their website are available only to paid members, but the older publications, I think older than two years, can be accessed by anyone. And the last resource that we wanted to mention is kind of a fun way to get your museum to start thinking about what collection management policies are and how they can improve collections care. And this is a board game that's based on the second edition of the book, Things Great and Small, Collection Management Policies. And you can download the game for free from the museum study LLC website. And Brad Bredehoff of this website has kindly made it available. So this is a board game you can download, follow the instructions, put it together, and play it with your museum staff to start getting people to think about how policies play a role in collections care. We didn't include a lot of videos and webinars, but with videos in particular, checking the information source is important. There are a lot of videos on the internet produced by commercial firms whose goal is to sell you a particular product. Some of these are okay. Most are fairly biased, so we particularly urge you to use cautions there. And we're not going to talk about any of the specific videos, but it is important to keep in mind who produced it and what was the motivation behind it. And I don't mean to say that you cannot trust commercial videos. Some of them are very good, but do approach them with an open mind and a healthy bit of skepticism. Being a member of a museum professional organization, I think is very important. There are international, national, regional, and state-level organizations. This is the chance to network with your colleagues and meet people, get to know them, see what's coming up, what's new in the field. You make a lot of connections this way. I think attending these meetings is very important. The largest museum organization in the world is ICOM, the International Council of Museums based in Paris. They have a variety of resources available for free on their website. The largest organization in the United States is the American Alliance of Museums, which has about 25,000 members. It holds an annual meeting that draws about 5,000 attendees each spring with a big expo. And the AAM has six regional organizations that meet in October. AAM meets in the spring. The regionals meet in October or November. Their meetings are usually, the regional meetings are usually smaller and a little more accessible, and you'll be talking to people in your geographical area, which can also be very useful. And then most states have some kind of state level museum organization as well. So you need to look around and see what's available and what organizations you'd like to get involved with. I think that networking is very important. Our colleagues, working with our colleagues is very important in museums. One of the things I like the most about the profession is how open people are sharing the information they know. Making these connections can be very helpful in determining which collection care resources we want to use. And I think lifelong learning is also an important aspect of being a museum professional. And at this point, we will turn the microphone over to Karen, who is going to talk about care of digital collections. Thank you. So when I was first considering this webinar and collections care resources, I kept going back to this topic that has been a struggle for me and that is finding information resources on the care of digital collections. As we just have been talking about, we know that our standards keep evolving. But anymore, the things that we are adding into our collection are evolving as well. So hopefully, I won't take us too far down the rabbit hole, but I really wanted to touch on the ways that our collections are evolving and what that means in regards to our collection care resources and the things that we look to for guidance. So as we progress, our objects are too, and we are becoming a paperless society. And don't get me wrong, I know that we're always going to have paper. Those things are always going to be there. But like it or not, the way that we are recording the human record is changing. And that's going to affect the things that are coming into our collections and the way that we need to be preserving them. I'm sure we'll be collecting paper for long after our days, but we need to also start considering how we're going to be taking in these digital objects and how we're going to care for them. So if you haven't already seen it in your collections, I assume that you will be seeing more digital donations coming your way. Obviously, those who are working with archival collections are going to see a lot more of this because we are so heavy on those paper documents and things that have been traditionally written down. But anybody really in a museum is going to have archival collection materials. I don't know of any museum that doesn't have letters and manuscripts, even photographs. Those are all things that are changing the way that are being produced and coming into our collections. So none of us are going to be immune to this change. Even if you don't see it in your actual collection objects, you're probably going to see it in your supporting documentation. Those of us who have been in natural history museums or those of you listening who are, you may have previously gotten field notes on a paper notebook and now someone wants to hand you a thumb drive with all that same material. We all probably have an experience with a reluctant donor who has some wonderful photographs, but they don't want to part with them. They may be willing to give you a digital copy though. And all of these things that are supporting our collections too, that provenance information, those are all just as important and need to be preserved just the same as our three-dimensional and two-dimensional collection objects. So this is, like I said, an area that I have really struggled to find good resources with. Fortunately, they are becoming more prevalent. You'll see some on the handouts, but there really still isn't a whole lot out there. And a lot of what is out there isn't necessarily written for our audience. It's not written for the museum professional. It can be a little too technological and not that easy to understand. Many of our digital documents that we're seeing come into our collections are gonna be subject to the same agents of deterioration that we have with our regular collection materials, but then we have some added things that are gonna be added to the challenge of caring for those collections. One of those things is gonna be, there's a lot of information that's really kind of hidden behind our digital documents. If you think of even just like a PowerPoint presentation, those transitions for the slides, there might be sounds, there might be music, all those things, if you just simply make a paper or a surrogate of that, those aspects of the presentation are not gonna be preserved. A photograph, any more photographs may never even see it to a paper form. They're born digital now and printing a copy of them is great and that can be another fantastic way to preserve it and to care for it, but there's a lot of information that doesn't print. If you look at the properties of a digital photograph, you'll see the camera-making model, you'll see a time, you'll see shutter speed. If you have an iPhone or probably any smartphone, but I know when I look at images on my iPhone, I can see navigational points. I can tell you the elevation I was at when I took that picture. So all that information also needs to be preserved, but it's not gonna be preserved the same way in a paper form. So, we are still subject to the same agents of deterioration, but we've got added challenges now when we are adding digital collections into our mix. Hardware, software, and operating systems. So these artifacts have to have something else to be used, right? It isn't the same as a textile or a piece of furniture or even a taxidermy mount that can kind of stand on its own. If you've got something that's in a digital format, you are going to need the hardware to run that software that's gonna be able to understand the file types and then the operating system that's gonna make the hardware and the software all work together. So something that we are gonna be running into is format obsolescence. We've already seen this. We remember 8 tracks and floppy disks and zip drives and all sorts of those old media forms that we don't see every day anymore. So we've got to think about data migration now. Pardon me, I had to go turn my light back on. It's on a timer and I am not close enough to it. So also we have a new problem of proprietary file formats. So you may have donors who are now bringing the same type of donations they would come to you in paper, they wanna hand it to you on a disk and you need to make sure that those are files that you can read. You could have Photoshop files or even architectural drawings that are coming into you in a CAD file. It needs to be in a form that you know that you can actually read for you to be able to use it. There's also just the inherent decay of information. With our regular collections materials, we see that too. Everything eventually will decay, will break down and there's nothing we can do but prevent and try and keep it for longer. And we're gonna see those same things in our digital collections but we're gonna see them in a little bit of a different way. People will say data decay or data rot, bit rot, data degradation. We're all kinda talking about the same thing right there and that's basically, when you break it down to a digital document, it's made up of different bits and if something happens to one of those it's gonna render your file unreadable. That could be something as simply as a CD that gets exposed to too much heat. It's gonna render that use or useless or those magnetic documents if that gets altered, you're not gonna be able to read those anymore. So we do wanna make copies but we have to remember that duplication does not necessarily equal preservation. We've all probably seen or are using those gold archival disks and they say there are some that'll last for 100 years, there are some that'll last for 300 years and that's a great way to preserve some information as long as we remember that you will still need the hardware that's gonna operate that disk, the software that's gonna read the files and then of course an operating system that's gonna make it all work together. I don't know about you guys but my personal computer doesn't even have a CD drive anymore so we're already seeing a move away from that form of media. So the chances are in 100 or 300 years for someone to be able to use that CD, it's pretty unlikely. So we wanna make sure that we are migrating our data for the future of our collections. Okay, so as I said, duplication does not equal preservation but there are still some safety principles that we can keep in mind when we are looking to keep our data safe and in our new digital collection objects. The first principle is locks and that is lots of copies keep stuff safe. And the 3-2-1 rule really kinda is very similar to that goes off that where you wanna try and keep at least three copies in at least two file formats and at least one other geographic location. So for example what I do if I get a digital photograph, I will save it as a JPEG, I'll save it as a TIFF file and I'll also save it as a PDF and that is something that I have on a local server and that's something that I also have on a cloud server. So when you look at that other geographic location, ideally that other geographic location isn't just down the street or another building on your campus but someplace that's really in a different area of the country that's gonna be experiencing different natural disasters and those things. So that can actually be pretty easily achieved though with using cloud storage. Okay, so lots of new things to think about with our digital collections but there is a silver lining. The storage for these things really does keep getting cheaper and cheaper. Most of us should be able to afford a removable hard drive or afford to use some form of cloud storage and that can be as simple as Google Drive a Dropbox. At some point you'll reach a need to pay if you have enough material but these are great ways to get it started and that cloud storage like I said is gonna offer you this extra protection that we can't offer any of our old, sorry not, well they're our old but any of our other types of collection objects I can't physically put a textile in two places but I could do that with a digital object and potentially save it from some form of natural disaster. Well, there we go, okay. So one thing we really just wanna do is try and set a state ahead of the game. As I said it's really been a struggle for me to figure out how to deal with this stuff and look for resources and findings to help me do this but one thing that we can all easily do now is think about when these donations are coming in is it a file format that you can even read? If someone's trying to give you Photoshop files or AutoCAD files, maybe they can provide you that instead in a PDF, something that's easily readable for you, non-proprietary that's gonna be available for a long time and also think of a storage device. There could be some really great information on that floppy drive or that floppy disk but if you don't have a way to read it it's really not gonna do any good in your collection or it's gonna cost you money to try and get it migrated over to a new and so it would be worth asking your donors if that's something they can do or saying you know what, that's great, we only take PDFs, we only take tests, we only take JPEGs, things of that sort. Unfortunately, when you have a technological realm like this that is going to be changing so quickly it means our resources for managing these digital collections are gonna be changing just as quickly, so our best bet at this point as I can see is to look for our publications that have less lead time. There are some conservatives that have some digital collections material, they are actually a bit older themselves, they're about 10 years but they are well written and easy to read and will certainly get you in there and familiar with some of these new kind of digital collection preservation issues and just kind of familiar with the terminology. Another way that I think we can stay on top of caring for something that's kind of an emerging and changing aspect of our profession is professional development opportunities. Those are areas where we're gonna be able to just meet with colleagues and interact with others and see what they are going to be doing in their collections, maybe it'll work for you, issues they've seen, ways they've found to solve those problems so they can be a great way to network and learn about new collection resources. So we should talk a little bit about resources for professional development. It's important in probably all professions but I think especially in ours that we stay on top of where our profession is going and we keep our knowledge current, not only for our own future but for the future of the collections that we are entrusted with. One thing that I always think about is when I'm doing things I don't ever wanna be someone who my successors will shake their fist at and be like, oh I can't believe she did that so I wanna make sure that I am staying on top of things and that no one in the future will disparage my name. So many professional development opportunities are out there for all of us to keep growing in our professions and of course you guys are doing it right now. There are lots and lots of webinars in this particular community that are great resources for you. There's gonna be workshops and training courses. A lot of times I find that those are easiest when I go through my state or my regional museum organizations because they're closer to me and it's a lot easier for me to try to get to a workshop or a training course. That's also something that I would encourage you to think about even setting up on your own. If you've got a large amount of staff members that are interested in a particular topic and you all are looking to grow your knowledge and resources on, you may be able to bring in a consultant or a specialist to do your own workshop or your own training course. It can be a more economical option rather than sending a whole bunch of people off to do something than to just have a person come to you. It could be a great way for you to build a relationship with other museums in your area who may have the same interest in a workshop or a training course and then they can also help you foot the bill for bringing in your specialist. If you wanna take it even further there are lots of educational options. So certificates and graduate degree programs. There's a pretty good amount of programs out there. You are far less likely to find an undergraduate program for museum studies, but most certainly there are graduate programs and certificate programs in the museum studies department and in the archival and library science section as well. A good way to get you started if that's something that you're interested in and you think you might like to have a graduate degree or certificate. There are program listings on Global Museum. There's also listings on the American Alliance of Museums website and the Society for American Archivists. All have program listings for things that you can try and find something close to you or some sort of program that's gonna work out with your needs. Go back just real quick. So I will say that you wanna make sure that when you are looking into programs that you're really looking to see with that particular program is going to be offering for you because there are a lot of programs out there with museum studies that are gonna focus on a particular area of interest. And if you are in an art museum and looking to grow that specific knowledge, you know a program that's gonna be particularly focused on natural history may not be a great fit for you. So make sure that when you're looking at those programs, you're really getting a good breakdown of course offerings and you're talking to instructors and knowing that it's gonna meet your needs. And the same thing is gonna go for archival programs. If you think you'd like to add some of that. Archival programs tend to be tucked in with either museum studies degrees or library and information science degrees. So you wanna make sure you're looking at a program that isn't very, very heavily focused on the library aspect and is only really offering you a few courses in archival and archival resources if that is the goal that you're looking for. There are also fully online programs. Those are an option for both full graduate degrees and certificates. Obviously there are some great advantages to those. You wouldn't have to probably move across the country, leave a job, something like that. But there's also gonna be a drawback to that type of learning environment as well. You won't have that face to face interaction with your cohort, with your professors, with just the other advantages that you get in being on a campus. A lot of times that's gonna offer on the job kind of working experience and just great relationship building when you can be in that face to face environment. It's a lot harder to network in an online community the same way that you can face to face in the classroom. So you can look at those lists. There are many, many options. You can always, of course, ask others for advice, but like John said earlier, when you'll see a question on the list there that's like, oh, what's the best database program? If you post that like, oh, what's the best graduate program? It's gonna be very far reaching options or responses and maybe not necessarily the most useful thing to look. Okay, so for those of you who have downloaded the handouts or when you do download the handouts, you'll realize that there really is a good amount of information on there. Like John said, they're not exhaustive, but there's an awful lot there. So one thing I wanna say is don't be overwhelmed by all of the resources that are on those lists. There's a lot of good information, but you're gonna have to figure out what works best for you. Maybe you have some particular projects that you know you need to beef up your research on and you want more resources on. Perhaps you're doing a storage move and you're having dreams of that or nightmares of that. So that's gonna be an area that you can hone in and start to build your knowledge on. If you have areas of serious concern, maybe you do not have an integrated pest management plan, then that's gonna be a place for you to really focus on and try and get that knowledge under your belt so something that you can deal with. For me, I have my own physical bookshelf and I have a virtual bookshelf. So there are certain resources that are just invaluable that you've gotta have, but there are gonna be also ones that you can just build a browser bar for. I have a lot of sites that I continually visit for collections care resources. I use a lot of conserver grams and the preservation leaflets so I can just grab those real quick when I'm on my internet browser. But of course, for really, really good ones, you always wanna print because you never know when a URL is gonna change. Or for me, I like to just take them over to my processing table and have those resources right with me when I'm working. So again, budget bookshelf. Many of us are, if not all of us, have a budget that we really need to stick to. There are gonna be those resources that are just completely invaluable that you'll wanna try and budget for. Different for everyone, for me. You know that museum registration methods. I have always gone back to that book. Marie Malaro's illegal primer on museum collections, that is one that I have put colored sticky notes in and helps my administration make points to the board with before. Those are just invaluable resources that I can't imagine not having. But I do, of course, take advantage of the online resources. We all have a budget, that's the reality. And of course, I have a bit of an advantage because I am in a library. Our archives are located in an academic library. So someday I'll figure out who designed our stacks layout and I will buy them a coffee because the closest shelf of books to my desk happens to be where all of the museum resources are. So that's a great advantage for me. But even if you are not in a library, you can still take that same advantage. Even though I'm at a private university, we are a public building. Our catalogs are online. So if you just kind of wanted to shop around and see what a local library has, you should be able to look at their online catalog. You should be able to visit and see what sorts of things that you can take advantage of their close to you or if you want to just kind of preview a resource and see if you want to be purchasing it. There's also a wonderful thing called special borrowers. Something that my library does and I know a lot of other libraries also take part in is even if you're not connected to the university in some way, you can become a special borrower and get borrowing privileges from the library. And it may be through another university. It could even be through public library. But I would just say that just know that even though you're not necessarily connected to some of those resources that are physically close to you, you may still be able to take advantage of them. All right. So I think we will open this up to questions now. Okay. There haven't been very many questions. We're gonna put a question for you guys into the chat box. I'm gonna do it right now. So we'd like to know what's your favorite collections care resource and then we'll start with these collections. Linda Endersley. Oh, Mike just made a really nice thing. So here, you can put it in here. Does anyone know, i.e. John, when the next edition of museum registration methods is coming out? We hope that that will be in December of this year or of next year of 2019. It's being edited by Tony Kaiser of the World War II Museum and I and we are so far we're on track for that but we're a long way to go yet and it'll depend partly on the publisher schedule but we tentatively have it planned for late November or December of 2019. Okay. And when does the preventive conservation book that Elkin's Norris book come out and where can people get it? Okay, I'm going to post over in the chat box the link to the website for the book and as far as when it's going to come out, I do not know. I had expected it frankly to be out already and I've not checked with Lisa and Chris to see what the current holdup is on things. Okay. But it should be out very soon. It was as far as I know it was due out this year. Okay. Okay, so I just put this link in that will get you to the webpage for the book and it might provide more up-to-date information. Okay. And then Jean Le Pen said that there are emulators where you can put stuff in and it will emulate even back to the ENIAC that he says they're not accepted by the software industry for copyright reasons. That's just a comment. And Amy Hammond said any suggestions on how to stay updated on materials, bubble wrap and glassing for example are now controversial. So I think, oh, you want to go ahead? Go ahead, Carol. Oh, you go ahead, Carol. For one thing I would say, when we're staying up-to-date on some of those really useful resources like museum registration methods, obviously those kind of older types of materials aren't going to be mentioned. And even just looking into what is available on our trusted vendors, the sorts of things that they are selling but we still have to be a little bit careful with that too, that some of those things may be hanging on longer than they should. And that's also the kind of question you can post to a site like Museum L or the collection stewardship list. Used to be the registrar's list where you can post that out and you'll get responses back from your professional colleagues, not just from the general public that can tell you that, yes, that bubble wrap is still considered a no-no because it's primarily PVC plastic and the bubbles deflate and that kind of thing. That's the kind of thing where it's probably advisable to check with colleagues if you don't know which literature to go to. And you can always post questions like that in our forum. And as I said, got an answer from a conservator. So go to one website, sign up for the new one. John, we're now connecting to Colorful Care. C2C is no longer, it became one. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That's okay. There was a question. See how fast that's changed? Yeah, and I just want to point out, we have about almost 1,000 resources in our resource library. So I try to collect resources from elsewhere and from us. We also have now I think about 130 webinar recordings that you can listen to for free. So take advantage of what we have. Let's see. Does anyone know of a graduate program for both library and museum studies? The only one I know of is one I teach in. So I'm a bit prejudiced, but Kent State University has a museum studies program in their School of Information and Library Sciences. The museum component, the museum studies component is all online. But if you look at the iSchool at Kent State, you can find information there. There may be others. I am not aware of any others out there that are both library and museum studies. Karen, do you know of any? I don't. I do know like at the University of Denver, we have both programs and you very often see a mix of students going between those two classes. So you may find that there's a school that offers a library science degree and a museum studies degree that are willing to work with you on your curriculum and your interests. That would let you kind of meet both needs. Okay. Stephen Toth asked if there are questions, if there are books that you can recommend on theory and philosophy of collecting artworks. I'll toss that one to Karen. I don't do art. Yeah, I'm gonna say that I'm sure there are things out there. I did start in art history, but I'm so far down in a pretty strict collections management path that it's not something I am up to date on. Yeah, I think there's been a lot published along those lines in the last 10, 15 years. Yeah. There's historic overviews as well. Yeah, and that whole thing is changing a great deal. Okay, Norah Schneider says, what would be the top resources you would recommend for someone who just became a part-time collections manager of a small historical society who has a background in history, but not a museum background? Go to Connecting to Collections Care website. We have had, and that's Norah, you're exactly the kind of person our website is for, and our whole program is for. You might also look at AASLH, the American Association for State and Local History, and you take a look at the handout Karen and I have on the basic library, the basic bookshelf, and you can go through those and see what titles look like they might be apt. And you could look at the AASLH program, Small Museum Pro, which is an accreditation program for people in small museums that are just in your situation. And that was started in New Mexico. So also Norah, I assume everyone can see the poll responses, right? So as you look through those, you see a lot of references to the National Park Service Conservagrams, Canadian Conservation Institute, and of course that Museum Registration Methods. And I think those are things that you seek out. I've always really loved the way that the information is just presented in those. It's very easy to understand and implement. Pretty straight to the point and very, very helpful, I think for anyone at any point of their career, but I think those would be some really great places to start. Bridget Jensen says, how would one begin reassessing collections, policies, and systems? There are a lot of steps and an overwhelming amount of reputable information. What is step one? I think step one is to take a look at your present policies and see if they're working. Are they doing what they're supposed to do or not? And begin assessing them one by one. And so don't think of it as all of your policies, but break them down to the individual things, the accessioning policy, the acquisition policy, the collection use and access. And go through them one by one and see what's going on. Make a list of the problems that your museum has and see what policies you need. Policies should be written to help you resolve problems. So if you have problems, you either need to rework the policy that addresses that problem or perhaps write one to address it. There, if I can toot my own horn a little bit, there is some information on how to do that in Things Great and Small, the Museum Collections Management Policies, which is now out in a second edition. Yeah, and also, you could take a look at the steps program from ASLH, which has a workbook which is worth the price of admission because it goes down, it breaks all these things down into small steps and says, if you are at this level, then you're this and it's very good. Bailey Yoder said, we recently acquired a collection from a separate museum and it's never been properly cataloged or stored. We are getting a brand-new storage for the collection, but what would be step one in assessing the condition of the collection and how to properly organize? Definitely, we'll look at Angela Kipp's book. Yeah, and I think Angela would tell you to start with an inventory to figure out what you've got before you go any further, take photographs, and then you can start breaking it out by materials or storage needs or what looks like it needs a lot of work. But I'd start with that initial inventory so you can figure it out. And, Bailey, there is a Connecting to Collections Care webinar that Angela did in 2000, two years ago. So check our website and you'll find it. And it's called assessing or getting a handle on accessioned things. I would also add her for... It's the same title as your book. Yeah, managing previously unmanaged collection. Yeah, sorry. Go ahead, Karen. If it's possible for Bailey, of course, if you're taking on a collection that's previously unmanaged, you may be also welcoming in some other pests and things like that that you do not want to have come into your new storage collection area. So if you could do some assessment and some inventory in an area away from everything else, that would be great in case you are ending up inventorying some live things. You didn't realize we're coming in with your donation. Great. And Elizabeth Cesar says, not sure if people saw the collection, the question about whether or not people have played monopop the month. You'll have to say it, John. No one can pronounce it. It's fine. Yeah. John's game and what their results were. So you could put that in the chat box if you have. Yeah, and I want to remind people about the evaluation. I'm going to stick it over here. Evaluations are really important. And there was a question about packing materials. And I wanted to say that in December, we're going to do a webinar on packing materials for moving and storage. And that's going to be done by somebody from Boxard. It should be really good. And then our second course, which is coming up in November, is going to be on different aspects of moving museums, on aspects that aren't usually covered. So that should be coming up, be posted fairly soon. So keep an eye on the website. And just to remind everybody, any recording, if you no longer see it on our website, see the advertising slide, it's been moved into the archives. And everything, the PowerPoint slides, the recording, all handouts are then available. And you can listen to them at your leisure. And what else? And the other question I get asked is, why don't I publish the webinars that are happening until about a month before they happen? And the reason is that I've found that if I do that, people sign up, and then they forget that it's happening no matter how much we remind them. So they always get posted about a month before. So that's why. Let's see, are there any other questions here? And Lori Benson said, send questions to the Connecting to Collections Care Forum and do that. Sign up for the new forum. We're happy to answer questions. I have an army of young conservators that answer questions. And if they don't know an answer offhand, they will research it and get back to you. And I remind them that the people that we're serving are small and mid-sized institutions. And so the answers need to be appropriate for the people we serve. Steph Bantoff in Prague says, do you recommend any collections management software? That's going to depend entirely on the collection and how it's used. I don't think you can make any recommendations for one-size-fits-all. I would say that you want to look for a relational database. You want to look for one that allows plenty of room for growth. And you want one that allows you to do things like loan forms, condition reports, link ancillary information back to your objects, and do lots of kinds of searches. But I would not want to recommend any one product. There are a lot available right now. But you do want to shop very carefully. Not all of them do the same thing. And they vary quite a bit in price. So John, what about when people first began having databases, they would have the board treasurer's husband who was a software engineer design a collection. And now he's dead. And there are only two people who can run it. What do you recommend about that? That's why I think going with commercial databases is much better than having them written in-house. Because frequently, the designer writes it in a way that it makes it difficult to transfer the data into another database. You should assume that no database will last forever. At some point, you will need to transfer that information into another database. And so I would look for one that is on a known platform and will be fairly easy to transfer if you can make that judgment. I would certainly, in most cases, avoid in-house written databases. Because they tend to be so institutional specific that they can't be transferred later. Yeah, thanks. I will certainly agree as someone who inherited a homegrown database and then had to transfer it to something that was commercially available. You always want to leave your successors and your collection objects that you care so much about in good hands. And part of that is going to be a way that people can gain access to information without you. If you are the training manual for your database and you decide that maybe you win the lottery and you're going to move to an island, you need to leave people with a way to learn that system. And going with a commercial system is a way to ensure that other people are going to be able to operate it as well. I tell my students, your database and all of your procedures and processes and collection management should be able to pass the bus test. And that is if you walk out the door and get run over by a bus, can someone else come in to your office and figure out what you were doing without going through an enormous amount of work? Your operation should be transparent and easily understood because people are ephemeral and the collections are not. I can also attest to remembering you telling us that. And I have that throughout my entire career. I always thought, OK, is someone going to be able to understand this if I do not walk in the door tomorrow? Not from a bus, but winning the lottery. Right. Vincent said, my problem is not so much with homegrown database as with software companies that are too small and eventually fold leaving customers in the lurch. Well, yes, that's a problem. Kind of like buying an automobile. It's not going to last forever. You do need to budget for replacing your database probably within five, six, seven years. Or at least, and do frequent upgrades. Because when you are left in the lurch, you need to have that data uniform that you can transfer it to. The smaller companies do tend to go under faster, but that can happen with any database. And the solution with that is picking something that is very standard and staying in touch with the database company. Make sure you do all the upgrades, but keep planning for that transfer. It is an ongoing expense. Right. And of course, when you're looking at those software systems, making sure that they have an easy way for you to extract all that information that you've put into it. So even if the company doesn't fold, but you've decided that there's another program that's really going to serve your needs better, if you can export that information into a usable form. That's for me when I traveled from a homegrown database to another one, the only reason I could do that was because I did luckily have the ability to export all of the information we had in a usable form that could be uploaded. So when you're searching for collections management software, make sure that you've got that element that you can get your data back out. Yeah, that's right. So I think we're going to call it a day. And please remember to fill in the evaluation. I really appreciate that. And let's see, we have another thing. Not all information is online. Yeah, we just wanted to remind you that not everything is online. A good library is going to have information in print that you will not find digitized. And I think our last message is the one thing that makes the museum feel so interesting to us, which is you never stop learning. Right, right. And so thank you all very much. Join us next month. Early in the month, we're going to have a webinar on feathers. Later in the month, we're going to start our first course on export.