 Mike will welcome back everyone. It's so great to see so many familiar faces saying hello in that chat box It looks like we have about a hundred and twenty eight folks logged in it to this meeting room right now As Mike said continue to say hello in that chat box and throughout Feel free to post any technical issues if you have questions for our speaker today Feel free to post them there as well, and I will hold on to them and make sure we ask her as soon as we have breaks So this course is just one of many in our series caring for yesterday's treasures today Since we log launch the series in January We've completed six courses with a seventh on its way if you missed any of those courses You are or you're simply interested in going back through the material We've got everything from webinar recordings to resource links on the online community. So make sure to check that out Today's course in this entire series has been made possible through a lore Bush 21st century librarian program grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services So we owe a huge Huge thanks to them. We're also fortunate to have Mike on board with learning times to help us with these webinars and also our website So before we move on to our topic today, let me just quickly review a few things including the course schedule After today will be halfway through this course if you can believe it. We'll meet again on Next week on Tuesday November 12th at 2 p.m. You'll log in just as you've done today To officially complete this course. We just ask a few things from you one that you've registered online So we have your information We ask that you watch all four webinars whether you log in live like you've done now or if you're watching this as a Recording and the final requirement for this course is to complete all four homework assignments And we'll provide you with links to those you'll also see them on the course web page as soon as they become available And everything is due no later than Wednesday November 21st Sorry Thursday November 21st Let's see and everything that you need as I said is located on the course homepage From PDFs of the handouts to resource links to those homework links And as always if you have questions, just let us know email us or call us Now today, we have a great presentation plan for you a lot of fantastic Examples on how to showcase collections care in a lot of unique ways And I'm really pleased to introduce to you all l'array um fleet l'array comes to us from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Where she not only serves as the administrator for the education and outreach branch through the Office of Archives and History But she is also the chief of collections management in both her roles She manages how the agency cares for Collects stores and exhibits the objects and it's custody l'array. Thank you so much for joining us I'm going to go ahead and move this out of the way and hand things over to you Thank You Jenny Apologies ahead of time. I was sick last week And I hope that I will not have any problems with my voice while we're talking But please accept my apologies in advance if it happens but I Just wanted to share some things that I've been observing and seeing and doing as I've been traveling around North Carolina in the US discussing outreach to improve collections care and disaster preparedness because in my world disaster preparedness is part of caring for your collection and I work with museum library and archives professionals across the board I am a museum's person first and foremost, but I have archival training and I've worked in the library So I've been aware of multiple hats and understand all the various things that go on in all those different types of institutions Inside North Carolina We've been seeking methods to increase our awareness of small and big things that can be done to highlight the needs of the stuff And our custody be at books photographs artwork objects Unfortunately, I don't get to go out and about and play tourists very much because I'm too busy doing the work that I'm doing But I will share you some examples of things that I've seen in North Carolina and in other sites around the country and even I saw some things that I really liked in other countries This presentation will be part advocacy ideas part fundraising ideas and all about how to highlight our work to share and save the stuff of history There are additional webinars on advocacy activities and on fundraising for collections care But in my world these things are also tightly tied together that I can't speak on one without the other But I'm going to refrain from doing too much on fundraising and advocacy, but I sometimes will have to say watch the other great webinars Let's see I think that's bad. Let me find out. There's my little button. I'm technologically disinclined everybody so my Computer skills sometimes are lacking So I'm going to start off with a poll Jenny if you could throw the first one up there for folks to see I'd like to know if any of our institutions that are participating have done outreach that feature collections care in any of the following Examples exhibits blogs newsletters Wow A lot of people have done exhibits So I Wanted to review some of the facts and challenges that we're facing when we're doing these types of things on this nice So museums Have consistently seen decreases in funding for collections care while collections are increasing Exponentially, I'm sure everyone sees that Museum and storage isn't growing, but the number of things coming into the museum is growing. Wow. It looks like a Good number of folks have done exhibits great and Also, we're seeing that in some places visitation is staying the same whereas in other types of museums is dipping and Are is it that we're just touching a smaller percentage of a larger population? Those things are interesting little topics to think about and how do we continue to care for our collections with sleek shrinking budgets? Those are all problems that everybody is facing and the Heritage Health Index which was a project of Heritage Preservation funded in 2010 or 2005 excuse me they published Survey study results that's called a public trust at risk the Heritage Health Index report on the state of America's collections and As a result of these surveys they traveled around the country surveying institutions They concluded that their immediate action was needed to prevent the loss of a hundred and ninety million Artifacts that are in need of conservation treatment and the report Generated by the Heritage Health Index made four recommendations that institutions must give priority to providing safe conditions for their collections That every collecting institution must develop an emergency plan and protect its collections and train staff to carry it out That every institution must assign responsibility for caring for collections to members of its staff and Individuals at all levels of government and in the private sector must assume responsibility for providing the support that will allow these collections to survive Further they have a Heritage Health Index discovered that most institutions don't even have small budgets for collections care And of those who do most have less than three thousand dollars allocated annually So today's topic fits several of these broad recommendations from the HHI the Heritage Health Index In that we are striving to share with visitors and stakeholders the things we do to provide safe conditions through proper housing Storage and exhibits and through the use of trained staff Further outreach activities search to engage our visitors and leadership by explaining the back of the house activities So that they can accommodate the collections needs when making policy and funding decisions so the poll numbers were pretty interesting a good number of us have done exhibits I like that and The next poll question sort of is a follow-up to that Jenny and do you feel that these programs were successful and Your measure of success can be any number of things, but do people feel that the things they did were successful? It's getting getting on the good side. Yes About 70% of you feel like it was a good thing to do an exhibit or a brochure or an outreach tool To share our collections needs. Okay, great Many times programs have goals and it's nice to see that many people Viewed that you've met your goals. Sometimes these goals are visitor participation. Sometimes it's fundraising Sometimes it's simply awareness and sometimes we need to recruit volunteers to help us in the cataloging and tours and all the things that we do and I Wanted to in a little bit talk about some shifts that we're seeing in museum paradigms And it's related to what visitors expect to see what the stuff that we have and they want to see it new and in innovative ways and Museum next is a blog Out there on the web that I really like and they had a post on shifting museum business models And it's it's potentially radical, but it's innovative and it could send us some of us thinking about the way we do in a little bit different way and the post the writer believed that Changes could be in the engagement between people in the museum Breaking down the traditional barriers between the institution and the community Embracing the idea of the museum as a third space and inviting the people that we serve to suggest new ways of using the museum provoking people to recreate and to spark new interpretations of old collections and I Found an example of that this past weekend. I was talking to some 20-somethings Who are interested in history tangentially and I asked them a simple question. Do you go to museums and? They thought about it and they thought about it and the last time they had been to a museum was when a friend of ours got married and had their reception in the science museum underneath the dinosaurs and They thought that the museum was cool enough to warrant a visit back the next day to see the rest of the museum so we have to think about how we can attract a younger visitor, maybe one that doesn't have children, but it has different interests and Museum next is having a 2014 annual conference in England. I think we all need a field trip and they're going to investigate what's next for the museum sector how they can adapt to changing audience expectations and how technology is changing the museum and This really also applies to archives and libraries some of my library colleagues have Wondered what's the future of libraries when everything is going to digital format? Well people still need books Well the answer is yes because museums still need objects and people still need books The but you know the younger generation of Museum-goers have grown up in a tech-filled world and won a different experience We have to find ways to engage these visitors without losing sight of the original reason. We have the museum Which is in my opinion and I could hear different things from different people who work in museums but the objects the books the papers the photos of the past or the reason we're there and we need to Save those things share those things and share how we should save those things with our visitors so Next poll is one where I would like to see how people think their Programs were originated was it for fundraising was it for educational reasons? Was it just to bring in visitors? All of those things are some of our demands on our institutions And it looks like most people were wanting just to educate people. That's great Because it seems like the exhibits and programming that's built to educate people about The preservation and the conservation of our collections do much more than those who just seek to raise funds That's good. So We still have to do our jobs Whether it be that we're a registrar or a curator or a conservator We still have to do all the things we need to do and we have to incorporate yet another thing into our projects to share That with our visitors and our stakeholders so What are our reasons for doing these things? Is it fundraising or is it education? It looks like most of you believe it's education, which I think is preaching to the choir here as my mama used to say and and So when we think about fundraising though, is it to fund the conservation of the artifacts? One of our museums here in North Carolina sponsored a program That was called what so proudly we hailed conserving historic flags and it was an exhibit yet It was also a fundraising program. The primary focus was to raise funds and in that purpose They created a brochure to solicit donations and then they created a wall of givers The museum also sold stars with the donor's name on them And they were then mounted on a US flag Graphic in a stairwell at the end of the exhibit the ornament size stars were given to the donors as a thank you the project raised enough funds to cover the conservation of six flags and The exhibit did incorporate videos of flag conservation work and because it was so successful the museum then went into Doing another exhibit based on the Civil War called Fragments of War It also sought funds for the conservation of Civil War era objects now here in North Carolina Civil War cells It's the Susque Centennial say that several times fast But it's the 150th of the anniversary of the Civil War and in some worlds. It's 1863 right now and We've just fought Gettysburg and had thousands of men from all over the country dying To commemorate the war to memorialize the war there's lots being done to conserve and exhibit Civil War collections, so Anything tied to the Civil War seems to be something that drives in the visitors and also brings in supporters and advocates for your collection Now other reasons to to do fundraising related to collections care is sometimes people have to think about the very fundamental things of keeping the doors open and the lights on at museums and Driving visitors in through the door to justify yourself being open if you're a county museum might be something that you have to think about Do you use funds that you might realize from exhibits to further other aspects of your institutional mission? Those are other concepts that you have to consider when you're thinking about sharing outreach for collections care Now most of us think that the best reason for doing outreach Connected to our collections is for education is the education to teach our visitors how to care for their items at home I've seen several institutions across the country who have been providing information sessions on caring for your wedding dress and caring for the scrapbook associated with your wedding and Then our museum here in Raleigh has two conservators on staff and about twice a year We get them to do meet the conservator events. It's almost like The intrigues roadshow in that people bring in their artifacts or their objects and they ask the conservators what they're made of how to best care for them what storage tools and methods should they use and You have to make an appointment you bring in your treasures one or two items per person and The conservators will talk about basic care for those items They are we've done it four times now and each time it's booked solid And I don't think we could do any more than what we have been doing on that unless we just totally Exploded the program, but it's a useful exciting thing the press picks it up. It gets good publicity for the museum That type of event where we're bringing visitors in to teach them how to care for their items at home has an underlying secondary self-serving goal in that if people care for their items better at home When and if they are ever donated to a museum, they will better be in a better condition and less likely to need immediate conservation once they come into our collections and that's something to think about and very useful sort of Self-serving let's help them, but it helps us in the big picture sort of thing Are we there doing these exhibits to teach our visitors and donors and leadership how time-consuming meticulous and tedious our work can be I Travel around working with our colleagues and I often hear curators conservators Registrar's and others complaining about how their management whether it's the director or the board of directors they don't understand how long it takes to do simple inventory work and and How long it takes to conserve an object or oversee a large collection from acceptance into the collections and Then to exhibit so do we need to do things to educate our stakeholders in the form of our bosses? What we do and how we do it and It's always fun to show what's cool behind the ropes and in the stacks to both our colleagues and to our bosses and to our visitors and One really neat and fun thing. I've seen that we one of my colleagues in Indiana is doing at the Indiana Who's your heritage Alliance Indiana history dot org? They have a graphic novel that they've developed and it's the agents of deterioration and Their little descriptive blurb says I am hero and in Enthusiastic volunteer begins his first day at the museum and realizes it is under attack by deteriorate deteriora And her evil agents will the heroes save the museum? How will he defeat the agents of destruction who will help him find the answers and others in their graphic novel online? And it's a unique way to share not only the challenges we face and caring for our objects but also to engage our colleagues and our visitors in learning those kinds of things too and hands-on components and exhibits are a great way to share the things we do and Someone suggested one time that we should do a program that explains what makes things fall apart to kids What sorts of things do? Kids understand as far as What might cause rust what might a moth do to? Rug and those sorts of things and getting kids to really think about the damage to everyday items that Mold and light and mildew might cause to our collections Next we go how to share behind the ropes how do we Think about different ways to bring people into these areas and This isn't going to be a comprehensive list of all the different successful things These are just some that I found out there across the country that are useful And I highly encourage people to do something that Lori Foley and I have called R&D Rip off and duplicate if there's something here you like that you can adapt to your institution go for it Rip it off and duplicate it. You don't even have to give us credit But if you're copying something that another institution is doing please point to them and say This was a great example that they did in Virginia, and I just think that we might need to try this at our institution So here's some I've broken it into three basic sort of categories. We've got exhibits I'm trying to play with my little mouse here exhibits Programming and social media and these are very broad topics that We can think about in an umbrella sort of way and this is like the 30,000 30,000 foot review of some of these things simply because There's so many interesting ways we can share what we do So under exhibits we can think about conservators under glass and we've all seen it We've seen it when it didn't work and we've seen it when it did work When larger institutions have the ability to have conservators on staff many will incorporate Conservators into exhibit spaces with windows into labs or scheduling days when the conservators in the gallery or a visiting space Discussing care for the collection Some institutions that don't have conservators on staff will build into contractual agreements with conservators They hire that they will provide a presentation on the work done for the institution either in gallery tours Lectures or demonstrations For those small guys who are hiring these these conservators to do special work While you have that level of expertise available to you make the most of their time on your dime to Share what they're doing and saving your collections I see the question over there from Jenny Lori from St. Paul was asking if we charge for the care For your own items event and no we don't we don't do any conservation care for them We just provide our expertise and you know explanations for what you should do and we have samples of acid-free boxes and tissues and The Cindy from Buffalo has asked that she she says that she's had requests to appraise items But I really don't have the background in this area and would this be something profitable that others have done Museum professionals typically don't provide Appraisal values. It's a conflict of interest and you get into a whole weird level of ethics issues Some institutions have had the equivalent of the antiques Roadshow at their institution and they charge per person or per item for someone to come in and bring their item and then there are you know Appraisers that have been brought in sometimes the appraisers donate their services sometimes appraisers want a Fee to speak and participate that's something you'd have to negotiate with either local or national appraisers and then the people bring in their stuff they have it appraised and That's between them and the appraiser the museum is just a venue for that sort of thing to happen they those types of events seem to Ebb and flow and sometimes they're very well attended and other times they're not sometimes an Institutional offer at year one and in year two it just doesn't do as well as it did in year one And then year three is better than year one ever hoped to be so and I don't know that we know Why those things happen? but with American Pickers and some of the other TV shows that are coming around with reality TV it does add a whole extra level of Consideration with television and mass media So back to our examples of successes and failures we have Conservation matters under exhibits and that's the title of an exhibit that was done here in North Carolina and Some of these institutions that I've talked to and looked at have sought to create exhibits specifically designed to showcase conservation care needs as a way to seek funding for those needs and Sometimes they want to share the cool stuff that you do to care for the collections In doing a survey of exhibits on collections care issues There's a wide variety of success and failure stories in terms of visitation or funds In some of the examples I'll discuss in a while today. I'll sometimes keep some anonymity for folks who wish to protect the guilty Conservators by nature are reluctant to share all their secrets with the lay people But there are ways that they can teach what they know in a basic way and instruct Without encouraging visitors to go home and try something that might be detrimental to a family heirloom There's always a point where you can't do anything else to an object You have to have that level of knowledge that a conservator has So knowing when you've reached your limit in both the museum world and the private, you know world is a very important thing so another museum and My survey sought to generate an exhibit of decorative arts items in their collection that had either been conserved or needed conservation work sort of a before-and-after set of examples with photographs and The actual items the end result of the exhibit was that funds were raised and items were conserved but the structure of the exhibit meant that it was I saw low attendance and Maybe they didn't drive as many people through the door as they had hoped to but The governing board became more aware of that aspect of museum work than they had ever had before So that's a victory when your policy makers understand more so what it means to do the things that you do that's a win Another museum has incorporated the conservators under glass again but tactile demonstration materials have augmented the conservators so outside of the conservation area there are hands-on activities where people can see and feel and Touch estimate what types of damage has occurred to an object and and see things change over time Why one exhibit works and another flops in terms of visitation or donations might be related to exhibit design or the purpose of the exhibit? I'll not go into exhibit design here But exhibits must capture the visitors attention and keep it regardless of the topic for it to succeed in whatever goal has been to us assigned to it So into programming We have a variety of things that have been done in programming adopt an artifact programs top-ten endangered artifacts programs and I do just Google adopt an artifact and you'll get hundreds and hundreds of hits So many museums have incorporated adopt an artifact program into their funding activities Most have identified for potential donors on their websites a series of objects needing specific Specific care and they already have dollar amounts attached to the item to cover the conservation care Which that's an easy Easy fix for the donor. I want to give to this artifact click click click and it's done Identification of it in endangered artifacts at an institutional level has been amped up in several states As they embark on advocacy campaigns Called the top ten endangered artifacts programs these programs grow out of the national connecting to collections movement sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services in response to the heritage health index that I read to you earlier We lovingly refer to it as the HHI The HHI showed that institutions don't adequately plan for collections care issues at some states Sought methods to help institutions find funds for collections care by showcasing items in need of care Along the line of the adopt an artifact programs. We'll discuss these in a little bit and then we have conservator curator tours and If you Google curator tour or conservator tour those things will start popping out too and These are sort of the behind-the-scenes tours with the conservators and curators for small groups It has to be a small group if you're taking them into your conservation lab or into your collection storage It has to be small. It has to be intimate and these are often special interest groups such as veterans Civil War Revolutionary War history buffs or collectors of certain types of things whether they're cars books or photographs These tours are sometimes requested by the group Sometimes arranged is ticketing fundraising events and sometimes they're free and scheduled as part of the day's admission to a cider museum and it really just depends on what the goal is of the staff in developing these behind-the-scenes tours Specialized behind-the-scenes tours are intimate as I said because you can't get very many people in those spaces and But they are very valuable in that you can incubate dedicated donors volunteers and benefactors Then we have social media and and that's just everything from Facebook to blog posts to Twitter and Flickr and all these great things that are out there to help us share our stuff and Many institutions are using the power of technology to share behind-the-rope stories These stories can be fascinating and can incorporate a lot of images video and interactive tools that we may not be able to put into an exhibit for technology reasons or for funding barriers and You can even demonstrate technologies with overlays such as infrared lighting digital scanning and refractive imaging and Give even deeper views of the objects under discussion Blog posts are a really easy tool to augment. What was once the newsletter? Newsletters were once a big and powerful tool now. They've shrunk and people are moving to online delivery of that information and blogs can expand on those things Ask a curator is a Twitter world thing. It's a Twitterverse idea and Twitter it seems to be a younger person sort of thing in their 20s, but I'm not quite sure I Twitter all the time I tweet tweet tweet two or three times a day at least and You just have to use a hundred and forty characters of the last to get your point across and one of the best examples of Twitter that we've used here in the Department of Cultural Resources is when we're doing recovery projects to bring Submerged cannons and anchors from a shipwreck to the boats above the water line We've used Twitter to track, you know first cannon is nearly above the surface. It's almost on the boat and we have video streaming and we can point between the video streaming and the Twitter to ask people to really pay attention and follow and Ask a curator is a Twitter feed where curators have attempted to use Twitterers and curators in conversations about what it means to be a curator and I'll talk about that in a little bit more, too I have a couple questions over here Melissa said that she participated in ask a curate ask a curator day But it was overwhelming and I'm not sure we got anything out of it. Is it measurable at all? in the materials But for more information materials, I have a couple of links about the ask a curator day including a blog post where there was an analysis of this most recent ask a curator day in September of this past year and unfortunately, it looks like it was curators talking to curators and colleagues talking to colleagues and very little of Joke you public asking a curator. How cool is it to work in a museum? So I don't know if it's a success. It's great to interact with our colleagues and But I don't I don't really know what the future is for ask a curator and Maria has asked is their state or government funding for outreach Programming and there are some federal programs in the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the NEH the National Endowment for Humanities where you can induce some outreach programming I know the NEH through their individual state re-granting programs you can have Speakers humanity speakers come to your institution and speak on any number of topics related to the humanities and so having a conservator or a historian or a conservator historian duo come and feature a specific wonderful argument artifact from your collection and Discuss, you know, what it is how it was made what it meant to whomever used it and created it and then how we care for it would be a great program and Many of those speaker series projects can be completely funded with grants to fund speakers to come to your institution So I want to ask you a question. This is a new one Jenny For those of you whose institutions have Facebook accounts Does the feed feature mainly events or does it incorporate collections activities? I don't have a poll for it. I just thought of it today, but I'd like to see what comes through in the Tap box to see you know Do do people who have Facebook accounts use it to share what they're doing with their artifacts and their collection activities? Or is it more about? Well, we're having a Christmas open house coming up this weekend. Please come or or things like that. So We'll see what comes through on that on webcasts and webcams and webinars Well, we're enjoying a webinar right now and so I don't need to preach to the choir about that one, but Webcasts and webcams are two things that we need to investigate to and some Institutions are toying with the conservator under glass concept using webcams I'm not sure how popular it is particularly if the cameras are mounted at a distance from the action and Watching somebody dutifully working at their desk isn't really riveting and how long will somebody watch that? without some interpretation So I don't know how how great that's kind of go, but I would be interested to watch We've also toyed with scheduled times to turn on webcams in the Large lab where we're conserving shipwreck pieces But we haven't gone more beyond talking about it Mostly because the conservators are a little hesitant to think that they're going to be on screen 24-7 so More work to be done there and I'll discuss our webcasts in a couple of slides from now So why not share? For all the reasons that I've given so far to share there are reasons that we probably shouldn't share Now this link that I have here is a blog post mainly about improving and increasing access to collections and Allowing reproductions whether they're physical or digital by our visitors of our museum pieces But some of the reluctance about opening up in those ways are some of the same concerns that we might see in the other Realms that we're looking for here's a quote from that blog post some collection stewards steeped as they are in professional Artifact protection standards are reluctant to shift towards more open version of institutional access that engagement advocates promote Do these two directives and perspectives have to be at odds can collections access be a way to entice new audiences? So some of the reasons for not doing these things It's a potential increase of risk of damage for our objects if you bring someone into collection storage and They trip and fall and knock over a mean vase There's a new problem that you didn't have before It takes a lot of staff time to build new programs and develop exhibits that work even open storage exhibits Need much in the way of planning and labeling to make it understandable for visitors And then there's the reputation the article speaks about Institutions who are reluctant to share images of the collections with visitors for fear that the reputation of the museum might be Affected through association or a perceived endorsement of a product that might be less than scholarly The same could apply to institutional reluctance to open the door to storage and show the dilapidated parts of our collections Collections deteriorate. It's a fact of life But some institutions have sped up the deterioration through improper handling storage and exhibition So do you see that failure as something you want to cover up or if you're making changes and doing improvements? Do you want to show that you're acknowledging your past wrongs and now you're improving and sharing the new system a Risk assessment might help curators collections managers and conservators decide of opening up collection storage labs or exhibits for collections care is a feasible option or if the spaces are just too sensitive or insecure or if the other limits to accessing those back of the House activities it may be an option to consider ways to bring the back of the house to the front of the house for limited engagements there might also be restrictions on access to your collections particularly when it comes to Restrictions provided by donors for example the Smithsonian Native American Museum has quite a few sensitive materials in its collection that Some things can't be viewed by women. Some things can't be touched by women. Some things have to face a specific direction and Other restrictions might apply to pieces in your collections. So you have to acknowledge that there's those problems as well So looking at some of the feedback from my earlier question There's been a lot of folks who have having events at their institutions and they're using Facebook to share that information Some people are using Facebook however to showcase an artifact and the history behind it and that's really cool Facebook's very friendly for quick little blurbs. Here's a great artifact in our collection And this is what we've done to it and to for it not to it for it so the beginning of why Lori and Jenny roped to meet in to talking to you about behind the ropes Because of a recent webcast on collections care that we presented The Queen Anne's Revenge is a shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina. It was a pirate ship. It belonged to Blackbeard It was grounded in Beaufort Harbor in 1718 and it sank as a result of the grounding Blackbeard called it Well, you could have thought of Blackbeard as a modern corporate giant because it was a way for him to Lose a ship and all the crew that it meant to run that ship and so he was downsizing but what he left behind for us and our modern archaeologist is a treasure trove of artifacts and We have been conserving pulling up and conserving parts of the ship for 10 years now and It's been problems with funding. It's been problems with access and all sorts of different things but it's been really interesting and great experience and From the beginning We've used the Queen Anne's Revenge and the items that we've brought up from the QAR for Queen Anne's Revenge As a way of teaching conservation along the way You can't just pull that anchor up off the ocean floor as we are showing you in the second on the bottom We're pulling it out of the ocean and then show it to you the next day It's got to take a long time to stabilize remove all those Concretions and the sponges and the the critters that have called at home for so long and make it ready for exhibition And so we're taking these opportunities to explain conservation care all along the way the photograph at the bottom right shows you Concretion that's what we call it when a clump of stuff from the boat has merged itself together And I'm no tech me purse techie person, but that's what it is. And so we can see that there's you know ceramics and calipers and Led shot and cannon shot all merged together from the shipwreck and it takes our conservators quite a long time to separate these things individually and to sell and to make them ready for exhibition and We've been working on it for all these years. We have a dedicated conservation lab We're partnering with East Carolina University in the eastern part of the state and so the lab isn't generally open to the public However, we do have visit the lab days where the conservators take Opportunity to share Sections of the lab with the visitors one of the coolest things that people like to see are all the cannons There's 20 some cannon that have been pulled off the bottom of the ocean and that huge anchor And they're all still in huge tanks being conserved slowly as they you know get the salts out and all the concretions off of them so visitors love seeing the tanks with the objects awaiting conservation and The conservators take small things around and share the conservation discussions in Tabletop displays wherever they can whether it's to a school or a local history day and a few conserved pieces They're also there all in the custody of the conservators We also use it as an opportunity to discuss Publicity we have webcasts of the cannon raisings We have press days the press gets to go out on the boat and Float above the site and watch the cannon break the surface of the ocean Magazine and newspaper articles it whenever something new happens with the Queen Anne's Revenge It gets coverage worldwide and that translates into more care for our collection in the form of excitement visitation donations and those things Our biggest benefit in this particular topic is that it has to do with pirates Pirates are cool. I don't care if you're five or fifty pirates are cool so we have the benefit of the topic related to these artifacts and With Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean it just went over the top for the last few years We've taken the Queen Anne's Revenge and we moved into a new realm in June of this past year We offered a webcast on the conservation of the artifacts To classrooms we chose a day in June when it was that little sweet spot between when they really stopped teaching information and they start testing that information and We broadcast to 493 classrooms from 196 schools And it was in 51 counties in the state plus four outside states So we assume that we've reached almost 12,000 students in that 45 minute webcast and the webcast Rotated through discussions with historians and archaeologists and conservators The historians set the stage for blackbeard and the grounding of the ship the archaeologists discussed how they do underwater archaeology including dive equipment some of the feedback was you know asking about their their dive gear and The archaeologists explained the process for documenting and bringing up the objects Then the conservator discussed the basics of conservation of submerged objects and the time that it takes to remove the salts Clean away the encrusted materials and make the items ready for viewing and she had some of her tools and Handled them and showed them to the camera about what she did and how she did it It's not perfect. It was our first try and we use live stream as basis to offer that Webcast and we can stream the video live and sponsor a chat live in that Livestream broadcast we then transfer the video to YouTube after it's in the can and we just need some more funding and We will be able to toggle between screens interject digital media and do other things with the broadcast to make us look more like your nighttime TV news broadcast we're working on it and The program did result in increased attendance at the museum over the next couple of weeks as children who had watched the program visited the Museum to see the stuff that they had been hearing about on the screen Museum staff had multiple anecdotes about children and families coming to programs about the qar and It was so successful that we decided we needed to do it again So we did it again and Our hook was the Civil War as I said the Civil War self in North Carolina and the rest of the eastern part of the country and It's the 150th and we had multiple target audience for this particular project We had museum workers who are caring for textiles in their collections when we go around the state talking about collections care Textiles are one of the biggest challenges for our institutions We provided information on mannequins patting out supporting weak areas of the textiles and pest management Another target audience for Civil War history boss We chose strategic pieces that reflected Major characters in the story of North Carolina in the Civil War As well as uniforms worn in iconic battles such as Gettysburg And we made sure they also had blood on them to appeal to that fascination the uniform on the left has See where's all arrow It's not wanting to move. Anyway up there goes. Sorry. I'm not technologically inclined, but the uniform on the left near the left-hand side of the waist you can see where it's discolored and that's blood for the fellow who wore this was shot and it resulted in his death and People just gravitate to that kind of morbid stuff But we also had to acknowledge that that blood is part of the story that uniform and if our conservator completely removes the blood We would remove Yes, something that's going to deteriorate that part of the uniform but it would also remove what makes it so interesting and We didn't really target children so very much because this wasn't something that we could see through to the other side to make it accessible to the kids in the classroom We had a couple hundred people register for the webcast if you are actually watched it but many did ask specific questions in the chat about some of the materials and techniques and Then we've had a good number of hits on the web on the YouTube video. So I Couldn't offer a textiles workshop and reach 200 people in 45 minutes, but our webcast is able to do that and And The chance to ask questions in the emails and live chats gave another level of interaction and we did get some people needing more specific information How to care for something in their collection and that was able to help us In large what the program meant for us and for others So in our little feedback area, let me check Laura from Wheaton, Illinois said one of the management concerns with highlighting or making materials more accessible off-site is It fear that such access will discourage in-person visits to our collection The fear becomes that the more items we highlight the more we undermine our physical and institutional existence Any ideas how I can better educate our management about this fear I'm a learn-by-doing kind of person and I think maybe if you take a small example And you do it well, it might prove and demonstrate how other things can be used in that way I don't know. I'll think about that one some more and Marsha wanted to ask from Northern California. What are the costs for the Q a r promotions and display? the We're lucky in that most of the things that we do are driven by staff that we have existing on site and in our DCR Department of Cultural Resources realm with archaeologists and conservators and videographers and web people and so the actual costs are minimal for us and it would be I Wouldn't even know how to begin to go about Explaining that now for the exhibits that we've done we've done exhibits in the Museum of History in Raleigh Which is about three hours away from the shipwreck and in the Maritime Museum in Beaufort, which is where the shipwreck is? We have a permanent exhibit in Beaufort and a traveling exhibit that visited the Museum of History and is going around the state right now and that's just basic costs for what exhibit would be to Show artifacts from the shipwreck because they're already conserved once they've made it to the exhibition level of things We do however have a couple of tanks that we send around with stuff still in it. That's awaiting conservation It's usually stable things that can handle that type of travel and our conservators routinely visit the artifacts on exhibit to make sure that they're weathering the exhibits well and that Deterioration isn't started because of higher humidity and things like that So it'd be kind of hard for me to come up with a cost estimate on those things So I'm going on to our next slide We're going to do another one coming soon to a computer near you will be our next webcast on flag conservation and North Carolina has the third largest number of Confederate flags in the country and it's a huge collection to care for some of them are like the shattered silk flag at the top left some of them are like the wool cotton flag to the right and There's different costs associated with either one of those and it's tied to a fundraising program Which is our next slide our adoptive flag program at the Museum of History and This is a screenshot from the 26th North Carolina Regiment. It's a reenactor group that has both People who do reenactments of the Civil War But also people who are descended from men who fought in the 26th, North Carolina in the Civil War So as I said, North Carolina has a large flag collection and we have a hundred and twelve and our founder back in the early Time period for our museum began collecting flags and military in the 1880s 33 captured flags were given back to North Carolina in 1905 by the War Department In his process of collecting mr. Olds promised a moth proof and fireproof storage and display area So he was ahead of his time must have been a great sales pitch because he managed to get lots and lots of flags and lots and lots of uniforms So we're partnering with a variety of Civil War history groups from the sons of confederate veterans To reenactment groups to bring the attention to the flags in need of care They seek a variety of ways to raise funds on our behalf and as I said the 26th is the most coordinated and other states have similar civil war Oriented adopt an artifact programs Illinois I found they're doing the same thing with some of their flags and then there's battlefield preservation groups Who are seeking to preserve battlefields by the acreage and prevent development on those pieces of property? Which is a whole other set of issues So we collaborate with those groups who are interested in our flags And so that means we have a group of enthusiastic backers you need to find who your enthusiastic backers are at your museum or your institution and cultivate them and find a great time to make something happen an anniversary of something or other such You know the anniversary of the founding of the institution or the anniversary of the event represented by the artifact and Give them an exciting product The groups that have been raising funds Just recently there was a 12-mile march to raise funds for flag conservation And they I think they followed a historic route for the men who marched under that flag and Collected funds for every person who walked X number of miles and once these flags are conserved. We give them a great dedication and bailing ceremony at the museum and Many of these groups bring musicians and costumed living history folks into the museum for the day And it turns into a win-win for them and our museum because they get to celebrate the Saving of a flag and we get to have great and wonderful dedicated individuals playing great music and walking around in their uniforms for the day at the museum So that's that's a great example of how these partnerships can work forward together So I'm going to I've moved from Overviews in now. I'm going to look at some more specific Explanations for some things that other people have done and exhibits are one of these things that are Great tools for sharing these sorts of things and the Austrian Museum of Folk life and folk art is a good one Their emphasis isn't on museum professionals teaching skills or demonstrating actions It's on discussion about those skills and our actions and objects They chose to put the experience out on the exhibit floor rather than bringing people into the conservation and registration areas Maybe a logistical choice galleries however are better suited for public engagement But it's also great because they're taking the experience to the visitor Although the visitors love to see all the neat stuff in our back work rooms. Maybe it would work better to take it out to them the Pennsylvania anthropology museum the pen Has an artifact lab a both blog called the inner in the artifact lab and Conservators under glass and exhibits that all work together and they say it's part exhibition part working laboratory It's a glass enclosed conservation lab that brings visitors right into the museum conservators world See the tools of the trade and watch as conservators work on a ride array of Egyptian artifacts right now So you get people who love Egyptian stuff and mummies included So it's a 2000 square foot exhibition that incorporates both the lab and the exhibit and the hands-on materials They show folks things in various stages of conservation And and discussing how it moves from study preparation cleaning mending conserving to the exhibit And they have a scheduled ask question times daily twice a day and that really helps people plan when they want to be in the gallery to ask questions and It's complimented by the blog So if you're really interested in what you saw you can read the blog and see more read more about it So it's a it's a double whammy thing that gives you lots and lots more information about that sort of experience with both the web and the visible in the space Everybody I'm pretty sure is familiar with the Star Spangled Banner project for the Smithsonian That was one of the first ones that I really went. Wow a long time ago it was a three-year project to conserve the flag and rehouse it for exhibition and There's lots of great information both in the Smithsonian and on the web about the construction of the flag the conservation of the flag both historically and now and Part of the exhibit makes it clear that we're working to save this for future generations and It that was also part of a smaller exhibit I viewed at Colonial Williamsburg where I visited a textile exhibit in the DeWatt Wallace Gallery and The Exhibit gallery was dark and there were lots of textiles and storage trays and you had to pull the tray out to see the objects inside the tray and There were labels in there, but it was part open storage part cabinet of Curiosity sort of thing, but all preservation and it was a really useful informational tool So Jessica from Mexico is asking is there a way to get these numbers on how exhibits have benefited museums with these stats And may be easier to propose something similar for other museums and institutions. I don't know if there's a national set of statistics We've we've seen Um, national statistics on visitation, but I don't know that anyone has seen anything specifically about Traveling to these types of exhibits. Um, it might be that we need to If there's an exhibit that you like that you've seen at another institution You might want to call your colleague and ask for some of those statistics So let me move on. I'm starting to get behind schedule Jenny's saying hurry up hurry up So Quickly a case study and I've already discussed it a little bit on the conservation matters exhibit. This is a before-and-after shot of Blanket chest in the museum and I asked as I was saying with our folks Ask your Institution that you're visiting ask a Colleague how do you think the exhibit went so I asked the director of the museum that sponsored the conservation matters Exhibit what she thought about it and she said after the successful flag exhibit that raised funds for conservation They then committed to doubling and increasing their overall annual conservation budget So it sold the idea of conservation budgets to it to their board and to their visitors They did the conservation matters exhibit that featured many of the pieces of the wooden furniture in the collection They featured pre and post images of pieces in the labels So many times you got to see the pre image and then the actual artifact was in front of you They also developed Interactive cards with visitors particularly younger ones Asking questions like which piece of furniture appears to be the oldest which was the heaviest How might you conserve this piece and then why don't we restore our furniture and they thought to delineate the difference between restoration and conservation which is a you know a big discussion that I will not go on to in here but we all understand that concept and She also said that the exhibition centerpiece was a 19th century card table that was in desperate need of conservation Before it could be put on long-term exhibit. They did a video of the conservator examining the piece and identifying the treatment needs They included treatment estimates as label copy and then they had a donor who gave the full cost to the treatment for the table and It will be installed in a long-term 19th century Decree March gallery soon It didn't turn out to be a draw for visitors. They didn't think that the title helped conservation matters We get it. We got what they were going for, but I don't know that Joe Q. Pollock did and I asked the curator about the same exhibit and She considered it a passive approach They had hoped that doing the exhibit with labels that explain what conservations is why we do it and asking for contributions Would raise more funds than it did But the rat card they developed and some of the other tools They don't it didn't raise as much as they hoped for but every bit that gets raised is more than you had in my opinion And I'm a visitor who pays attention to such things. I visited this exhibit. I really enjoyed it I spent longer in it than anybody else in my group and then I went to the gift shop because that's what you're supposed to do and In the gift shop there was a corner where visitors could purchase acid free boards folders boxes and tissue paper and The curator and her staff had developed a flyer to teach some of the basics of storing your treasures so this is more of that how to care for your personal items at home and Translating what the museum does in the professional world into the private world And that was a really really great thing to have that stuff in the gift shop And it was just a little corner and it really wasn't a whole lot, but it was there and I thought it was super cool So conservators under glass the this is from the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab and The director there She told me that the conservators put that up because People give tours in the lab. They don't stay open for tours regularly, but when they're giving tours in the lab The conservators told her that the Conservators attention was very very often focused on the objects They were working on and through microscopes and with machinery that makes noise and Unexpected groups suddenly surrounding them at the microscope can be very startling and could cause them to inadvertently damage the item That they were working on So the staff who are the non-conservators who are taking people through the labs have started to observe a greater personal space Around the conservators working in the lab It's it's really cute. Don't tap the glass. It scares the conservators But I heard the same thing from another conservator who was working at ground zero on one of the steel beams that was salvaged from the World Trade Center site and She was often she wasn't there as a conservator under glass But there were glass windows where people could look in and see what she was doing and she would oftentimes get very startled to look up and see a whole wall of people looking at what she was doing extremely concerned Just because of the nature of the system that she was working on and then another part of conservators under glass is the webcam and The conservator working at their microscope in the back of the picture There is only interesting if you get some sort of inside scoop on what she's doing Simply aiming a camera at a conservator and putting in a glass wall won't serve to educate Unless you give some context and interpretation on what they're working on how they're working and why they're doing what they're doing In a guided tour scenario, it's easy for the donors docents to be prepped daily weekly with the schedule much like the Penn Museum incorporates the technology with the blog and Other information in the exhibit space to tell you what the conservators doing You need to do the same thing with webcams if you ever consider doing a webcam situation So programming Behind the scenes tours top 10 most endangered projects. Those are the kinds of things that I'm talking about with programming And I've included a variety of things under the broad heading from tours to advocacy campaigns Anything you can do to share with the world of potential visitors Volunteers supporters and donors what you have done or are doing to preserve the heritage is worthy of consideration and analysis You should also success and failure study and under an estimate the cost associated with those activities I encourage you to at least try a small thing to advocate share your collections care challenges and successes I just have a few examples here the old Royal Naval College That's the restoration of a historic interior with guided tours and scaffolding there's a lot of detail on their website about mobility and safety issues for this particular tour and Really at its basic level. This is a historic house museum and And historic house museums have a unique role in the type of programming because in many instances The house or the building is the largest artifact Whenever work is being done on the exterior interior elements of these structures tours should seek to include information on the work being done what materials are being used and How they're saving Augmenting the original elements and how things are being conserved and preserved One of the historic house museums where I was once the curator under winter major renovation after paint analysis we opted to keep the house open repainted and we incorporated the up sound upside down nature of the repairs and Renovation into both standard and behind-the-scenes tours with the curator and the painters We were unique in that we were using traditional painting techniques and tools and mixing our paints from scratch Further we were keeping the furniture in the house rather than transporting it to an off-site location simply because it wasn't feasible So our drawing room was temporary storage Visitors enjoyed seeing the backs of things that they didn't normally see particularly long-time supporters who saw the house the same way for 20 years If you move it around they find it interesting so historic house museums have unique ways to do what they do in addition to Just talking about the house is the artifact moving the stuff around talking about Dust covers on furniture in the summer to protect it from bugs and things like that Colonial Williamsburg does some of those things with seasonal interpretations and Moving things out of sunlight and windows But they also have as part of the regular ticket price package prices Regularly scheduled tours with conservators and their curators and their reservations are necessary And then there's the standard Curator-conservator tour in the gallery the National World War two museum describes It's behind the scenes tour as a chance to discuss the American World War two experience with your guide Who cares for museum artifacts creates exhibits and is an expert on World War two the tour doesn't come cheap But for the true World War two fanatic, it's an amazing adventure. So I mean how better to sell that that's pretty neat I could not find how cheap that tour is on their website And I didn't have the guts to call them and ask them that either but They did have a whole section dedicated to specialized tours for veterans and things like that Sometimes the curator conservator tours are additional and ticketed events that are geared to specific interest groups or benefactors These intimate talks engender much support for the work we do behind the ropes to save the treasures of our institutions I recently saw a blog post of a private individual who took a behind-the-scenes tour The photos and descriptions of what he saw and learned conveyed just how special the experience was for him And also made me want to go for a visit to that institution and try to get back there in this text too So it it really is a multiple effect once somebody takes that experience to the internet and gets other people Enthusied about your site And then the top ten endangered Artifacts program Virginia started it in 2011 with their first set of nominees and honorees And like I said earlier it grew out of the Connecting to Collections project from IMLS And the project staff envisioned that the media needed a hook to get interested in collections their stories and sustaining our collections The way it works is the institutions aren't asked to nominate one of their options objects as endangered in the need of care The list is vetted by professional conservators and then the top ten are selected for additional publicity and advocacy They receive additional airtime and many of the objects that have been featured have now been conserved using funds realized as part of the publicity One of the questions is this bad thing to be on the list all of the artifacts in the care of the institutions are threatened and This is a way to share and highlight the important work done at the institution and the goals That they have for maintaining the collection. So no, it's not a bad thing after Virginia's lead other states followed suit Pennsylvania has a successful program and they've taken it to a new level and they are asking people to donate for their favorite items on the website and those funds go to the institutions who are featured and North Carolina is one of those We're not sure where we are in the grand scheme of things yet because an institution in North Carolina is the North Carolina Preservation Consortium Has started a top ten project in North Carolina However, both Virginia and Pennsylvania have benefited from grants to spend large chunks of money on marketing dollars North Carolina Preservation Consortium has Offered their project with little funding and lots of skepticism. We're facing more of the isn't it a bad thing to show off your damaged goods And we just don't have the marketing staff to help us, but we'll get there and we'll find a way to make it work Jenny's telling me I have ten minutes The adopt an artifact program we have a poll question does your institution have an adopt an artifact program and I saw one institution sell it as You know, here's something you can do for your Hard to buy for individual You may not be able to find something at the mall for your individual But you certainly can donate to our museum and we'll send them a note that we've adopted their artifact Some are passive some are aggressive But all need to do something to find someone interested in their collection to adopt an artifact and this steps into the fundraising world And I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but it's a way to share with potential donors What you have in your collection that needs some care and demonstrate how you are hoping that you can care for things in a multiple of different ways tying into North Carolina's adoptive flag program. We also have had issues because we had large numbers of flags in framed cases now and We needed some way to store them in storage when people came to look at them. So we have a new rack system and the little signage on the Rack is at the right side of your screen if I tell you about it. There it is. There's the adopt an artifact program I'm sorry and There's our adopt a flag thing and right there on the on the rack is a little note This is funds for the purchase of this flag were given by the Sun's Confederate Veterans So it shows us the benefit of the adopt a flag and adopt an artifact program Here we are. Here's another case study conservation lab tours So we have several archeological Collections that are represented in our conservation lab tours that I talked to people about The Maryland archeological lab does hands-on activities with school groups not with actual artifacts, but ones to Show how it's done with non artifact things And these are a couple of photographs of some of the work they do there's Conservator talking to a school group about the conservation of a group of iron artifacts from Jamestown And another one is students looking at ship timbers that are submerged in water that were retrieved from the side of the World Trade Center So that's an interesting way to bring in people who may not come any other way to learn about conservation work So we have media and this is everything from Twitter to Facebook and blogs and back again So we talked about ask a curator a little bit earlier and The statistics were in 2013 that 366 museums in 37 countries participated with over 26,000 tweets Some of the summary showed that it was colleagues not lay people interacting and one analysis I gave you the links in the for more information section said that the most important question Was in case of a zombie attack what objects would you grab to ensure survival? So what do you have in your collection that would help you survive a zombie attack? I thought that was interesting not really a good use of the collection, but might be who knows But Facebook we all saw that we have Facebook posts and I was just tuning around Facebook for conservation projects And I found the Peabody Museum and this is an image from the Peabody Museum Facebook page And they're doing some preservation work on Alaskan kayaks and they found Alaskan kayak builders who were very useful in helping them understand How the kayaks were built what they were made of why they were built the way that they were built and what needed to be done to preserve and conserve them and This is one of those discussions about using constituent communities to help you with your projects And I'll do I'll talk about that more in our next slide For blogs many museums have blogs I've included some sample blogs in the more information document and sometimes blog posts are for the public to look in the back rooms Sometimes they're to share really cool stuff that's been discovered uncovered donated and sometimes they're for our museum colleagues much like today's webinar Multiple audiences can be difficult to navigate, but you can do it for example the Smithsonian had a Meet the conservator blog post specifically geared the Girl Scouts It was part of a Girl Scout program and it described described what the curator did in the exhibit in the lab What her best moment was an advice for careers and she took time to respond to comments So she posted her blog post talked with the Girl Scouts And then they asked her questions through the blog and it was a nice Interchange she took the time to respond even over a period of days to the questions on the blog post And then the Folger Shakespeare Library had a really neat one about what's the smell and the Folger Library focuses Generally on books and papers, but they had an artifact exhibit in the form of Costuming associated with some of the plays that were put on and So the the staff of the Folger not typically handling textiles was very intrigued by what they saw when the textile conservator was doing their job and they wrote about it in their blog post took lots of photographs and Then they Discussed how they installed the exhibit and then a few days after the installation of the exhibit in the cases One of the people at the Folger had to open up the case to check on something and it smelled horribly like body odor in there and it was the room that residue from the costume and Oh, it's kind of neat So we can learn from ourselves still to And I've been talking about webcasts and webcams plenty I have a question for folks though, and this isn't a poll question It's just if you've ever watched a webcam. Do you watch it for more than two minutes? Is it really useful to have conservators under glass with webcams and you can just reply over in the side Jenny You'll catch what's good Making Jenny work today So Next we were talking about those constituent communities and by that I mean for example, Native American tribes and African-American communities and Women's groups or Masonic groups Sometimes there may be additional sensitivity in the care for those objects This isn't central to our presentation, but I thought certain cultural groups have rules on handling collections orientation care and navigating that can be difficult when you think about opening up your storage and So on the photos here, I have on the left Project that was done with the Tuscarora. That's a Native American tribe from North Carolina and there was a massacre of Tuscarora tribe at in 17 after the Tuscarora war in 1711 and a collaborative project improved understanding between The white community and the Tuscarora community and you see the Tuscarora descendant looking on map and a professor from East Carolina University happy that they are collaborating and sharing their community heritage and Then at the top right we have an image of the King Kamehameha statue in Hawaii undergoing conservation repair and the conservator Glen Wharton was careful to research the significance of the object to the community and it Changed his viewpoint. Who is he responsible to to the object to the funders to the community? That can travel through to other objects for our work Who are we holding our outreach room to is that our obligation to the object and protecting it while we're sharing it? Is it to those whose money we're seeking for conservation care to fund a new rack of shelves? Or is it to the greater community that our museum serves and offering a window to a collection? Those are all questions that we need to ask ourselves when we're working on these things Always consider Your constituent communities as a valuable asset they offer of knowledge about the youth creation and history of objects tied to their particular interests Quick poll has your institution involved constituent communities and represented by your collections While we're doing that. I'm going to move to my next slide. I'm almost done Pushing my limit here This is a fundraising little bit of a slide here. Oh, yes. Good. Good. That's encouraging Controlling the story is is important you need to have a commitment to the conservation needs of your collection And that needs to permeate all your messages and it needs to be coherent and cohesive and it will continue to build support across your realm Inside your museum inside your leadership and inside the Community as a whole Good sixty percent. It looks like how thought to involve the sectors. Good. Good. Thank you So plan and manage your project your commitment to conservation needs to permeate messaging. I thought gosh That is a sad chair in that picture What better piece of their collection to show than that one to say please take your photograph with us and help us save our stuff very neat and Finally find what sells in your collection and promote it One of my the folks I was asking questions of she said if your only goal is to drive visitors through the door Conservation exhibits may not be the right choice. However, I have seen instances where they work The key is to find what sells in your museum. She told me that if it wasn't pirates Zombies or dinosaurs people wouldn't come but I think if we do it, right? They will come the key is to find what sells whether it's the Civil War the Pirates the teapots or the constituent community and highlight that to your visitors and Your funders and participation and ownership of the museum will increase and One last slide. I wanted to share with everyone is preservation week That's in April next year and there are many national movements to bring attention to preservation concerns Preservation week was started by the American Library Association to highlight what can be done to protect both personal and shared Collections it's growing beyond libraries and now incorporates museums and archives I encourage everyone to visit the work site work website and see what you can do to participate It's not too late. They have useful tools on their website and a great deal in the form of preservation resources And one plug for heritage preservation may day. It's just do one thing to improve your disaster preparedness So I'm going to wrap it up. Does Jenny or Lori have anything they'd like to say about preservation week? Well, it's a fantastic resource and also you'll see this is Jenny You also see on their website folks can enter in what they're doing as As they participate in preservation week a lot of great ideas I am going to Larry just quickly pull over the assignment for today So you guys have a link and I'm also going to ask it looks like Folks watching in groups. It hasn't been as frequent, but if you are watching in a group Please go ahead and list all your group members in this chat box and Larry We have about five more minutes. So if anyone can get in any last-minute questions All right, and you'll see one from Cindy over here. She's curious in in these public venues and events How do you prevent thievery? She knows it's concerned with their paper archives. All right. Yes The casual thief is the one that you have to worry about you need to keep keep things so that it's secure and I guess it would depend on your space and and how you frame your exhibit or your outreach activity and You definitely need to have if it's if it's just on a table and you're talking about it with folks You need to have good command of your space and perhaps more than one individual at the table talking about the items that you're sharing with the public If possible sometimes I've encouraged people to have high-quality Reproductions of some of the pieces that they're sharing particularly if what they're talking about is fragile and light-sensitive that a high-quality reproduction of the piece in question serves as a Method to convey how important it is to protect that item that you're talking about so if you have An important document for your region's history and you're having a history day session and you need to bring the document bring a copy and Part of the discussion needs to be this is a reproduction and this is why it's a reproduction, but Thievery does pose problems and it kind of depends on on the scenario that you're in as to how you prevent such things All right Well, it looks like we are all out of questions. Lorette. What a fantastic presentation And I'm sure everyone is walking away now with a great idea some things to try So thank you so much. You're welcome. It's fun. Yeah, and we'll see everyone back here on Tuesday at 2 o'clock for our third webinar which will be about talking to the media so sharing all these this great work that you all are doing and We'll see you then everyone. Have a fantastic afternoon. Thank you