 We welcome you to say hello at the, when the session starts, we'll be removing that. Okay, thank you, Kristen, and welcome, everybody. I know many of us here today are really chilly. Some of you were probably chilly a couple of days ago. And so hopefully we're all keeping warm. And today we're going to talk about staff and volunteer management for collections care. And this is really going to be specifically geared towards collections care, staff and volunteer management in general. So please remember that because we can really get off onto a lot of tangents in our questions. So what we want to think about for our collections is that they really can run into problems from many different quarters. We can put things on exhibit and in preparation for exhibit while on exhibit, while coming out of exhibit, we can cause damage to our collections, as many of us know. Especially if we remember back to the webinar on environment that Tara did, light is particularly damaging. And so, but so is the handling and we really want to think about that. We can run risks to our collections through theft and that's either through poor security at our institution. It could be not having proper exhibit cases or not having proper oversight of our exhibits. Or it could unfortunately in many ways be from inside theft. And we don't like to think about that but we have to remember it. It could be from people using our collections for research. For those of us in the library and archival world, we are very familiar with this. Even worse if your research collections circulate. But even within the museum world, we do have people coming in and doing research. We want to be sure that any of these collection materials that they are using are being handled properly. And that could be internal research, it could be external research. And then our education programs. Many of us will do lectures to the public, lectures to our academic institution. And we really would like to use as many of our original collection materials as we can. But we need to remember that in the presentation of these programs, there can be a lot of damage. I just remember one institution I worked at had a great architecture program. And the architecture students would come into the special collections. And get a lecture on how to use the research materials. And they would have all of these great big architecture books laid out. And then they would take their notebooks and tear off a sheet of paper. Put it down over a drawing in the book and start tracing it. And we had to do some training for the staff first before we did training for the students. But there are a lot of ways our materials can get damaged. And staff, volunteers, and the general public can really cause unintentional damage when handling collections objects. Most people do not go into an institution with the intent of doing damage. But most do not. And as Tracy says, the poor volunteer in Spain who touched on the mural, who of course got very vilified. And for those of you who don't know about it, we will be sure to get the link up for you. It's rather scary. You know, she did not go into that restoration project intending to cause so much damage. But that's what's happened in the end. So we really need to be aware of these issues. So what we're really going to get into talking about today is we're going to talk a bit about assessing skills. We're going to talk a bit about attracting, retaining, and managing our volunteers. But then we're really going to focus on how and do training in collections care for our staff and our volunteers. So we're going to start off by talking about how to go about doing a skills assessment. It's really good to think about periodically doing this for staff and volunteers, especially if you're developing a new strategic plan and you want to be sure that you have the staff to be able to carry out this strategic plan, or if you use a lot of volunteers, that you have the volunteers who can carry out the tasks that you need them to. If you want to be doing this part of doing an assessment is really trying to combat the inadequacy, what you want to do is combat the in-at-feelings. I'm getting all tongue-tied today. It must be the cold. You want to combat the feelings of inadequacy and the upset that could come by doing a skills assessment after somebody's already been on the job for quite a while. With really good communication, make sure everybody understands that what you're trying to do is to get a sense of where the institution is now so that you know what you need to do to fulfill these goals of your strategic plan. Ideally, you're going to be doing the skills assessment as you bring staff and volunteer on. You can do this either with maybe a physical test. If you're having volunteers or staff make boxes, have them do a simple origami. It's a way to test their skills and how they can follow directions, how they can measure, how they can read a diagram. Some people just don't have that skill, and you want to be sure that you're giving the right people the right types of tasks. You can also do it through surveys and questionnaires. This is a way that you can bring out unknown details or those hidden depths in your staff or your volunteers that really have applicable skills. For example, you have a staff member and their job is cataloging. They do all of your cataloging, but it turns out one of their hobbies is quilt making. They're a sewer. You need somebody to help you create curtains to block out light in the storage area or to make covers for the exhibit cases because you can't turn the lights off, so you want to be sure you cover them when you're not open so that they're not getting excessive light. Here is somebody on staff that may be willing to do this as part of their job because they have those skills, but it's not a skill you would necessarily know about without asking. We really want to think about how we're approaching both our staff and our volunteers, and we could do that through surveys or questionnaires. The Collections Australia site that you've been doing a lot of reading or skimming out of has in their chapter 5 on managing people a really good long, but good demonstration of how you can go about speaking here predominantly to volunteers and finding just the right volunteers that you need. The Yale Peabody Museum has in their volunteer application a questionnaire to find out just what skills people have that they may not think is applicable, so it could be a really good, a couple of good examples. As is, oh thank you Tracy, you can find dexterity assessments, so for anybody who's going to be doing any sort of box making or maybe even setting up exhibits, making exhibit cradles, if you have volunteers doing that, the dexterity assessments are really good. So you need to be thinking of this in terms of how you are going to be going about assessing these skills. Really remember if you're doing it for your staff that you need to communicate why you are doing it and that it's not going to be a way to decrease anybody's salary or make anybody lose their job. You just want to find out what you have so that you can become better in the future and that's really something that communication is going to be very important when it comes to staff in this respect. So there's not a lot to say on assessing skills, sometimes you just need to dive in and do it and so what we're going to talk about now are our volunteers and so what I'd like to do is bring over a series of poll questions now to give me some idea of just who we are, who we have in this group so that I know how to tailor this talk a little bit better. So if Kristin can pull that open that would be great. So first off, does your institution currently have volunteers that work on collections activities? And Ellen has made a good point that a lot of us may have volunteers that aren't necessarily there willingly, they're there to do community service so one of the things you may have to really consider is are your community service volunteers actually doing any sort of collections care work or are they doing something else because remember what we're really talking about today are staff and volunteers that are working in collections care. So we want to be thinking about what volunteers so the second question I had was for those who don't currently have volunteers are you planning on having some? It seemed to be pretty well, almost evenly balanced here for those folks who didn't have volunteers. And so what I want, the last question that I have, I think we're done with question one. So the last question that I really had was if you don't have volunteers does your institution have policies that prevent you from using them? And I have worked in institutions where we have had part of our staff has been unionized and because we had union staff we could not take on volunteers and so you may be in that sort of situation as well but it looks like most of us don't really have policies that prevent us from having volunteers so that's good because volunteers in many ways can come in and be of great benefit but we want to be sure that we are having them in the right locations so I'm going to then keep going here so if Kristin you can pull that last poll question off we really want to think about volunteers and so there's a good chunk of us that do and so we want to think about how we are attracting, retaining and managing our volunteers and we could in many ways think about how are we attracting, retaining and managing our staff here as well but for many of us we bring in and do a lot of work with volunteers and most of what I'm going to be talking about in this section you can take out the word volunteer and replace it with intern because on many levels our interns are doing this voluntarily. We want to think about why people generally volunteer and this is again we're talking here by choice not by community service so we want to think about why people volunteer and many of our volunteers whether they're younger or maybe mid-career could be people who are changing careers so you may get people coming to volunteer with you because they've been a lawyer for many years and they've now decided to leave that profession and what they really want to do is work in a museum or library and so what they want to do is come volunteer with you to find out just what direction they want to go Other people may volunteer, especially retirees who want to be able to share their experience, their knowledge and their skills and be able to be around like-minded people Now any of us who have volunteers or have been a volunteer somewhere know personalities still always come into play so we have to remember some of these but in most institutions our volunteers are really here to help out and are hoping to have something that's mutually beneficial to them Now they're not getting monetary remuneration but what they are getting is a sense of community and a place to be and so we want to really think about why our volunteers are coming to us and some of us may already know this and maybe it's a good thing to ask when people are coming to volunteer, why are you volunteering? What is your interest in us? By asking that question too, by finding out their motivation you're going to be able to better place them as well because if you can tell from somebody's answer to that question that they're really not going to be here for the long term are they a volunteer that you want to put into collections care because those volunteers are really going to require a lot of training and so is that somebody that you really want to commit the time for and so things to think about so just always kind of figure out why people are volunteering because if you understand the why they're volunteering it's going to help you to figure out where their skills are going to be best used and what sorts of projects you're going to put them on so you also want to think though about what benefits you offer to volunteers is it just a place to come and be with like-minded people or do you offer them free admission, do you offer them discounts in your gift shop discounts in the cafe if you have one do you do an annual volunteer party so that they feel like they're being appreciated everybody likes to know that the time and the effort that they are putting into something whether or not they're getting paid they want to know that their work is being appreciated and so by having some of these benefits for your volunteers that's one way of saying thank you the other way of course is to just periodically say thank you for the work that they're doing and then finally do you require your volunteers to fill out an application maybe it's something just as simple as name and address and types of work they'd be interested in doing but you can ask about their skill sets you can ask about why they're volunteering and especially for interns because a lot of us could have a lot of interest by interns and we only have so many intern spots maybe you have those interested interns write a short essay on why they want to be there why do they want to go into the museum field why do they want to become librarians at least I know with my students at Simmons I don't know if many of them actually know why they want to be a librarian yet so it could be a good question to ask again do these students look like they're going to be good interns would they be somebody worth putting them really the effort of training and supervision in that they're going to require because we really need to remember that we can't just take on a volunteer and then let them at it just say hi welcome and here's what you're going to do okay now go do it okay we really need to think on the institutional level having some sort of written policy for our volunteers or our interns what are we going to expect volunteers and interns to do how much time are we going to expect them to commit during the week how much what sorts of work are we going to be willing to let them do it's going to really depend on the volunteers that you have coming in you know do you basically say for the first year all volunteers will work on this type of project or this type of position so for the first year all volunteers will be greeters in the lobby and work the information desk so they can really understand the institution better and then after they've done that they can be trained to become a docent or they can be trained to work in collections care things of that nature do you have somebody that's really there to be the supervisor for the volunteers or interns now many of us think about how we what projects we really want our interns or our volunteers to work on but then we need to remember that those projects need to be supervised by somebody on staff now of course if you are an all volunteer run group then the supervision generally falls to the more experienced volunteers to supervise the newer or the younger volunteers so we need to think about what we're doing there who's going to supervise how much time do they really have to dedicate and is that acknowledged in their general workload so that they actually have the time to supervise the interns I've really been in many positions and talked with many people and in a lot of places the quality of the intern is directly proportional to the amount of supervision that they've gotten that doesn't necessarily always ring true there are some superb volunteers that will need no supervision whatsoever and then there are going to be the volunteers that it doesn't matter how much you supervise them they're hopeless and you know that's just the way things really work we want to really think about having defined projects as well as expectations for our volunteers many places have very specific types of projects that they have interns work on one of the projects that I worked on when I was a new volunteer at the Minnesota Historical Society was cleaning basically cleaning a collection of archival records that had been in a flood and gotten moldy so as a volunteer I was trained in all of the personal protective equipment that we talked about with Tara last week and I was kitted up and put into a fume hood and given a HEPA vacuum and showed what to do and basically when I started that I was told the expectation is if you are here eight hours a week we expect you to get through X number of files in that week because they also want to be sure that you're getting the work done properly but that you're also getting the work done and you're not sitting around chatting and drinking tea and eating cookies so you know not only define the project but also define the expectations and make them very clear now for those of you who actually manage or supervise staff some of this should sound very very familiar we also want to think about making sure that on a certain level our volunteers have some sort of ownership over the work that they're doing when you're doing the training let them be able to ask questions offer their own opinions, their own observations let them offer their observations throughout because maybe there's a way of doing it that you hadn't thought about or maybe if they've got a lot of questions this would be an opportunity to teach them a little bit more especially the interns always encourage your interns and your volunteers to take some semblance of ownership and responsibility and ask the questions and then always always always always at the minimum at the end of the day sit down do some quality control and evaluate the work that they're doing let them know what they're doing well and then start to remediate what they need to improve do some extra training you know gentle reminders so that you are always making sure that your collections are being taken care of in the way that you want them to and that it's all being done safely and so it's a lot to think about and I think a lot of times it's a step that's not necessarily taken in a lot of institutions part of defining the project is thinking about how much time you have and Emily from Delaware asked what types of projects do you have two-week volunteers do and that is a really really tricky one I had a two-week intern when I was at Syracuse and it was really difficult to come up with a good project but in many ways if you've got small discreet collections taking some time to maybe re-house improve collections materials so if you have an archival collection that is just in regular folders and stuffed into a photocopy paper box and you have one box of it then maybe a good volunteer project is to transfer one-to-one all of the contents to new folders and then transfer those folders into flip top boxes and if you only really have a small discreet collection it could also be a time that if you've got one flip top box maybe two it could also be a time that you could do finding aid for something like that if you are in a museum it could be improving the storage for again another small discreet collection it's going to really depend on your two-week volunteer how many hours in each day those two-week volunteers are contributing so really for something like that the best thing is a really small discreet collection or maybe your two-week volunteer comes in the first week and helps you take down a small exhibit and then helps you to prepare and put up a new exhibit depending on how large your exhibits are that could again be something that they could help you work on in those two weeks so again it's going to depend on their skills and how many hours in each day they have but I know a lot of museum study students and library school students will do two-week mini-internships over the winter break and so that's I'm guessing Emily that that's where that question is coming in background checks I'm getting a note from Kristen that we're getting a lot of checks and I will get to talking about that in the later sections but you really for background checks you really want to think about what sort of institution you are and what in many ways what sort of access to the collections your volunteers or your interns are going to have if you are giving them free reign throughout the institution into all of the storage areas where they will be unsupervised in storage then maybe doing a background check isn't a bad idea if they're just going to be working supervised the whole time it's probably not as necessary you might also want to think do you actually do background checks on your staff because if you don't do background checks on your staff why would you do it on your volunteers especially if you're asking them for some sort of reference it's a tricky situation and one that I don't think necessarily has a good answer so we also of course love the concept of volunteers because volunteers are free we don't have to pay them we might give them some benefits we might throw a party but for the most part in our mindsets volunteers are free but remember volunteers are free like a puppy they need that supervision they need the guidance they need the positive reinforcement when they're doing something well think about we really want to think about the fact that yes we are getting work done for free but it isn't really because it is going to still take our time and our organization to make sure that it works well so for those of us for those of you who don't necessarily have the staffing to be able to manage or supervise volunteers I guess my question would be how many volunteers do you have and why are you taking on volunteers if you don't have the time to supervise them because the unsupervised volunteer can very quickly become a major problem you want to think about all of us have encountered those volunteers that have taken the ownership of what they're doing to a whole other level and you really want to keep some of that in check if you can because once it's gone beyond and that volunteer is now in their mind in charge of the institution you've really got a problem not only with how do you work with to a public relations nightmare because many of us know some of these volunteers tend to be fairly prominent in the community and really do some damage if we handle things incorrectly so that's why having specific projects having those expectations and having that supervision is so important and if you can't do that you really need to ask yourself the hard question of do we really want to take on volunteers is this the smart thing for us to do right now and that's a question I can't answer so can you take them on do you have the time do you have the staff and can you just in the bigger question can you take on volunteers or do you have policies that don't allow you to do it or do you really only have the types of projects in the collections that really don't lend themselves well to volunteers for collections care again I have in the institutions the academic institutions I've worked at I have always had people really interested in learning because I'm a book conservator predominantly wanting to learn about book binding and book repair and they really are dying to come in and volunteer and I couldn't take them on either at Northwestern or at Syracuse because we had the unions and because of the unions I couldn't take them on so remember you know if you are having people work on collections care in more of a paraprofessional staff level it could be you know or just a general staff level it could be problematic for you especially in those larger institutions do you have the right environment for it and this is where you need to think about what sort of culture do you have at your institution do you have a lot of staff members who even if you don't have a union might think that taking on volunteers is going to mean that somebody won't have a job anymore or do you have a lot of long-term employees who have always been against volunteers and you're somebody new coming in and saying well wouldn't it be great if we could take on volunteers and interns you know we could it would really help with this project it might not be the right environment because if you're a lone voice in a crowd then how do you ensure that that volunteer isn't going to be made to feel unwelcomed which is going to then be a bad situation all around for everybody and then do you have the appropriate projects for volunteers to work on if your major projects really involve a lot of detailed work in terms of collections here if it would involve spending a lot of time in the vault but you don't have anybody there to supervise it or if it involves working with say a particularly sensitive collection not so much sensitive in content but sensitive in this really need special handling and special knowledge on this topic you know maybe again that's your volunteers could be used in other places better we run into this a lot in terms of disaster response and disaster recovery so for those of you who've had a disaster you probably know the volunteers come out of the woodwork wanting to help but if they don't actually know how to handle water damaged or fire damaged collections materials they can do a lot more damage and so here would not be an appropriate project for your volunteers to work on whereas making the coffee making the hot apple cider baking the cookies to keep the people who are doing that work fed and relaxed that would be a great project you know so a non collections care project so those are some things to think about with your volunteers and I have a couple of questions is it is it required to pay workman's comp for volunteers when you do take on volunteers you really want to check with your insurance company to see what sort of coverage you are going to need in terms of liability for your volunteers I don't know of anybody who's paid workman's comp but they do have the liability insurance within their overall insurance package that will pay for you know any sort of injury so it's not necessarily workman's comp but most places that take on volunteers especially if you're taking on volunteers to work on collections care projects such as cleaning if you have your volunteers doing any sort of basic repairs that would involve any sort of sharp implements or if you have volunteers like I did with my first one working on moldy items if I had gotten ill from the mold the institutions insurance would have covered my medical expenses but luckily we were always so careful with the personal protective equipment we didn't have that but you definitely want to speak with your insurance company about the liability insurance for your volunteers what do you do if your volunteers know more than their supervisor oh Betty that's a good question that one's really really difficult because there's a couple of ways that we can approach that question does the volunteer really know more than the supervisor or do they just think they know and that can be a tricky thing as we all know sometimes it's difficult to deal with the know-it-alls I guess the question would be is when this person came to you to volunteer were they coming from the profession were they somebody who had retired from a museum and moved to a new location and now they want to volunteer for their small historical society then they may know more than their supervisor and one would hope that the supervisor would take anything that they say under advisement and thank them for the knowledge that they are sharing but also it could be a good opportunity for two-way learning the volunteer could learn that maybe coming from a larger institution to a small institution they can't do everything perfectly they can't strive for that ideal because they just don't have the money to do it they may not be able to afford all of the expensive boxes and expensive folders that the volunteer is saying they really should use but maybe then the supervisor can take the opportunity to say but what about if we just bought the acid free lignin free buffered folders could we then go with a less expensive box if we're doing the folder correctly and maybe there's a way that people can learn from each other and really strive to keep any sort of egos out of it is that easy to do? No am I good at it? not always sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not and I think it's something that you just have to work out for yourself sometimes but take it diplomatically I guess is the best word oh Karen how do you deal with those who take on ownership um in the all volunteer uh organization especially when they're the ones in charge you know that's really hard and in many of the institutions that I've worked with that have had this problem they try all sorts of different methods they try the gentle subtlety of suggestions they can try you know bluntly and then sometimes you just have to wait it out and try to do the best for the collections that you can so that they'll be stable until that person leaves the institution is that easy? no but it's really a tricky difficult sort of situation to be in and not always a good a good answer for that periodically questions like that come up on the list serves and people deal with it in many different ways and then a lot of times the final action is to just wait it out unfortunately um so always remember that volunteering is done by choice if you have people being assigned to you that's not a volunteer um volunteers will be selective of where they work when they work and what they do and so part of finding the right volunteer for your project will be trying to get at these where's, when's and what's sometimes you just have to very bluntly ask the questions and just remember these people are there by choice if they don't want to do it they will walk away hopefully and so always try to find the right volunteer or intern for the project you're working on and that just involves talking to people so I want to move on to what we're doing now and we want to think about when we're talking about training staff and volunteers in collections care we want to make sure that we are planning what we are doing we're not just going to go into this blind we want to make sure that we have activities for them especially in collections care it's all well and good to talk to somebody about how you have a tube it's an entirely different animal when you have sample quilts and sample tubes and all of the tissue and the Tyvek fabric to wrap around it and actually have them practice it it makes a huge difference and practicing on non-collections activity non-collection materials can be really helpful especially if there's going to be damage incurred if you don't do something correctly and so think about having activities have resources you know sometimes people do learn differently so some people might learn just from listening to what you're saying some people may actually have to do it to figure out how it's done and then there's going to be the people that really need that diagram and having multiple ways of sharing the information you'll be able to get across the information to everybody who's participating and then always mentor again this is taking that concept of supervision maybe to a different level and really working with the people that you're trying to train and above all have fun because people will retain the information better and they are enjoying themselves hence why I'm always putting in these funny little cartoons to give you all a little bit of a chuckle and hopefully make this a little bit more fun so that you remember what's going on so when we are thinking about planning our training sessions who is the training session for because if we are doing a training session for just staff for just volunteers we will probably take a very different approach than if we were doing it for a mixed crowd and so we really want to first of all ask ourselves who is the training for because if we're doing security training for staff it's going to be very different than security training for volunteers likewise handling practices can be very different for staff and volunteers because they're actually going to be handling different things or they need more knowledge as the staff because if you're doing training for staff it could be the sort of thing that you're training the staff to then be able to train and supervise the volunteers do you already have an existing baseline of knowledge either within your staff or your volunteers or do you need to start from scratch so do you need to plan a series of training sessions one that starts with the basics to get everybody on the same page and then subsequent workshops that can take you beyond the basic but you want to be sure everybody has that same baseline of knowledge because if you start and you train people how to pack textiles into boxes and you're talking all the time about and used buffered tissue for cottons and linens and use unbuffered tissue for silks and wools if you have people coming in that don't know the difference between cotton, linen, silk and wool or don't know the terms buffered and unbuffered it's going to be difficult for you to get really good quality work if they don't have that baseline of knowledge who's going to do the training and are they a good choice so are you going to have in-house staff do it or can you bring somebody in from the outside can you write an NEH preservation assistance grant to get in-house training for your staff and then take that training and be able to share it with the volunteers do you have somebody in your area that maybe is a retired professional that actually would be happy to become a volunteer and do this for you on a volunteer basis and then when you're thinking about doing training really try to think about in any one training session especially when you're working with collections care to focus on three main messages and repeat them over and over and over so again going back to if you're packing textiles buffered for cottons and linens unbuffered for silks and wools you're going to repeat that throughout the session every time you're talking about these sorts of materials and then think about how do you size the box so each time you're talking about storing something how do you pick the right size box or how do you decide if you're going to box or roll and so those might be the three main concepts you want to get across and you'll want to repeat them throughout the session so things to think about so that basically you don't fall out of the tree definitely think about activities for many of collections care types of projects that we are going to have staff and volunteers doing they are very much hands on sorts of things so we want to make sure we have time for activities so if you're doing in person training don't try to cram too much information into a session and I can you can probably tell from my style of teaching I really have a hard time with this but you want to make sure you have activities so that you can get people up and being active another great example any of you who've gone through CPR training know it's all well and good to listen to them talk about how you do CPR it's an entirely different thing when you get on the little well now the computerized guys I was used to recessa Annie when I started out but it's a very different thing because there's so much that people need to learn in terms of how you handle things how tightly can you hold something that's fragile how do you carefully support it so that you don't damage something when you're dealing with a crazy quilt with a lot of silk that's wanting to crumble how do you actually handle that what does it feel like when you get that in your hands and how much pressure is too much first time I did CPR I think I broke about eight ribs so I didn't I had to do it again so everybody needs to have that activity to actually really learn and ingrain those collections care techniques into their head and into their hands if you have a session with a bunch of people and you're rolling quilts or you're packing documents into crates because you're doing some disaster recovery training or you're teaching people how to clean books you want to be sure that everyone in the session has the chance to do the work and not just sit back and watch and listen it's very important some people might not feel comfortable doing this this is where having special materials that you can just use for training really helps and I can definitely put a plug in if you are looking for collection type material that you can do a lot of training on if you are in a location that actually has you take the garbage to the transfer station there's often swap shops swap shops are a great place to get sample materials but also think about your local salvation army your goodwill there's a lot of ways that you can get materials that will mimic your collection materials that people don't have to be afraid of accidentally damaging in a training session so be thinking about that and again build in some form of assessment into the training session not just for the participants but also for the trainer because you may be trying to teach people how to do things and they just don't understand it and so we need to both get feedback in these sorts of situations and so be sure that you are doing an assessment for the participants as well as for the instructor think about those resources we've all flown at one time or another we've all sat and watched the safety talk or not as the case may be over and over and over again but they also always have the little card in the seat pocket so that for those people who really just want some other way to get that information they have it and so it's really important to have support materials for any training session so for example here we've always made sure that there are links to further information you had the reading that you could do for these sessions and then also giving you the PowerPoint slides as well as the recordings so that you can go back and refer and not expected to remember everything the first time around and so this is just a way to give people the opportunity to go oh I remember they talked about that and I can't remember what they said you have those support materials to go back to another really good resource to think about would be just having in general a big binder for your staff and your volunteers on your guidelines for how to do some of these things here is our in-house manual for storing materials here is our in-house manual on how we will process collections and you know create finding aids things of that nature here is how we give things accession numbers because sometimes you might have interns or volunteers doing that having those guidelines in a very specific binder can help keep these sorts of guidelines very simple and direct bullet points lists diagrams are really really helpful think about those quick references you get when you buy new electronics ok maybe some of them aren't very good but some of them are pretty helpful they're just simple straight forward that gets you going and then depending on your audience you can always provide further readings because there are going to be some people who want to learn more hopefully those people are your interns you might have staff that's starting to get really interested in a particular aspect and they want to just improve their skills or you might just really have interested volunteers sometimes you'll get the people who really aren't interested in any further readings but having further readings for those that want it um is going to be really helpful so and then finally don't forget um to mentor do not train and abandon people because most of us know um that we have um we need to abandon people we want to regularly communicate with our staff or our volunteers on how things are going so um what I want to do now is I've got one question from Margo do I have any suggestions for training when all of the volunteers come in on different days and different times um when you have something like that if you have um the time or you have a volunteer who's particularly savvy actually setting it up as a power point that the staff can or the volunteers can work through um on for the basics can be really helpful but when it comes to any of the actual activities you do still need to take the time to do the training with each individual you might do a power point presentation for them that they can watch on their own you could make a youtube video that they um are required to watch but then each individual especially if you're doing any sort of housing or handling of collections that will still need some in person training to give them that feedback on how well they're doing it so you can do mixed some of it can be individual um but then some of it can be on their own so you don't have to take the time and we're actually going that's a perfect question to segue into this last segment um and so what we're doing we don't have to reinvent the wheel um taking care has a lot of articles on collections care topics and those are from the museum conservation institute at the Smithsonian so that can be some of your handouts right there it can be some of the prior reading to doing some of the collections care work the wyoming state museums collections care manual is a great one to borrow information from to write your own collections care manual in safe hands is um a series of webinars from the british library so you don't maybe have to make your own little youtube video you can borrow from others and then saving your treasures which are a series of videos and articles that were done by um any t nebraska uh the pbs station there and the nebraska state historical society and so those are some starting points but then if you're doing collections management um and preferably here it's really going to only be your staff or experienced um volunteers because this is where you are accessioning items you are describing them you are labeling them um and so we really want to be sure that the people doing this have the skills have the knowledge and this is where this is going to be something that it's predominantly going to be staff um and really only volunteers who have either been with you for a long time or volunteers who come with prior knowledge and there's a good um the south australian community history program has a little video on how to label different materials and so if you want a refresher if you want more information this is something you can have your staff watch storage um staff are predominantly going to um be the people working on doing the storing of the materials the packaging and all of that but you can also have it um be done by supervised volunteers and interns who will be doing what depends on what condition the materials are in um volunteers and interns are great to use for those collections that are in really good condition and just need boxing um for those really fragile materials um if you've got a really old silk wedding gown that might be something you want the staff to work on rather than volunteers because there's a lot of fiddly bits and fragile fabrics that could be damaged if they aren't handled correctly um make sure that you have the supplies the materials in the space for the staff and the volunteers to be able to easily do the work that they need um if you're trying to cram volunteers and interns into a tiny little corner and they don't have the space to safely handle things then collections are going to be damaged um the same can go for your staff too but hopefully the staff has a little bit more room and for storage um practices hands on training is really going to be important so storage containers and mounts is a good article from the Minnesota Historical Society um as well as storage furniture is another good article from um the Minnesota Historical Society caring for cultural objects from the Burke Museum um if you've got natural history is a good video um and general collections handling guidelines article from the South Australian Community History but then also um to give you a little sample of the Nebraska PBS and Nebraska State Historical Society project on saving your treasures and so we're just going to watch a little bit on how to fold textiles we won't get into the rolling textiles in this if you want to put a quilt or any textile into storage follow these steps write a description of it listing the dimensions of the piece you or your family make sure the quilt is clean before you store it if it's too old or fragile to be cleaned consult a conservator remove anything that might catch and snag on the fabric make sure you have a large workspace and cover with a clean cotton sheet scrunch some acid free tissue into what are called sausages to pad the folds this will help prevent the fibers of the fabric from deteriorating at the folds avoid using tissue from department stores often contains acids that can harm your quilt store your quilt in an acid free box lined with acid free tissue place a photo of your object on the outside of the box for easier identification slip the box into a plastic bag and seal it with tape to protect it in the event of a water leak or flooding and remember to refold periodically with fresh tissue taking these simple steps will ensure that your treasured quilt remains in the family for generations to come if you don't want to fold your object thank you Kristen so yes these Nebraska videos are geared more towards the general public but there was a lot of really good information in that little 1 minute 24 seconds snippet that we watched and so it could be a good way to show this to your volunteers or to your staff and then maybe talk about some of the issues are they putting it into a plastic bag is that something we would need to do I love the idea of putting on a digital image of it because you know once you start to get more and more boxes you have no idea what's in them so just to give you a little sense of what's out there in terms of the video I do want to just give a little caveat on videos because not all videos are made the same as many of us probably know from just scanning YouTube there's some pretty scary things out there so if you're just starting out I would really stick to the resources that we're giving you here and not just do a general troll of YouTube actually going to other institutional sites will be much better than your average YouTube video I've seen some pretty scary ones training for handling collections this is going to be everybody and here hands-on training is really important because people may not really understand how some things can get damaged if you aren't handling them carefully especially if you have oversized materials oversized textiles oversized maps oversized books actually doing the training so people can get a sense of just how tricky these materials are is really important so handling museum objects from the article from Heritage and Libraries Branch in Ontario the new Bedford Wailing Museum a nice little it's actually a handout a nice little caring handling of objects handout that would be good to share with you all of your staff and volunteers to glove or not to glove here's that topic again the Minnesota Historical Society did a really great video on that saving your treasures from Nebraska again and then the Volunteer Training Bank in London has some really good articles and presentations to get you started you can always tailor it to your own needs but it's a good idea to get them started there's a ton of handling videos for libraries Yale George Mason Cadbury Columbia University and Harvard so we're going to just get a little sense now of handling collections for libraries in this little video snippet from Harvard when you submit a request librarians will retrieve items for you bound items should be placed in either a foam or plexiglass cradle foam cradles are adjustable plexiglass is used when books have loose pieces or powdery deteriorated leather books should be read in the cradle which should stay completely on the table if the covers of the book are springy ask the librarian for book snake weights which may be used to hold pages down and keep the book in its cradle when using weights to hold the leaves of an item open only place weights on blank areas of the page try to touch only blank areas when turning pages if pages do not separate easily ask the librarian for a paper tab to help pick up the page you want to turn if the book has foldouts be sure to refold them as they originally were taking care that no new creases are formed as you turn the page unbound manuscript material is stored in flat or vertical boxes when examining unbound materials the items must remain in their folder and flat on the table you should also be sure to maintain the sequence of items in the box as with bound materials try to touch only blank areas when turning pages or use a paper tab to help lift pages before handling some materials such as photographs or metal objects ask a librarian for gloves to prevent the permanent transfer of fingerprints when you are finished with the material it is important to stack loose items neatly within the folder so that edges don't get crushed folded or torn a tidy stack is also easier to manage and fit back into the box so you can see in some of these videos that you can get it's also helpful because we may not necessarily always be aware of some of the whys we've always been told this is what you do but if you didn't have the training to explain why you use foam cradle versus plexiglass cradle you get the different issues Robert, the reason why she isn't wearing gloves was because for most of the time in that video she was handling paper objects and bound volumes and when you are handling bound volumes and paper materials as the paper deteriorates and gets more brittle you can do more damage by wearing gloves because you are losing your tactile sense than whatever protection you are going to give by wearing gloves so we always recommend for anything based in paper that you wear you don't wear gloves and you have clean dry hands the only time in libraries you really recommend wearing gloves is if you're handling any sort of photographic or film material it's much safer that way so security is another thing that you want to think about at least giving some rudimentary training to everybody I know it's we've all encountered it if you fly if you take public transportation anywhere if you see something say something it's all security is so much about being aware of your surroundings and really seeing what is going on not just what you want to see but what's really going on and so for our last little sample I want to just show you a video from Transport for London and we're going to do a poll question in the middle of this video so be prepared this is an awareness test how many passes does the team in white make the answer is 13 oops but did you see the moonwalking bear we missed the poll question but that's okay but did you see the moonwalking bear so Transport for London did a couple of really good testing awareness videos for helping drivers become more aware of cyclists but it's also a really great way for us to share some of these concepts with our staff who may work in reading rooms our staff or our volunteers who may supervise exhibit areas you know the docents your docents who take people around your museum and so it's a really interesting thing because we all get so focused on certain things that we sometimes miss the things we're not expecting to see and so these the moonwalking bear and then the who done it are two really good videos to share with your staff and your volunteers just to help make them understand that we do need to focus a little bit more on being more aware of what's going on monitoring and housekeeping a lot of times volunteer projects include environmental monitoring I know another one of my volunteer tasks at the Minnesota historical society when I was just starting out was to go and download all of the um environmental monitors throughout now that was because I was a pre-program volunteer but it was something that you can have your interns do as a good training session or depending on where you let your volunteers go you download at least the information from your environmental monitors maybe in your gallery spaces that are more open to the public you can also train staff and experience volunteers in doing some housekeeping so training people how to properly clean materials so that if you don't want your cleaning company coming in and cleaning your paintings which has happened in places where the cleaning company tried to clean a smudge off of something and used their Windex or whatever and damaged a painting you know or how do you safely dust collections materials some of these housekeeping questions can be done by experienced volunteers but you still want to train staff if that's what you're going to have staff doing as well um and so just knowing what you want people to be doing and what you don't is going to help um for the monitoring concept Image Permanence Institute is doing a series of webinars again be sure to sign up for those great way of training and then the South Australian community history group again has a good housekeeping schedule that you can follow and keep track of do health and safety training how do you safely remove collections especially if they're large or they're heavy or they're awkward show people how to use some of the steps duals or the ladders so they know how to use them safely make sure you teach people how to use that personal protective equipment so they know what they're doing how do they select gloves what do they wear gloves for um if you've got staff members using chemicals be sure you train them and how to use the chemicals and how to safely dispose of them and then hopefully make sure somebody somewhere has some first aid training um always a good idea if you don't feel comfortable doing the training yourself you can um get training you're already taking training from Heritage Preservation the Image Permanence Institute is another good resource American association for museums oh except they just changed their name which now I can't remember what it is the Society of American Archivists or your regional groups um there's the regional conservation centers in California with Balboa the Gerald Ford Center in Nebraska Midwest Art Conservation in Minneapolis NEDCC in Boston CCAHA in Philadelphia um Lyrasis which is nationwide now and Amigos down in the Southwest um and then your state agency a lot of them will uh have people on staff who can do training or they offer training within the state so um take a look at what your you know state and your region offers as well that way you don't have to worry about it and here I thought I had a nice really short webinar and I still have somehow managed to leave myself not a lot of time for questions so um Betty had actually a good question about um what if this mentor who is going to be um supervising the volunteers is off site um how can they check in with volunteers I guess one of the great things now that we didn't really have as an option um when I was doing a lot of my volunteer work is Skype so if you have an internet connection and you have a computer um you can be sure to get headsets and a little um webcam which you can get for really cheap and set up in the location where the volunteers are and set up where the mentor is and you can actually in real time talk to each other see each other and show each other things and that might be a really good way if the mentor can't be there all the time um still would be good if the mentor can come in and check in periodically but if they can't Skype is going to be a really good option for us now um so cotton gloves versus nitrile in many ways it really doesn't matter I tend to almost always gravitate towards the nitrile or the latex or whatever you're not allergic to because it doesn't have anything fuzzy on it cotton gloves after a few washings can get really hairy and that can be problematic for some materials so if think about if you're transporting a painting and the frame with its you know all of its fancy bits if those fancy bits are starting to crack and are really loose sometimes all it takes is one of those little hairs of the cotton gloves to get in one of those cracks and you take your hand away and pull off a piece um so I generally tend to always gravitate towards the nitrile or the latex they're also much thinner so you have a better tactile sense so no matter what you're handling you have a lot more feel as to what you're doing than you do with the cotton gloves and I'm just gonna say the cotton gloves with those little um nubbly bits on the palms um I don't like them the nubbly bits have sulfur so especially for um any sort of metals or photographs and your negatives um that sulfur's going to have a really negative reaction and so again I tend to stick with the the nitrile or the latex they don't have those reactions so I'm not seeing any more um should you wear gloves for bird prints and I'm guessing John in Amsterdam that you are predominantly to the um autobonds with the autobonds you have lots of blank areas around the edge um so I would really not wear the gloves because also a lot of your autobond prints are getting brittle by this point in time so um I would forgo the gloves with the bird prints so I don't see any other questions in my parking lot um I'll give you all a chance if you have any other lingering questions but I do want to thank you all um for joining me on these webinars it's been a really great opportunity for me I've really enjoyed it and I hope that you all have learned something and if you do have any questions subsequently please feel free to let me know I'm happy to answer any questions down the line that you may have you can kind of think of me as your pseudo mentor I will be here to help once you've gotten you know one week one month six months down and you've forgotten something please don't hesitate to contact me I'm always happy to help