Field Guide to Emergency Response
A New Initiative of Heritage Preservation and the Heritage Emergency National Task Force
With a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Heritage Preservation is developing a new Field Guide to Emergency Response. Every year across the country, hundreds of museums, libraries, archives, and historic sites experience emergencies large and small. They happen suddenly, and the results are rarely predictable or tidy. In most cases, people are unprepared to handle the situation. Tackling an emergency is a tough challenge, even with a good plan and trained staff. What’s needed is a tool with step-by-step advice on what to do immediately after a disaster. The new Field Guide to Emergency Response will offer in-depth instruction but remain concise and portable enough to use on-site.
The Field Guide to Emergency Response will help staff at collecting institutions and historic sites respond more capably to emergencies. The Guide’s interactive nature and distinctive format will make it handy to use. It will have three components:
- A spiral-bound, flexible notebook will outline initial steps to take, explain essential response functions, and describe what conditions staff members are likely to encounter. It will cover communications, damage assessments, health and safety, and other vital issues. A bibliography of resources will be included.
- An instructional DVD, which can be used in a laptop computer on-site, will be coordinated with the text and tucked in a pocket of the Guide. It will illustrate typical problems encountered in a disaster and demonstrate basic salvage techniques.
- Institutions can adapt the Guide to their needs by filling in tabbed information panels on local emergency contacts, service providers, insurance, supplies, and salvage priorities.
The development of the Field Guide is being guided by a distinguished advisory board: Sharon Bennett, Archivist, The Charleston Museum; Steve Dalton, Preservation Manager, Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Library, Boston College; Mary Jo Davis, Conservation Consultant; Robert Herskovitz, Chief Conservator, Minnesota Historical Society; Julie Page, Preservation Librarian, University of California at San Diego; and Jill Rawnsley, Director of Preservation Services, Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts.
The Field Guide to Emergency Response will be released in summer 2006.
