Connecting to Collections Bookshelf
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During the tumultuous 2008 hurricane season, museums and libraries along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts have faced challenges in trying to protect their collections from fierce winds and devastating water. Fortunately, many have had at hand a helpful new resource, the Connecting to Collections Bookshelf. The contents of the Bookshelf that cover emergency preparedness are two Heritage Preservation publications, the Field Guide to Emergency Response and the Emergency Response and Salvage Wheel.
In a letter to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which sponsored the Bookshelf, Andrew Morrow, Executive Director of the Mandarin Museum and Historical Society in Jacksonville, Florida, wrote, “We received our Bookshelf a couple of days before Tropical Storm Fay hit. Although we have a disaster plan in place, it was fairly limited at the time. Through the Bookshelf, we were able to ascertain quickly what we still needed to do to prepare our museum for the storm.” As a result of the storm, the buildings saw substantial flooding and debris threatened further damage. “With the guidance of the Bookshelf, I am happy to say that we came through the storm with our structures and collections intact,” wrote Morrow. The Galveston Historical Society also used Bookshelf resources to help survive Hurricane Ike.
The Connecting to Collections Bookshelf is part of the IMLS initiative Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action. While the Bookshelf is an IMLS project being conducted in partnership with the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), Heritage Preservation played a significant role in its development. Heritage Preservation assembled the selection panel of experts charged with advising IMLS on which publications and resources would be included in the Bookshelf. After much deliberation, 25 resources were selected from the original list of 234. Heritage Preservation wrote the User’s Guide that summarizes the resources and also developed the Guide to Online Resources that accompanies the Bookshelf but is free to the public. To see the list of all Bookshelf resources, the Guide to Online Resources, and the User’s Guide, visit www.imls.gov/collections/bookshelf.
Most recipients of the Connecting to Collections Bookshelf are small organizations with limited budgets and staff who urgently need preservation advice. “With a small staff and budget, it is hard to amass such a collection of information. The Bookshelf will allow us to continue our mission of properly conserving artifacts,” said Charlene Orr, executive director of Historic Mesquite, Inc., managing organization of Florence Ranch Homestead in Texas, which was selected to receive a Bookshelf in August 2008.
The Bookshelf is being distributed to organizations in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. “We are so pleased to be a part of this,” says Lawrence Reger, President of Heritage Preservation. “The Bookshelf is a wonderful resource for assisting museums, libraries, and archives in the care and protection of the treasures in their charge.”
Over 3,000 organizations are expected to have received the Bookshelf after the third round of selection is completed in 2009. Applications for the third round will be accepted from January 5 through March 9, 2009 and are available online at www.aaslh.org/Bookshelf.