Staff members, volunteers, board members and others will get a lesson on planning for the worst for museums and cultural agencies on Monday, May 16, 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. at Jackson Library on the campus of UNC-Greensboro. The workshop will include some hands-on training in dealing with wet books and paper.
The North Carolina Connecting to Collections (C2C) Project of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources is the sponsor of the free program.
“Disasters come in many forms — natural, human-generated, intentional, and unintentional — and all are capable of doing significant property damage,” observes Matthew Hunt, C2C Disaster Preparedness Coordinator. “We will all face disaster one day, and our success after it will depend on our preparation for it.”
Hunt has served with the West Asheboro Fire and Rescue Service and the Prince Georges County, Md., service in pre-incident management. He will lead the workshop with an information session about C2C and N.C. Exploring Cultural Heritage Online. Questions, feedback and networking are encouraged, and participants will have the opportunity to improve the care of a wide variety of artifacts, books, papers, and other holdings of archives, museums, libraries and historic sites. C2C staff will seek input on workshops to be offered in the future.
LeRae Umfleet, Cultural Resources’ Chief of Collections Management and tweeter of the popular twitter.com/CivilianWartime, will offer tips on social media outreach.
The N.C. Connecting to Collections Project is funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services with assistance from partner organizations including the Federation of N.C. Historical Societies, the N.C. Museums Council, the N.C. Preservation Consortium, the State Historical Records Advisory Board, and the Society of North Carolina Archivists.
To register, visit http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/disasterpreparednessgreensboro. For more information, call Michelle Vaughn at (919) 807-7422.
The C2C Project from the N.C. Office of Archives and History is within the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities, and the vision to harness the state’s cultural resources to build North Carolina’s social, cultural and economic future. Information on Cultural Resources is available 24/7 at www.ncculture.com.