The first two questions can easily be answered through this new tool; there’s no access to the full text of the awards at this point, though individual awards are available via e-mail. (Note that a few examples of narratives for Humanities Collections and Reference Resources are available here, under “Program Resources–Sample Narratives” on the right, half-way down the page. For example, here’s the narrative from an application from the Newberry Library.)
Searching the database is straightforward. Looking for any grant going to any historical society anywhere in the country, I entered historical society in the “Organization Name” field, left the other fields blank, and got back 862 results, including this one:
NEH funded projects search result example: Shelton Historical Society
Because the results are returned on one page, you can quickly skim or search them using your browser’s search function. (Most browsers have page search built in.) This is an improvement over the way in which most sites display search results, broken up into short pages, making them impossible to quickly scan or search.
You can easily modify your search using one or more criteria. For example, selecting the state of Massachusetts and running a search on organizations that include the words historical society in their name returns 59 results.
Brett Bobley, CIO of the Office of Digital Humanities at the NEH, and his team have a done a great job introducing this, their 1.0 version of the search. They have plans for further improvements and are interested in your feedback. If you use the database search and have suggestions, you’ll find a link for feedback to the CIO near the bottom of the FAQ/Help page. And unlike the way this most large organizations–public or private–would handle this, your message really will go to the CIO–and he’ll read it.
…
Note: Another Federal agency, The Institute of Museum and Library Services, recently made the full text of the last two years of awarded Connecting to Collections Planning Grants available online.
Earlier today I sent the message below to my fellow members on the Massachusetts IMLS Connecting to Collections Statewide Planning Grant Advisory Board. It references the minutes of our first meeting, and seeks to continue the conversation about addressing critical issues that may otherwise reduce participation in the survey.
The next meeting of the board is November 18. We hope to accomplish a considerable amount before then.
If you have comments or suggestions, please add them below.
Earlier posts described the efforts of Massachusetts and other states in securing planning grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a Federal agency.
One of the shortcomings of past efforts, including the national Heritage Health Index (described in this post), was the under-representation of smaller institutions, including the many local historical societies.
There are roughly 1,000 historical societies (in name or function) throughout New England, the vast majority of which are all-volunteer organizations. Often these organizations serve as the repositories for the town’s archives. Despite the tireless work of those who staff and support local historical societies, most societies, including the one on whose board I serve, don’t have the physical set up, the training, the time, or the budget to maintain their collections in ways that are comparable to the preservation efforts at large institutions. We do the best we can, of course, but with meager resources, we trade off things like maintaining the building, putting on programs, supporting research requests, and managing an ever-expanding collection.
The unintended result of the under-representation is that those institutions in which the situation is most dire are the least likely to show up in the results.
In order to address this, the advisory board that’s been established includes three members (in bold below) representing historical societies.
The members and the (draft) minutes of the first meeting, which took place on September 18, 2009, are below.
In order to provide a platform for communication and discussion, I’ll post updates during the life of this Advisory Board. If you belong to an historical society in Massachusetts and have suggestions or comments, please feel free to contact me or, better yet, add them below. When you add your comment, I’ll be notified and others will be able to learn from and participate in the discussion.
Members of the Advisory Board for the 2009 Massachusetts IMLS Connecting to Collections Statewide Planning Grant
This is a partial list. It will be updated when a complete list of members is made available to us.
Angelina Altobellis, Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC)
Mark Vassar, Harvard University Schlesinger Library and Cambridge Historical Society
Jennifer Fauxsmith, Massachusetts Archives
David Blackburn, Lowell National Historical Park, National Park Service
Mary Berhle, Northeast Massachusetts Regional Library System (NMRLS)
Joanne Riley, Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston
Pamela Hatchfield, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Kate Viens, New England Museum Association (NEMA)
Michael Comeau, Massachusetts Archives
Martha Clark, Massachusetts Archives
B.J. Larson, New England Museum Association (NEMA)
Jessica Steytler, Congregational Library
Michael Schuetz, Historic New England
Lee Wright, Marlborough Historical Society
Diane Smith, Massachusetts Commonwealth Consortium of Libraries in Public Higher Education Institutions (MCCPHEI)
Sharon Sharry, Greenfield Public Library
Mary Lawler, South Hadley Historical Society
Gregor Trinkaus-Randall, Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC)
Rachel Masse, MBLC
Rebecca Meyer, MBLC
To read the document below, either use the controls in the grey bar at the top of the document or double click on link immediately below.
From: [name] [mailto:[address]@IMLS.GOV] Sent: Friday, April 10, 2009 11:55 AM Subject: FOIA 09-15
Ms. [sic] Lee,
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has received your on-line e-mail request for information regarding “[r]ecently-funded Connecting to Collections grant applications….”
In response to your request and stated desire to obtain information electronically, I have coordinated with the Office of Museum Services to expedite its normal process of updating the agency’s website so that the requested grant information is made available to the public. That process is now complete, therefore, I have provided you a link below to assist you in obtaining the requested information.
I note that the IMLS FOIA Officer has determined that all information contained on the agency’s website is appropriate for release. There is no fee for providing this information.
Thank you for your interest in the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Respectfully
[name]
Senior Paralegal Specialist/FOIA Processor
Office of the General Counsel
Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
1800 M Street, NW (9th Floor)
Washington, DC 20036-5802
[phone number]
[fax number] (Fax)
How did this come about?
On March 4, 2009 I wrote the program the senior program officer to learn what arrangements I needed to make in order to visit their offices in Washington to read the other awarded Connecting to Collections Statewide Planning Grants.
Statewide Planning Grants, an important component of the Connecting to Collections initiative, foster partnerships among organizations in a state, commonwealth, or territory to implement recommendations of the Heritage Health Index (HHI), which recommends that collections in the public trust should:
provide safe conditions for their collections;
develop an emergency plan;
assign responsibility for collections care; and
work together to increase public and private support for, and raise public awareness about, collections care.
Surely reading what other states were planning to do would be a good way to understand efforts across the country.
I received this reply:
As for reading funded proposals, we don’t really have a reading room for that type of thing. If you want, you can request as many funded projects as you are interested in to be sent to you via the freedom of information act http://www.imls.gov/about/foia.shtm.
This was quite a surprise for several reasons, including (1) the grants had already been awarded; (2) there was nothing secretive about their content; (3) they were small ($40,000 or less); (4) they were decidedly non-political in nature; and, (5) this is a public agency awarding tax dollars.
Believing that there was both a principle that mattered and a practical application that would serve others, I submitted this FOIA request:
I was surprised to learn that these aren’t (1) available online; (2) made available by e-mail upon request; (3) made available in paper form upon (reasonable) request; or finally (4) available to view on-site if someone drives to your offices in Washington to read them.
Given the fact that all of these are in electronic form, and publishing them is literally free (via the web), one would expect that this would be the standard once the awarding of public funds is announced.
That you can’t even read them on-site. . .Well, that’s pretty exasperating.So, if a FOIA request is the only way I and others in my community and state might learn from those in other states with the same goal, then that’s what I’m submitting.
In terms of fees, $5.00 should cover the staff time required to e-mail the documents or upload them to a free public site such as scribd.com, which is already widely used throughout the Federal government for hundreds of thousands of documents.
Thanks for your help.
A little more than a month later I received the message above reporting that the IMLS had now published the awards from this year and last year online.
Thanks to the willingness of the IMLS to revise their existing practice, it is now easier for institutions across the country to learn what others are doing in the area of collection assessment and care.
In fact, the February 19 press release from the IMLS announcing these awards made just this point:
I applaud these grantees as they take action to combat the crises in collections care that threaten to rob our heritage, said Anne-Imelda Radice, IMLS Director. They represent a wide array of approaches to planning, from a system of conservation circuit-riders in Virginia working with small institutions across the state to the first-ever statewide preservation assessment of material culture collections in Utah.
They’ve now made this possible for all via the web.
An earlier post listed the grants by state and described the way in which several institutions throughout Wyoming collaborated online in the development of their successful grant submission. Another provided full online access to the submission and timeline for Massachusetts’s successful award.
I recently asked Peter Sandbeck, who administers North Carolina’s Historic Preservation Office and serves as the Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer, how they made the decision to implement this policy:
We took the leap with our eyes open and a sense that this was quickly going to bring great benefits to our process, which it has.
Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, one of more than 2.600 properties in North Carolina on the National Register of Historic Places.
Michael Southern, the state’s Senior Architectural Historian and GIS Coordinator, picked up the discussion from there. Michael, who has worked for 35 years in historic preservation in North Carolina, said the move was “a little painful at first,” so to help his colleagues bring their skills up to the level required by the Office’s new policy, he set up a computer lab in their conference room and held full-day sessions.
He also worked with the consultants throughout the state who assist with National Register filings, including making trips to the houses of some to walk them through what they were going to need to do in the future.
Here’s the full e-mail interview with Michael:
Q: What prompted the move to requiring digital photography? Peter mentioned “great benefits to our process.” What are the major ones?
A: With the improvements being made in affordable digital cameras, by 2004 or 2005 it seemed clear to us that digital was a better way to record buildings for architectural surveys. As the policy states, “Digital photography offers speed, flexibility, and cost savings in acquiring, editing, sharing, presenting, and printing photographs. It enables use of a single camera to obtain photos for every step in the process of recording, presenting, and nominating a property or district.”
While most of us would agree that traditional view camera photography is superior as “art” photography and for special images of VIBs (Very Important Buildings), the point is that thousands of photos of buildings and their architectural details and settings are taken in the course of a survey. The images need to be good descriptive photos, and improvements in affordable SLR (and even some non-SLR) digital cameras made their images equal to or better than 35mm film cameras. In fact, I would say that the quality of photos taken by our consultants has improved since they have switched to digital. The benefits have been improved photo quality, improved presentations (PowerPoint versus slides), easy sharing, and of course, speed and cost savings.
Q: What process was used to develop and ultimately put in place the new policy? In other words, what entity made the decision, and what did it take to get to that point?
A: Before Peter became our Deputy SHPO in mid-2004, he had been in the thick of digital imagery issues at Colonial Williamsburg. The impetus came from him with concurrence of senior staff. I drafted the first efforts at a digital policy, which went through multiple reviews (first by our staff, and later by consultants) and several subsequent revisions and improvements. Some of the least technical members of our staff had an important role showing how we needed to clarify the “geekspeak” and make things as clear as possible for general users.
Q: What concerns were voiced when the revision was made? Any strong objections?
A: Some of the older consultants—some have been doing field work in N.C. since the early 1970s—were skeptical and wary of the change, but I don’t remember what I would call strong objections. (But it’s possible there were objections that never reached my ears!). Most have made the transition to digital pretty well. These people are mostly traditional historians with limited computer skills beyond word processing and email, and I have spent a good bit of time on the phone and even visiting the homes of some of them to help them with downloading, batch processing, and PowerPoint questions. I would say that states that wish to implement a digital policy need to provide at least some measure of technical support of this nature. But some of the younger ones were actually a step ahead of us with the new technology.
Q: Have you run into any problems with the implementation? Peter mentioned ”long-term storage, cataloging.” To what extent are you looking at storage in the cloud as the solution for storage?
A: Storage and cataloging are the biggest problems. We’ve tried to address the cataloging issue with a photo naming protocol based on survey site numbers that serves at least in a rudimentary way as its own index. For the time being we are simply storing the photos by county in an “Image Library” on our server. As the collection grows, storage space and retrieval are going to be more serious issues. I’m not familiar with storage in the cloud technology, but I wonder whether the state would be open—at least for now—to using that sort of external service for public records.
Q: Did you consider, or do you plan to consider, adding geotagging as a requirement?
A: Not in the near term, though we recognize how it could be beneficial in certain types of survey work in the future. Most of the field work is done by consultants, and as I indicated, many are decidedly non-technical and uncomfortable with computers in general, so it’s one step at a time. Our GIS system bases site identification on the survey site numbers, and that will facilitate linkage to associated photos that use the site number at the beginning of the photo name.
Q: Can people view these digital images online now? If not, do you have plans to make this possible in the future?
A: We have begun making PDFs of recent National Register nominations that have some photos included. The first of these will begin to appear online within a couple of months, we hope. But it will be a slow process working through our National Register roster and into other categories of historic properties and districts. We are in the very early stages of considering how we will present GIS mapping and general survey materials online.
Q: Are submissions (text, in addition to photos) done electronically when they are sent to you? Can these be viewed online?
A: Survey reports and National Register nominations are submitted in word processing format, usually Word. We have also developed a survey database in Access that is used by consultants for new surveys, survey updates, and new historic district nominations. The database is designed to serve as a stand-alone project data manager, but it also links to GIS. Except for the nomination documents converted to PDFs to be posted soon, these other materials are not online.
. . . .
Read the full text of North Carolina’s revised photo policy, which now . . .
requires the use of digital photography for all grant-funded survey and National Register nomination projects.
An e-mail exchange with a small circle of colleagues about the evolution of the Web and society–we’ve all been deeply involved with the Web since 1995– brought such an interesting exchange yesterday that, with their permission, I’ve moved it here. Given the focus of Read Write History on the use of modern tools to foster interest in and engagement with history and historical artifacts, the discussion about the evolution of the Web, social media, and society is directly relevant (albeit sometimes irreverent).
"Twitter! Down again!"
This is the text of my original e-mail message; the messages that followed appear in the comments below.
“I’ve been amazed for years at people’s amazement at the ongoing changes wrought by the web, and for a year or so by all of the twittering over “social media.”
“It finally hit me: The reason so many are surprised and intrigued and amazed is because it is new to them. They simply don’t think very hard/often/clearly/rigorously about things, so when things happen, even those that are part of clear, long-term trends, it’s new to them.
“Other explanations? (Let’s leave out the motives of those selling books and consulting gigs.)”
Best–
Lee
Tip: It’s the discussion that took place in response, which I’ve moved to the comments below, that’s the interesting part.
“The Web has not only democratized research, but forced a paradigm shift in the way we think about research overall and the very definition of what scholarly publishing is. It was not so long ago in many academic institutions that only ‘researchers engaged in scholarly research and publishing’ were even allowed to get near a rare book or original manuscript–and that had to be approved by a curator or director. If I had a dollar for every time an undergraduate or terminal Master’s alumnus of Columbia University told me they were laughed out of special collections I would be one wealthy woman; and we’re not an anomaly. Indeed, just as the web is ‘open to one, open to all,’ so too have academic institutions been encouraged (in some cases forced) to be ‘open to one, open to all.’
“In addition to democratizing access, the Web has also had a surprising effect on what rare or unique really mean. The aggressive push by Google to digitize books has not isolated archives, but made them the prized commodity in the business of the academic library. Archives and special collections are being leveraged in a way never seen before. It’s a dynamic fuse that now burns: ‘researcher’ is redefined > collections are not just used, but used by more people > demand grows to see more, what else is there? > process faster, make material accessible > institutions forced to reexamine past practices, embrace change > explore new delivery practices > standardization > competition.
“It’s an exciting time to be an archivist. We are part of a major shift in professional practice and identity. Embrace it! Revel in it!”
The recent well-publicized opening of Lincoln’s watch by the Smithsonian is another reminder of the challenges in connecting individuals to collections and providing a platform for sharing information about historical artifacts and events.
Darius Abbassi, a friend and colleague through many ventures (for both of us), pointed to this interview with Harry Rubenstein, Chair and Curator of the Division of Politics and Reform at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Near the end, the curator answers the question of why didn’t they know about this before:
” . . . it was only a family story and not a story that was out among the public and a larger audience. . . [T]he public often knows things that we don’t, and they can share this information with us.”
And my friend’s question and observation:
Lincoln's watch, which was opened recently to reveal the engraving made minutes after hearing the news of the firing on Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861.
“Okay, but how, pray tell, do they ’share’ anything with ‘us’ if there is no means to do that?
“Also, he refers to the ‘public’ as a mass, a group, a single entity. In the Roman sense of the world, Popolus. In the world of crowdsourcing, that is an interesting point. Implicit in his comment is the notion that this group has a collective ‘knowledge’ that can be leveraged if there is a means by which a many-on-many communications mode can be established.
“In the field of history in particular, folk history, folk stories (Volk, PoPolo, Pluribus, Public) are the items that encode the meaning behind the facts, and this is a critical insight. The facts are dead without the lives and intentions of the people who lived those ‘facts.’
“The Lincoln watch story beautifully illustrated the point: A watchmaker inscribed a story or message inside Lincoln’s pocketwatch at the first firing on Fort Sumter in 1861. Lincoln, unbeknownst to anyone, carries this Pro-union message around with him for the duration of the war and has the watch with him the night he is assassinated.
“The tale is told and retold, handed down within the family for generations. However, it isn’t until one of the descendants approaches the museum, which was putting on a Lincoln exhibit, and says, ‘By the way, do you have Lincoln’s pocket watch? I have a story to tell you about it . . .’”
If it hadn’t been for this special exhibition and the persistence of one of the descendents now, nearly 150 years later, how would we have learned of this interesting historical fact?
Two news items out of Massachusetts are reminders of the importance of preservation and the challenges faced today:
March 13, 2009
BOSTON, MA—It has been a majestic rite: tall ships from across the world dotting Boston Harbor in July, recalling
Tall ships in Boston in 2005.
the city’s maritime history in a parade of billowing white sails and crisply attired sailors. Twice in the last two decades, the event known as Sail Boston has drawn millions to the city.
But in what could be a particularly cruel blow to the region’s recession-addled psyche and economy, the tall ships extravaganza could be scaled back or even canceled this summer, another victim of the vicious economy.
Municipal officials have said they might have to scrap the event unless Sail Boston 2009, the nonprofit group that organizes the event, can come up with a plan by the end of the month to reimburse the city for an estimated $3 million to $5 million in public safety costs.
GREAT BROOK FARM STATE PARK, MA—In a surprising development that has confirmed a number of longstanding local rumors, authorities discovered the 32nd Regiment of His Majesty’s Royal British Army still fighting the Revolutionary War in a small wooded area outside of Carlisle, MA Monday.
The disoriented foot soldiers—who in the spring of 1776 survived a barrage of Patriot cannon fire at Dorchester Heights only to become lost during the subsequent British retreat—were found by park rangers . . .
When the Institute of Museum and Library Services announced the latest round of Connecting to Collections grants, they included brief descriptions of each. However, the full text of the submissions is not available online.
In an effort to share knowledge and insights among all of us working in this area, we can rectify this situation by making this public information available online. One free, widely-used service, Scribd, includes an Historic Preservation group. Anyone can upload a document and assign it to this group.
If you do, please add a comment below. Or contact me and I’ll lend a hand or upload it for you.
Update (April 15, 2009): Thanks to a successful Freedom of Information Act request, all grants awarded for the 2009 and 2008 cycles are now online. The process and the result are described in this post.
Once your document is uploaded to Scribd, you can link to it or embed it on your site as has been done here. The process is simple. And it’s free.
Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners IMLS Connecting to Collections Planning Grant Proposal Developing and Expanded and Enhanced Statewide Preservation Program for Massachusetts’ Cultural Heritage Collections 1. Need and Rationale The documentary and material heritage of Massachusetts is essentially intact from its founding. Throughout the Commonwealth, repositories and museums house irreplaceable collections of monographs, pamphlets, manuscript material, records, ephemera, statuary, paintings, and three-dimensional objects of all types, which serve as rich resources for researchers. Librarians, archivists, curators, and other staff have long collected materials that document their immediate and adjoining locales, as well as focusing on specific collecting areas. Many of these people need training in preservation activities, and many collections are in need of conservation work to prolong their lives and to enable them to be consulted. Institutions in Massachusetts have a long history of working for the preservation of cultural resources. The New England Museum Association (NEMA) was founded in 1919 to provide support and assistance to museums. In 1973, the Northeast Document Conservation Center, Andover, MA (NEDCC) was founded “in response to growing alarm about the monumental scope of the paper deterioration problem facing collectionholding institutions in New England.” Also in 1973, legislation was enacted (Acts, 1973, c. 711, s. 1) providing that the Archivist of the Commonwealth shall prepare and administer a “comprehensive statewide documentary preservation plan.” The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) became involved in the preservation of library and archival materials in 1988. The MBLC is the state library development agency for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As such it supports, improves, and promotes library services throughout the Commonwealth. The MBLC was established in 1890 under Chapter 78 of the Massachusetts General Laws; the first such agency in the United States. The MBLC administers a number of major programs and services that impact libraries and library collections throughout the Commonwealth. The following are applicable to this grant proposal: Preservation, Emergency Assistance, and the administration of the federal Library Services and Technology Act (L.S.T.A.) program. NEMA is the only museum service organization in Massachusetts. NEMA sponsors Professional Affinity Groups (PAG) for Conservators, Curators, Registrars and those who work in Historic Sites and Libraries and Archives. The PAG meetings and ongoing program evaluation have further informed the profession of the challenges facing collections. PAG Chairs and NEMA staff also monitor and respond to the questions and concerns presented on NEMA’s Collections and Administration discussions lists. NEMA has held an annual conference for more than seventy-five years, where museum professionals and volunteers receive training in collections care and conservation. In response to NEMA’s evaluation that the training needs of small and all-volunteer museums and historical societies were not being met, it partnered with Massachusetts Humanities to present a highly successful pair of introductory-level workshops that include the basics of collections care and management. Efforts to gauge the extent of preservation knowledge and needs of cultural heritage institutions have been undertaken on several occasions. The results of these surveys have helped focus the efforts of several organizations in addressing these needs during the past thirty years. • • Salary and Benefits Survey, New England Museum Association (NEMA), since the 1970’s. This provides data on the education, tenure, salaries and benefits of museum curators, conservators and registrars at various stages of their careers. Historical Records in Massachusetts: Prospects, Programs, & Plans, Massachusetts Archives, 1983. Funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), this survey assessed the preservation and storage conditions of records in Massachusetts. Preservation Needs Assessment Survey, MBLC, 1989. A survey of some 1,100 libraries, archives, historical societies, and town halls (958 responded (87%) to assess the preservation needs and disaster preparedness of Massachusetts institutions. Subsequently, the MBLC received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Statewide Preservation Planning Grant in 1990, resulting in the publication of Preserved to Serve: The Massachusetts Preservation Agenda that has served as the basis for Massachusetts’ preservation efforts for the past twenty years. Heritage Health Index (HHI), Heritage Preservation, 2005. Approximately 130 institutions responded to this survey yielding a comprehensive collection of preservation data about institutions in Massachusetts. This data will serve as one of the sources in developing a baseline for the proposed data gathering efforts. Assessment of Emergency Preparedness for State Archives and Records Management Programs, Council of State Archivists (CoSA), 2006. A statewide self-assessment tool that focused on the state of emergency preparedness for records in all fifty state archives and records management programs. • • • The results of the Massachusetts surveys consistently indicate a need for help with preservation and emergency preparedness. In addition, because of the rapid proliferation of digitization programs and electronic data systems, none of the surveys provides information on digitized collections or “born digital” materials. The MBLC survey touched only briefly on audio-visual materials. Fortunately, the HHI survey was distributed to a wider variety of cultural institutions than the MBLC survey. By necessity, the HHI survey looked at cultural repositories in a broad way. As a consequence, it does not provide the necessary detail needed to develop, enhance, or expand a statewide preservation program. Therefore, to expand and enlarge the current program, it is necessary to collect current data on institutions and their collections in Massachusetts at a more detailed level and across a broader spectrum of institutions than was accomplished in either the MBLC survey or the HHI. During the past twenty years, working in consort with a number of other state agencies and non-governmental organizations, the MBLC has developed an active, multi-faceted statewide program to address the preservation needs of the Commonwealth’s cultural heritage. The MBLC’s program includes: • • • • Providing information and referral on preservation and disaster-related inquiries to all types of institutions; A Continuing Education Program that provides workshops on a wide variety of preservation topics; An Environmental Monitoring Program that lends dataloggers to libraries, archives, historical societies, town halls, and museums for periods of five months at a time and produces substantial reports for the institutions based on the data collected; An Emergency Assistance Program that provides training, recovery supplies at sixteen locations, technical assistance, support for packing, freezing and drying of library and archival materials, and an email weather alert for inclement and threatening weather; A close alliance with the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency starting in 1996 as a member of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Team, the InterAgency Hazard Mitigation Committee, and the Massachusetts Recovery Alliance to ensure that cultural heritage collections are considered and provided with appropriate prioritization for their protection and recovery during and after a disaster; and A grant program using L.S.T.A. funds for Preservation Surveys, the Preservation of Library and Archival Materials, the Digitizing of Historical Resources (for access), and Manuscript Arrangement and Description. • • In addition, the MBLC has partnered with the NEDCC on two occasions. In 2001, the NEDCC received an IMLS National Leadership Grant to create an online disaster planning tool. The NEDCC and the MBLC created dPlan: The Online Disaster Planning Tool, which is now being used by over 1,900 institutions across the country. In 2006, the NEDCC received another IMLS National Leadership Grant to develop a framework by which states could create a statewide disaster plan for cultural resources. The MBLC and the Massachusetts Archives are currently spearheading a pilot project to test the Comprehensive Statewide Emergency Preparedness framework (COSTEP). While the MBLC’s preservation program has had success in addressing many of the preservation needs in libraries, archives, historical societies, and to some extent town halls, a major gap has been the lack of contact with museums and the lack of focus on the preservation of three-dimensional objects. It is for this reason that it is important that this grant provides the information necessary to expand the statewide preservation program to include those media and collections that have been addressed only by NEMA in the past. Moreover, there are other gaps that need to be identified and addressed such as the preservation of audio-visual media and the need to move ahead with preserving digital and born-digital collections. 2. The Planning Process Interested parties met initially on August 15, 2008 to identify potential partners and to discuss ideas for the focus of the proposal. This group included the Massachusetts Archives, the MBLC, NEMA, and the Sturgis Library, a participant in the initial Connecting to Collections Conference in Washington, D.C. It was decided that a comprehensive survey of the cultural heritage community was necessary for a number of reasons. NEMA has the data from its triennial salary surveys and program evaluations. The MBLC has the data from the 1989 survey of libraries, archives, historical societies, and town halls. The HHI (2003) identified a number of problems in similar areas, but the majority of Massachusetts’ respondents to the HHI were museums. In addition, since the MBLC’s preservation program has been well-established for two decades, it is important to measure the progress that has been made in as many areas as possible as well as identifying areas and institutional types that have not been addressed or included in this program such as museums. The survey will be based on those components of the HHI that need resurveying and that also mirror the questions used in the 1989 survey. In addition, audio-video and museum collections were not included in the original survey and others such as digitized collections and “born-digital” materials, whose preservation will become more and more pressing in the years to come, have become more prevalent and will need to be addressed. Survey. The plan is to develop and distribute a comprehensive web survey to obtain information and investigate the range, volume, and needs of Massachusetts collections; including threats, resources, staff to manage them, and challenges facing cultural heritage institutions. In addition, the survey will measure progress that has been achieved in addressing the preservation needs identified in the original MBLC survey in 1989. In both the MBLC’s 1989 survey and the HHI, disaster preparedness and education were identified as pressing needs. The analysis of the data gathered in this survey will result in a new statewide preservation action agenda with measurable outcomes to refocus, expand, and enhance statewide preservation efforts, including the museum community and formats that were not included in previous planning efforts or were not heavily in use at that point. With our consultant(s), the MBLC and its partners will analyze the survey data, produce a report documenting the conditions and preservation needs of cultural heritage collections in Massachusetts repositories, and develop recommendations for action with timeframe, institutional responsibilities, outcomes and outputs, and budget identified to address the identified preservation needs of these collections throughout the state. 3. Project Resources: Budget and Personnel MBLC staff: The MBLC will coordinate and manage the project. The project director will be Gregor Trinkaus-Randall, Preservation Specialist. Michael Comeau, Assistant Archivist at the Massachusetts Archives will serve as the liaison to the archival community, and Katheryn Viens, Executive Director of NEMA will serve as the liaison to the museum community. These three individuals will have responsibility for working with the consultant(s), survey development and data analysis, developing the preservation plan based on the survey results, and reporting to IMLS and Massachusetts institutions. The MBLC fiscal staff will assist with the budgeting and accounting issues. Consultants: We plan to engage the services of experienced consultants to work with the project staff, create the survey content, draft the survey instrument (to be vetted by the Advisory Committee), administer the survey, provide an analysis of the results, and prepare a report including recommendations based on the survey results. In addition, an intern will be hired to assist in data entry when necessary and in the administration of the survey including developing final contact lists, answering questions from survey recipients, encouraging recipients to complete the surveys, and other clerical issues. Partners: To develop as broad a preservation program as possible a number of institutions and organizations have agreed to serve as partners for this grant. They will participate in vetting the survey instrument, planning its delivery, serve on the Advisory Committee, promote the survey among their constituents, and assist the consultants in drafting a statewide preservation plan. Partners Museum of Fine Arts New England Museum Association Massachusetts Archives Northeast Document Conservation Center Massachusetts Conference of Chief Librarians of Public Higher Educational Institution Boston Public Library Northeast Massachusetts Regional Library System Advisory Committee: Project staff will appoint an Advisory Committee to provide advice on the development of the survey’s content and assist in developing the mailing lists to reach as many institutions as possible with the survey, promoting the survey to their constituencies, reviewing the final survey results, helping develop recommendations for future activities, reviewing reports, and approving the final written report and recommendations. Results: The project’s final product will be a report documenting the conditions and preservation needs of cultural heritage collections in Massachusetts repositories. It will also identify priorities and provide recommendations for future statewide preservation activities. The report will serve as a basis for implementing these recommendations and developing an enhanced, expanded, and sustainable statewide preservation program for all types of cultural resources in Massachusetts.
More than 50 million people use Scribd every month. Government, business, and non-profit organizations and individuals upload more than 50,000 documents every day.
