2019 Webinar Archives

Click on the titles below to view the information and videos for past webinars.

Insurance – How to Manage Your Organization’s Risk - December 5, 2019

Does your organization have insurance? If so, does it cover all of the necessary exposures? If not, what are the barriers you face to attaining insurance? How do you know what kinds of insurance and coverages are appropriate for your situation? This webinar will cover how and why insurance will help you to manage risks to your institution and the types of insurance and risk strategies appropriate for museums and other cultural institutions with collections. We will look at all the points you should consider when contemplating insurance including coverage for your buildings, collections, your volunteers, your visitors, and third parties (vendors, contractors, event renters, etc.). And, you will learn how to talk to your insurance broker so that you get appropriate insurance for your institution.

How to Change a Lightbulb: LED Lighting for Museums - November 21, 2019

This webinar will demonstrate how light-emitting diodes (LEDs) emit light, describe methods for assessing the qualities of light and provide examples of how good lighting design can help provide a dynamic visitor experience while minimizing light’s harmful impact on collections. The talk will be richly illustrated with examples from exhibits at Smithsonian American Art Museums and include information that ranges from simple retrofits to advanced control systems.

Collection Facility Planning: Preparing for the Next Renovation - October 29, 2019

The very nature of collecting means ever increasing demands on the facilities and equipment housing the collected materials and the need for ongoing and sustained planning to meet those demands. For most successful and active collecting institutions, over time, facilities become gradually more and more crowded and access to the collected material more and more challenging. Eventually the need to expand facilities becomes essential to continuing the important work of collecting the valuable materials required for research, education and cultural advancement. Whether that means a simple reorganization of space, major renovation, addition or a new building this webinar will provide an overview of the planning work needed before engaging in the design of new or improved facilities.

Practical Book Repair - Thursday, October 3,, 2019

Do you have a circulating collection, reference collection or study library in your care? While rare book libraries or museums are committed to the long term preservation and retention of their core collections there are often holdings of smaller collections: books, periodicals and pamphlets that are used for research but not part of the permanent collections. Research collections suffer significant wear and tear from high use and those with preservation responsibility will need the right tools to assess the item’s potential for repair and decide which repairs would be effective. Sometimes a replacement copy will meet the need, but sometimes the book in question is an oversized reference volume that is out of print and yet crucial for current research. What are the options when a book is being retained for its intellectual content instead of artifactual value?

C2C Care Course: Cleaning the Museum Without Damage, Four webinar course - October 10 - October 31, 2019

We all think we know how to clean. After all, we do it at home. We dust, vacuum, wash the dishes, polish the silver, and wash the floor. However, the methods we use at home have the potential of causing damage in our historic house, museum, library or archive – any cultural collections under our care. For instance, the accumulation of dust is both unsightly and damaging to collections. Dirt tracked in from outdoors can damage the wooden floor and historic floor coverings.

Archival Processing – Principles and Practical Strategies - Thursday, September 5, 2019

This webinar will discuss the basic principles of archival arrangement and description, including imposing basic physical and intellectual control over new acquisitions, minimal processing standards, descriptive standards and practices, and practical strategies for managing a processing program with limited staff and resources. Our goal will be to help you identify practical solutions for overcoming barriers to processing in your home institution.

Don’t Fan the Flames: Understanding fire and what to do about it - Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Every year there are major news stories about fires in cultural heritage institutions or the wildfires threatening them. With the recent incident at Notre Dame fresh in our minds, join Donia Conn to learn about the nature of fire, what can do at your institution to prevent fire, and how to mitigate the impact of a fire. She will cover the chemistry and mechanics of fire, how it spreads, and how a fire department works when they are on site to fight a fire. With this knowledge, participants will gain insight into how their building layout, storage areas, and landscaping affect fire vulnerability. The webinar will enable you to have a more knowledgeable conversation with your local fire department as you build a good working relationship and improve their preparedness to fight a fire at your institution. We will go over how to assess your institution for fire safety and how to create a checklist of problems to correct in order to be as fire ready as possible.

HVAC Installation, Renovation, and Collections Environments – An Introduction - Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Maintaining appropriate preservation environments – those that can manage risks of chemical and mechanical degradation, while protecting against mold and corrosion – often requires the use of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning, or HVAC. This session will discuss strategies for collections and institutional staff working with engineering/contractor partners during HVAC design, installation, and renovation processes, with the ultimate goal being an active, integrated decision-making approach that best combines the expertise of both collections and mechanical professionals.

C2C Care Course: Making the Most of Your Assessment, Four webinar course - July 10 - August 7, 2019.

Preservation and Conservation Assessments, Surveys, and Evaluations can be incredibly helpful collections care tools – if you know how to use them! Too often cultural heritage organizations receive these useful documents only to let them sit on a shelf and gather dust. This course will help you to understand the different types of assessments you may have done on your collections, and, most importantly, how to implement the recommendations made and move these documents from a binder on the shelf into real life applications. In this four part series, presenters will discuss what is included in a general preservation assessment, other types of useful collections care related assessments, using an assessment for grant writing and fundraising, and creating an implementable preservation plan.

An Introduction to Herbaria and Herbarium Practices - Thursday, May 9, 2019

This webinar will provide an overview on herbarium collections. This includes covering the broad range of taxonomic organisms that may be housed in a traditional herbarium and what some of the storage options are for their many forms. Some basic schemes of organization and what a taxonomic revision means for collections will be discussed. We will briefly touch upon assessing material for incoming accessions and basic permitting guidelines. A list of some of the critical resources for understanding and maintaining these collections will be provided and gone over, and digitization will be touched on briefly. Lastly, we will talk about collections risk related to pest infestations and suggestions on integrated pest management strategies.

Exploring Old Loans: A Quest for Resolution - Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Old loans are a challenge for most museums – whether large or small. And, with other competing priorities, it is easy to let them linger. Solving your old loans will give you a sense of accomplishment as well as lower the risk of insurance claims or even more unpleasant your museum’s potential involvement in a fight between a lender’s heirs.

Planning for Natural Disaster Damage in Botanical Collections - Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Living collections invariably come in direct contact with meteorological elements every day. Usually this direct exposure is what plants need to survive; however, during extreme weather conditions, such exposure can be destructive to plants. Plant collections are the life-blood of public gardens; no plants, no gardens. Simply put the process of disaster planning helps to ensure the safety of plant collections and the relevancy of botanical institutions.

When Copyright and Cultural Collections Converge - Wednesday, February 27, 2019

This webinar provides a practical introduction to U.S. copyright law, the public domain, and fair use, as well as touching upon parallel intellectual property rights to consider, such as privacy and publicity rights. Additionally, attendees will be presented with methodologies to navigate the myriad licensing options and ever-changing uses affecting collections, including determining rights status, identifying rights holders, and applying rights statements, Open Access, and Creative Commons licenses to collection objects.

C2C Care Course: Collections Management for Smaller Cultural Institutions, Four webinar course - February 12 - March 5, 2019.

During this four-week long course, originally presented between February 12 and March 5, 2019, participants learned about essential aspects of collection management, from the acquisition and registration of objects through the care, use, and deaccessioning of objects. The importance of collection storage and exhibit environments and collection management policies will be considered as participants produce a needs assessment for their home institution’s collections.

C2C Care Course: Planning Your RE-ORG Project, Six webinar course - March 20 - June 5, 2019

Do you find that your storage rooms are sort of a nightmare – not accessible, perhaps overcrowded, hard to clean, not enough space and nowhere to expand? Is your storage a risk to your collections and limiting how you use them for public programming and community engagement? This course will introduce you to and guide you through the RE-ORG Method, a step-by-step approach to storage organization that will help you to reorganize your current storage rooms, focusing on the creative, yet safe, use of existing resources. This method was originally devised by ICCROM and UNESCO for smaller institutions and has been used all over the world in 144 institutions and over 30 countries. Take this opportunity to participate in this program with its developers and with the developers of STASHc (Storage Techniques for Art Science & History Collections) – learn to create an action plan and carry it out under their guidance and with input from other members of the course. See how the RE-ORG Method is applied in practice to the Custom House of the New London Maritime Society, in Connecticut, United States (AIC Angels Project 2019).

Demystifying Silica Gel for Effective Microclimates - Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Did you know that the internal surface area of a teaspoon of silica gel beads is equivalent to that of a football field? This amazing property makes silica gel a relatively low-cost method for protecting collections on display and in storage from inappropriate or fluctuating environments. But not all silica gel is created equal.

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