May Day 2026 Assessing Risk to Protect Your Collections

Risk assessment is the foundation of successful emergency planning, but getting started can be daunting. As part of the annual May Day Programming, join us for an introduction aimed at small and mid-sized institutions with little experience in emergency preparedness to learn about useful tools that will help you assess your risks so that you can create an emergency plan that covers the situations that your institution is most likely to experience.

After this webinar, participants will:

• Understand the importance of risk assessment as part of the emergency planning process.
• Know how to use the AIC’s Risk Evaluation and Planning Program tools to assess their own risks.
• Incorporate the risk assessment data into their own emergency plans.

Presenter

Rebecca Elder, Principal, Rebecca Elder Cultural Heritage Preservation

Rebecca has been the principal at Rebecca Elder Cultural Heritage Preservation since 2014. In this capacity, she provides preservation services to library, museum and archive clients. Over the course of her career, Rebecca has conducted well over 100 preservation assessments for institutions ranging from small historical museums to municipalities to large academic libraries, and has taught classes on such topics as Emergency Preparedness, Response and Recovery, Preservation of Photographic Materials, Archival Holdings Maintenance, and three levels of Book Repair Techniques.

Rebecca currently serves as the coordinator of the National Heritage Responders, the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation’s volunteer emergency recovery team. She is a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, and a member of the Society of Southwest Archivists, the Oklahoma Museums Association, and the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums.