Climate change increases the probability of natural disasters even in areas previously deemed safe for special collections storage. As library staff, we need to be prepared not only to adequately respond to a disaster, but also to recover from it and restore access to our collections as quickly as possible. In the face of floods, fires, and earthquakes, strict adherence to normal security protocols can actually put our collections in danger, yet adopting special security practices in a moment of crisis can also bring new, unknown challenges to the forefront. How do we respond while still keeping ourselves and our collections safe, both in the moment of a disaster, and in the long aftermath? In this panel session, three speakers will present on the following topics:
Greg Prickman, currently of the Folger Shakespeare Library, will discuss his experiences dealing with a devastating flood that tore through the University of Iowa campus in 2008. While the Libraries escaped with only minimal damage, preparations in the weeks leading up to the flood were initially careful and ultimately frantic, as the nature of the threat grew and became better understood. This paper will consider lessons learned from planning under pressure, and how our notions of collection security evolve as circumstances change rapidly.
Ashley Jones of the Linda Hall Library will describe her work creating and executing disaster preparedness plans at multiple institutions. A good disaster preparedness plan is general, flexible, and scalable, with contingencies for specific actions and actors where necessary. That said, our collections are most secure when we make and follow carefully-tailored plans for the movement and care of our materials. This paper will explore ways special collections libraries can address the expectations and realities of security in environmentally compromised spaces, balancing the priorities of library staff, first responders, facility personnel, outside vendors, and even the media.
Natalia Sciarini, of Yale University’s Beinecke Library, will describe a flood in the Beinecke stacks which happened in April 2018, covering why and how it happened; how Access Services, Security, and Preservation responded; what we have done for disaster recovery, and what lessons library staff has learned from it.
Fuel for Archival Advocacy--A public library responds to wildfires (Joanna Kolosov, Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
In 2017 Californians, accustomed to battling drought, became intimately acquainted with a new climate norm—wildfires. Though fires took a similar path through Sonoma County in 1964, development ballooned in the intervening years, causing record devastation and staggering economic losses this time around. The History & Genealogy Library, a special collections and archives of the Sonoma County Library system located in Santa Rosa, was right in the thick of it. The fires exposed weaknesses in the library’s infrastructure and communication channels and posed a direct threat to its off-site storage of county government records. This presentation will outline the steps staff have taken to raise awareness of the public library’s special collections, provide disaster preparedness training and tools, develop a community response network of cultural heritage organizations, revitalize collection development and preservation policies and procedures, and document community experiences in the aftermath of the fires. The talk will also address larger conversations happening around fire ecology and the use of fire as a natural resource as well as public libraries offering personal digital archiving services to empower people to preserve and protect their own treasures.
Shake, Rattle, & Roll : Earthquake Preparedness for Libraries (Allie McCormack and Alison Elbrader, University of Utah)The University of Utah sits directly on a fault line, and seismologists suggest that Salt Lake City is overdue for a major earthquake. This presentation will discuss what the Marriott Library has done to mitigate this threat so far, future actions that could help safeguard collections, and how other libraries might implement these ideas. The first portion will provide examples of actions the library has taken to protect the building and its collections in the event of an earthquake and subsequent, related disasters. The speakers will give an overview of the seismic renovation done to the building, discuss specific enclosures and other strategies the preservation department has used to protect especially fragile items, and detail what other collection management plans are in the works to further protect collection materials. The second portion will focus on how special collections staff can advocate for monetary funding and cultivate the staff support necessary to implement some of these strategies at their own institutions. The speakers will share some of the conversations that took place at the Marriott Library and how the concerns of various parties were overcome or mitigated. This will include an open discussion of the balance between access, security, and space.
Living Knowledge: Establishing a Seed Sharing Program at the UCLA Clark Library (Anna Chen, Rebecca Fenning Marshall, and Tanya Knipprath, UCLA)The Folger Shakespeare Library began working on the Folger Sustainable Preservation Environment Project (FSPEP) in 2010. Funded largely through planning and implementation grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections, FSPEP has become a major focus for Collections and Facilities personnel at the Folger. Working with consultants from the Image Permanence Institute and Linden Preservation Services, the Folger focused on 5 air handlers serving collections storage spaces, including 3 subterranean spaces housing rare materials and one of our reading rooms where a large portion of our paintings collection is hung. The grants allowed the Folger to collect data on equipment operations; work with consultants to identify areas where optimization was desirable to correct incorrect operations; make capital improvements to 3 of the 5 air handlers involved; capture energy savings through improved performance and renovated equipment; and determine how to seasonal set points would impact collections and costs. This presentation will focus on the successes and ongoing challenges of the work performed; how unexpected factors can impact desired outcomes; communication and relationship building between divisions; and working through staff changes. Folger staff will also speak to how these grants have influenced future climate needs and planning at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
The Great Bay Estuary of New Hampshire is the single largest estuarine system on the Gulf of Maine and its rich resources have attracted human settlement for millennia. With European settlement beginning in the 1600s, it became a locale of particular social and economic complexity. This period left a robust suite of tangible cultural heritage sites including standing architecture, buried archaeological sites, and early colonial graveyards. Yet due to its proximity to the watershed, this landscape and the cultural heritage that it holds, is highly threatened by sea-level rise brought on by climate change. In 2016, the UNH Department of Anthropology launched the Great Bay Archaeological Survey to inventory these vulnerable sites. It is a collaborative, community-based effort, drawing on evidence from historical documentation, traditional archaeological survey and excavation, and new mapping technologies. The result is an iterative process for an increasingly targeted program for identifying, documenting, and understanding at-risk early colonial sites in the Great Bay watershed. This panel explores the interconnections between these varied approaches. The first paper discusses the role of research in special collections and archives and how essential this work is in identifying significant cultural heritage sites before they are washed away. The second paper examines how new digital mapping technologies, including GIS, GPR and drones, are helping advance and expedite the study of these sites as they are found. The final paper explores the specific threats that sea-level rise poses to early colonial heritage sites and examines the hard questions that communities will face regarding what to preserve and what to let go.