Hurricanes and floods

This past summer was more dangerous than usual for heritage collections in the United States, so the preservation directorate at the Library of Congress (LC) is promoting use of the extensive emergency recovery and response information on its Web site. There is an introduction to emergency response, followed by sections devoted to coping with earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes, mudslides, tornados, volcano eruptions, and winter storms. For dealing with water damage, a common occurrence in many types of emergencies, the site has three documents: “Quick Reference: Disaster Response and Recovery,” “When Waters Rise,” and “Response to Floods and Water Damage for Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Other Repositories.”

LC’s recovery and response information can be found at www.loc.gov/preservation/emergprep/recovery.html.

Connecting to Collections online

Heritage Preservation, in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History, has launched the Connecting to Collections (C2C) Online Community. The community aims to provide smaller cultural institutions with a virtual place to find preservation information and access to professional advice.

It has a meeting room for Webinars presented by experts in a variety of preservation fields, a discussion forum for questions and conversation, a featured resource that will change approximately every two weeks, a calendar of preservation-related events, and an archive of past discussions. The C2C Online Community is supported by funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The C2C Online Community can be found at www.connectingtocollections.org.

AIC guide

The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) has published the second edition of The AIC Guide to Digital Photography and Conservation Documentation. The 224-page book covers the workflow, equipment, camera settings, image processing, storage and backup of electronic records, and photographic techniques necessary to support conservation documentation. It also includes more than 120 color illustrations, six appendices, a glossary, a bibliography and a list of online resources. It was authored by Franziska Frey, Dawn Heller, Dan Kushel, Timothy Vitale, Gawain Weaver, and edited by Jeffrey Warda.

The guide costs $75 and may be purchased from AIC at www.conservation-us.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewpage&pageid=1531.

Preserving maps

The Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) is offering “Exploring Maps: History, Fabrication, and Preservation,” a program about map preservation November 2–3, 2011, at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. The faculty will include Deborah Boyer (Azavea), Martin Brückner (University of Delaware), Joseph Garver (Harvard University), Ronald Grim (Boston Public Library), John Hessler (Library of Congress), Abraham Parish (Yale University), Bruce Laverty (Philadelphia Athenaeum), and Jim Hinz, Richard Homer, Jessica Makin, and Samantha Sheesley (CCAHA).

Registration costs $225 for CCAHA members and $250 for nonmembers. The registration deadline is October 21. For more information or to register, go to www.ccaha.org/education/program-calendar/2011/11/02/history-preservation-of-maps.