Next week is the American Library Association's Preservation Week. This year's theme is "Preserving Community Archives". Community archives are those organized by members of those communities (whether physical or self-identified), which empower the community members to document and interpret their experiences.
To celebrate and facilitate preservation within your communities, consider attending these preservation webinars:
Preservation Meets Public Health: Enduring Lessons from Pandemic Planning
Topics in Preservation Lecture Series from the Library of Congress
Presenter: Jacob Nadal, Director for Preservation
Monday April 26, 2021 at 11 a.m. (Eastern)
This presentation will explain how the Library of Congress staff used information from the REALM project in conjunction with public health guidance to develop safe operations plans for activities that involved the Library’s collections. Jake will unpack the decision-making processes that staff used to allow the agency to operate safely, adapt to developments in the pandemic, and incorporate lessons-learned to improve future operating plans. These include adjustments to collections management processes and hybrid on-site/telework operations for conservation, scientific research, and preservation services.
Collecting and Preserving after Tragedy Presenter: Whitney Broadaway Tuesday, April 27, 2021 at 2:00 - 3:00pm (Eastern)
Following the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, FL, the Orange County Regional History Center launched an extensive rapid response collecting initiative to preserve the history of the tragic event and the community’s response. The Collections Manager, Whitney Broadaway, will share how the museum collected at memorial sites and inside the club, especially concerning the stabilization and preservation of items that underwent heavy exposure to the elements. Serving as an introductory to rapid response collecting, this webinar will discuss how the care of the collected items after the Pulse Nightclub shooting continued behind the scenes and is ongoing still today.
Introduction to Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) Presenter: Marie Lascu Wednesday, April 28, 2021 at 2:00 - 3:00pm (Eastern)
The Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) model has always been intended to engage both trained professionals and anyone with home movies or other creative works stored on film, video, audio, or digital media objects. This webinar will give an overview of the history of the CAW committee, explain the basic workshop model, and summarize current work through grant-funded projects which are building heavily on the original workshop model and pushing it forward to focus on long-term preservation planning assistance and tools.
U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Digitization Tutorial: Stitching Files for Oversized Materials
Presenter: Rachael Johns
Click here for session recording
Have you ever needed to scan something that is too big to scan all at once? Creating files for oversized items can be challenging. In Preservation Services, we often digitize oversized library materials, such as foldouts from books or really big maps. If you also work with oversized materials, or just want to play with Adobe Photoshop with library people, please join us for a tutorial on stitching oversized materials. It covers basics and our work together to combine several files to represent an example oversized item.
Test Your Knowledge: Disaster Planning and Response
Presenter: Shelby Strommer
Click here for session recording
How much do you know about disaster planning and emergency response? Whether you want to brush up on the basics or show off your expertise, join us for this interactive game. This session will cover the library’s work before, during, and after a disaster. Viewers will understand the importance of disaster planning, gain practical knowledge for responding to disasters, and learn collections salvage basics.
