Curators, archivists, museum specialists and those with collection management responsibilities in the Pacific West Region recently participated in the Bi-Annual Museum and Archival Management Workshop. The workshop was held at the historic “Red Barn” at the beautiful Point Reyes National Seashore in California from March 9-12.
Over 50 people attended the workshop representing parks from American Samoa, the island of Molokai, California, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Nevada. This was the first time the workshop that occurred in three years. Arguably one of the most interesting topics of the workshop was “Disaster Planning and Recovery Strategies”. This session began with a brief presentation by Judy Hitzeman, registrar, from the San Francisco Maritime Museum. In this presentation, Hitzeman explained how she has tried to protect her collection from earthquakes by installing reinforced upright hanging devices for fine art pieces and by adding additional brackets and reinforcements to preventing tipping and jostling of museum cabinets and shelving. By using ingenuity and seeking out new supplies and equipment, Hitzeman showed her colleagues new strategies to try to make collections “quake- proof”. Once Hitzeman had finished discussing what she did to minimize a potentially disastrous situation, testimonies were given about what happened and what transpired when a disaster was unable to be prevented
The first to speak on disaster recovery was museum curator Tammy Duchesne from War in the Pacific NHP in Guam and American Memorial Park in Saipan. Duchesne was the acting curator last year when Supertyphoon Pongsona devastated the island of Guam and destroyed the building which housed the National Park Service museum collection. In her power-point presentation, the WAPA curator showed many slides which documented how the building’s electronic components were destroyed and how the islands decimated infrastructure made recovery efforts nearly impossible. After describing the situation which she was tasked to solve, Duchesne showed how mold growth was rampant in the museum and how the artifacts which were houses in a hot, humid, non climate controlled environment needed to be removed as soon as possible. Duchesne described how she was able to identify and prioritize the controlled and non- controlled artifacts without access to the ANCS+ database by using location and inventory reports she had generated only a week before. Armed with the information she needed, Duchesne described how she proceeded to systematically remove all the artifacts from the mold infested, hot- humid museum into the temporary storage area.
After Duchesne explained how she orchestrated, prescribed, and executed the transfer of the artifacts from the museum to the new location, Blair Davenport, Curator at Death Valley, described her experiences on “team Charlie” when she was deployed to work with a squad of curators who responded to the Jamestown emergency. Davenport showed horrific images such as mold growth on artifacts, water lines on the walls of the collection storage room that were a couple feet high, rusted museum cabinets, and photos of museum artifacts that had been knocked out their boxes and were floating in water when the recovery team arrived. Her presentation detailed her experiences as she helped respond to the disaster and helped “triage” the Jamestown museum collection.
While the audience may have gasped at some of the horrific images, both presentations gave curators and archivists the opportunity to learn about two different disaster experiences. By learning about two different parks’ disaster experiences, this information might help to guide other parks in creating, reevaluating, or revising their Emergency Operation Plan. While the thought of an approaching disaster is unsettling, both parks presentations showed how having an emergency plan is important and necessary.
After Duchesne and Davenport gave their presentations on their first hand experiences coping with and recovering from the disasters that affected War in the Pacific and Jamestown, David Bennett, PORE Ranger, gave a report on the Incident Command System. Bennett provided flow-charts, scenarios, tables, and a description of how ICS can be implanted in a variety of situations and tailored to the unique circumstances of the disaster. Bennett stressed how ICS can be altered and modified given severity of the incident and the availability of personal and resources.
While the disaster presentations left the audience solemn, other presentations detailing very positive things happening in the Pacific West Region. Scott Foss, Paleontologist and Collection Manager at John Day gave a presentation on the process of going from an idea to a new state of the art museum storage facility. Foss explained how John Day was able to plan for a new building and facility that allowed research, science, preservation, and curation to be optimized. James “Bow” O’Barr also gave a presentation which detailed his experiences in transforming a completely inadequate facility into one that enables curators and archivists to perform and excel given the excellent facilities that allow them to maximize their skills and resources. These two presentations really emphasized positive directions and successes in the planning and designing of new curatorial facilities.
The conference also covered such topics as Museum Management Plans, Collection Management Reports, the Automated Inventory Program, Scope of Collection Statements, PMIS procedures, and cataloguing issues. Curators also talked about significance criteria, the NPS museum centennial, opportunities for advanced education in Museum Science through distance learning programs, how GIS can be used to catalogue and access digital photography, and the importance of strategizing for cooperative museum storage facilities. Much meaningful discussion also centered on archive strategies as a whole, the data management program ARGIS, NPS records management, the uses of NPS Focus and Voyager, and ways to create a virtual museum. The three day workshop was a wonderful event as people were able to receive input from Regional Curator Kent Bush, Diane Nicholson, and Holly Dunbar, learn from their peers, participate in relevant discussions, discuss successes, achievements, and challenges, talk about partnering to maximize opportunities, and catch up with colleagues. The gorgeous scenery of Point Reyes, the extraordinarily good weather, the seeing of old friends and the making of new friends made this not only a rewarding professional and educational experience but also a pleasurable personal one as well.
Special thanks to Carola DeRooy, Point Reyes archivist for planning the event, Point Reyes National Seashore for hosting it, and Kent Bush, Diane Nicholson, and Holly Dunbar for their presenting at it. The next workshop is tentatively scheduled for 2006 although no location has been selected.
