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Sunday, May 1, 2011

MayDay! Resources to Use


"MayDay is a time when archivists and other cultural heritage professionals take personal and professional responsibility for doing something simple – something that can be accomplished in a day but that can have a significant impact on an individual’s or a repository’s ability to respond." - Society of American Archivists.

SAA has partnered with Heritage Preservation to promote awareness and resources for how to prepare when a disaster strikes archival, library and special collections.This is a wonderful opportunity for individuals and cultural institutions to annually review how they can pro-actively protect their collections in the event of an emergency.

In honor of MayDay! repositories across the nation are providing Emergency Preparedness ideas and resources that can be implemented by individuals in their personal or professional archives. SAA is an excellent place to start for Ideas for MayDay! and a sample of Emergency Preparedness Procedures. Council of State Archivists' also provide a wealth of Emergency Preparedness Initiative resources, and Emergency Preparedness and Response for Native American Cultural Resources offer Preparedness Discussion Questions - helpful to think about even if you don't have Native American collections.

The National Archives offers more resources for cultural institutions including: A Primer on Disaster Preparedness, Management and Response: Paper-Based Materials, contributed by entities such as the National Park Service and the Office of Risk Management, Smithsonian Institution.

And finally, an excellent resources page for individuals and cultural institutions is The North Carolina State Archives, as they offer: assessment tools, planning, templates, online tools, and publications.

Please check out sister blog The Bigger Picture for more MayDay! information and resources!

Freer|Sackler Archives

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