Disaster Response Information & Assistance

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy we compiled a list of disaster response resources such as guidelines, advisory services, relief grant opportunities, and aggregate sites, especially focusing on resources related to audiovisual assets. These resources are pertinent to any type of disaster, not just hurricanes and floods. In our experience implementing such efforts to assist people affected by the flooding, the fact was heavily underscored that an emergency preparedness plan alleviates much of the stress and uncertainty.

We were overwhelmed by the response we saw throughout the archiving and arts community, from volunteers, and from those outside the region lending their support and spreading advice through social media. Twitter, you’re all right.

*Audiovisual Specific*
Association of Moving Image Archivists: Disaster – First Actions: First Actions for Film, Tape and Discs
National Film & Sound Archive Australia: First aid for water damage
Washing and Handling Wet Film (video demonstration): http://www.folkstreams.net/vafp/clip.php?id=63
Disaster Recovery for Films in Flooded Areas by Mick Newnham
Specs Bros Hurricane and Flood Recovery Info for Video and Audiotape http://www.specsbros.com/hflood_recover.htm
And Disaster Recovery Checklist: http://www.specsbros.com/recover.html

National Park Service Conserv-O-Gram Salvage of Water Damaged Collections: Paper, Non-Paper Based, Objects, Natural History, Textiles
National Film & Sound Archive Australia Disaster Planning : http://www.nfsa.gov.au/preservation/handbook/disaster-planning/
*Direct Response & Support*
Northeast Document Conservation Center 24 hour Disaster Assistance Hotline: (978) 470-1010
American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works Disaster Response & Recovery Hotline: (202) 661-8068
And the website: http://www.conservation-us.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=695
Lyrasis Disaster Assistance:
Phone – (800) 999-8558
Email – [email protected]
Website – Disaster Assistance
Mid-Atlantic Region Archives Conference Disaster Relief Fund: http://www.marac.info/disaster-relief–
SAA National Disaster Recovery Fund for Archives: http://www2.archivists.org/news/2008/national-disaster-recovery-fund-for-archives
New York State Archives Disaster Assistance: http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/records/mr_disaster.shtml
*Multi-topic & Aggregated Resources*
Preservation Response & Recovery Resources from Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/preservation/emergprep/recovery.html
NARA Records Emergency Information : http://www.archives.gov/preservation/records-emergency/
METRO Disaster Recovery Resources List : http://metro.org/articles/disaster-recovery-resources/

Is It Wrong To Focus On Saving Mere Things After A Disaster?

One of the great conflicts I have with the choice of my career is the primary focus on material objects, on plastic things. Sure, those things hold important cultural content, but int he end they (generally) are not a matter of life or death. They are not people who are suffering, who could use the resources and care we give to these piles of…stuff.

One makes one’s choices in life, and, realistically, most work is not immediately critical to survival. But this issue I have is brought into sharp relief at times like these as we recover from Hurricane Sandy. I’m very proud of the work we at AVPS and all the other volunteers have done at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center and with other media collections to help salvage their materials. (See our Facebook page for photos and documentation of the effort.) The mobilization effort is so impressive, and seeing our colleagues in the field use their expertise and passion to save a collections before it is completely (and quickly) lost is just, wow.

But at the same time, one wonders (or maybe just I do), what if we had funneled just a fragment of that effort into taking food and equipment to people in the hard hit areas like the Rockaways and Staten Island, or into volunteering at medical shelters to care for the sick and elderly, or going into houses to help clean up and rebuild? What are mounds of DVDs and reels of magnetic tape compared to the life of a stranded shut in who needs warm clothes and a hot meal, or someone who has lost their home?

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In a less drastic scenario, this kind of question parallels the issue of general funding for the arts, libraries and archives, and preservation. However in that arena I have no problem adamantly averring that yes, these institutions and efforts need more resources and money because they matter. Arts and Humanistic learning bring texture and richness to our lives. They connect us to others, in the present, past, and (if we’re lucky) the future. We understand the things that make life physically possible to live — food, water, shelter, clothing — but what is that capability without the things that make life worth living — family, community, belief (in something or nothing), pleasurable food and drink, entertainment, and art.

And in the aftermath of tragedy — the brunt of which many of us were lucky enough to escape relatively unscathed — it is also important to recall the importance of quality of life, as well as to understand our roles and abilities to contribute as part of a functioning, livable society. We do what we can and we help in the ways that other people cannot help themselves.

In this way the kind of work done at Eyebeam is not about material stuff. It’s about community, about reaching out to someone to say what you do or what you care about matters to others. It makes our lives better. We want to help maintain that fact and share it with others, and we want to thank you.

— Joshua Ranger

Can Better Metadata Help Better Manage Costs And Disaster Recovery

Based primarily (I myself believe) on my sterling undergrad honors thesis on the topic of African-American Women’s 19th Century Spiritual Personal Narratives, I was able to procure a temporary staffing position as a file clerk with a workers compensation and general liability insurance company.

Don’t let anyone tell you that a Humanities degree is not versatile.

I ended up staying on, working in several different positions until I careened myself into the data analysis and reporting side of things. Much of the work was basic number crunching — how many claims, frequencies, how much was being spent — but an actually interesting part of the job was developing reports that would be the basis of risk management studies, such as looking at injury types across periods, locations, or jobs to see if there may be some preventable cause. Sure, maybe in the end it was ultimately about saving money, but I preferred to think about the efforts as trying to ensure that workers were not put in harmful or injurious conditions in order to create a safer, more pleasant workplace.

Don’t let anyone tell you that a cynic with a Humanities degree is not actually a big idealistic slob.

Another interesting thing I learned on the job was the different types of medical care models — such as preventative, curative, and palliative — and how they were applied on a health care continuum. In truth, though I may joke about that period in my life because one is supposed to joke about working in insurance, I picked up a lot in that career that has shaped how I think about preservation and collection management as, in a way, risk management or risk reduction. Essentially, we know that the assets are decaying, becoming obsolete, or can get damaged, so we work in ways at various points in the item’s lifecycle to prevent (for a time), retard, or ameliorate those events.

This is on my mind right now because we’re all waiting to hear what the impact of Hurricane Sandy on library, archive, museum, and other collections will end up being — not to mention the many personal collections endangered that we will probably not hear as much about but should still be a concern. We’re all bracing for what could be a high degree of palliative or curative care to salvage collections.

In an event like this it is uncertain precisely how much impact preventative care had. Yes, there are certain things which help, but water and wind do what they want. This is the bind of preventative measures (or insurance for that matter) — you don’t really know how beneficial (or useless) it may be until a triggering event occurs, or such an event may never occur, so there’s always the gamble to do without just to save costs.

Maybe we need another term that’s something more like Preparative — making sure that in the event of a disaster you are prepared to respond to it and have done things to prepare for smoothly managing the recovery. Many of these things would be covered in a disaster preparedness plan, such as having a phone tree and proper equipment and guidelines for recovering materials, but based on some of my experiences I feel there is one thing we are not focusing enough efforts on that would help us be more prepared — the creation of centralized, analyzable asset records at or near item-level.

How can this help? I’ve written a white paper on the topic posted today in our Papers & Presentations section, (“Insuring Media Archives & Leveraging Data Management as a Risk Reduction Solution”). Essentially, my thesis is that if you can’t quantify your collection pre-disaster, it will be impossible to do so afterwards, leading to an increased potential for a contentious claims process, duplicative or inefficient remediation efforts that waste resources, and greater costs down the road for coverage or self-funded remediation. Pre-disaster, a poorly quantified collection may result in over or under coverage, or a lack of realization regarding potential strategies for reducing risk to the most valuable content in a collection. This last point is very important to audiovisual and photographic collections where there is frequent duplication or versioning of contents, and management efforts should be focused on original or highest quality items.

Processing backlogs, incomplete records, or dis-aggregated records sets are a frequent issue for institutions, and the resources to alleviate those problems are often lacking. In reality, fuller records can impact many other cost points, such as the insurance topic discussed in my paper, time spent assisting patrons in discovery, or legal issues that require the recovery and review of data. Not to ignore the recovery efforts that are on-going and will continue, but for institutions not affected by Sandy or who escaped catastrophe, these events should be an eye-opener to the potential for risk. We need to start weighing these factors or risk, cost, and benefit and use them as arguments for improved funding for record creation, record management systems, and other data-centric areas that impact how well we can do our work and protect our collections.

— Joshua Ranger

Insuring Media Archives & Leveraging Data Management As A Risk Reduction Solution

Creating item level records for archival media collections is seen as a high-cost investment, but it may help save costs and efforts in the long run, especially in the event of a major loss due to disaster.

• INSURING MEDIA ARCHIVES (PDF)