Budgeting for Conservation of Collections : The Heritage Health Index (2005)

This week our class (see this post for more context!) read the 2005 report, A PUBLIC TRUST AT RISK: The Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America’s Collections (hereafter "HHI").

The report was alarming in its statistical portrayal of the state of archival, library, and museum collections in the United States in 2005. And because it's kind of dry reading and my classmates have used all of the best graphs from the piece, I'll be illustrating this post with everyone's favorite (or most reviled) cultural imperialist/grave robber, Indiana Jones.

What was the problem?

A huge percentage of American museums, libraries, and archives were not taking care of the items in their possession.

This was caused by a combination of factors. For one, many of the storage spaces for these irreplaceable items are out of date.

Many of these organizations also didn't have funds designated for preservation of the objects in their care. This isn't particularly surprising; we've been talking all semester about how much trouble cultural institutions have when it comes to funding. This course's Steemit experiment has sought to show that Steemit can be a viable revenue stream. In any case, funding is somewhat scarce.

With outdated infrastructure and weak funding streams, the results were predictable. HHI tells story after story of disasters befalling storage spaces and whole museums being leveled by floods, fires, and pests.

What are were the solutions?

The HHI was primarily an attempt to get a sense of the extent of the problem, but it also offered solutions:

• Institutions must give priority to providing
  safe conditions for the collections they hold in
  trust.
• Every collecting institution must develop an
  emergency plan to protect its collections and
  train staff to carry it out.
• Every institution must assign responsibility
  for caring for collections to members of its
  staff.
• Individuals at all levels of government and in
  the private sector must assume responsibility
  for providing the support that will allow these
  collections to survive.

Some of these directives are relatively simple. Creating an emergency plan for some of the possible scenarios might take some time but it will help immensely if it's ever needed.

Pro tip: Margery Sly, archivist at Temple University's Special Collections Research Center suggests including chocolate bars in your archival emergency kit (among many other things!). Chocolate always helps in a crisis.

Other recommendations are harder to act on. How does an institution balance protecting its assets and sharing them with the public? @hourofhistory has more on that particular dilemma over at their blog. It's a really tricky question!

And of course, we're back to "where does the money come from?" Most funding comes with strings attached and necessitates a deft touch to meet the needs of the institution as well as those of the patron (or Steemians).

Why did you use the past tense in those first two headings, @tmaust?

Because the HHI was published thirteen years ago. Heck there's been an Indiana Jones movie since then, and that was a decade ago. It's tough to know to what extent the cultural sector has responded to the HHI jeremiad in the intervening years. During the Hurricane Harvey, for instance, some museums leaped into action to protect their collections, but it's hard to know if those actions are indicative of a larger trend.

I know that emergency planning was a large part of our Archives and Manuscripts course last fall (see the above nugget from Margery Sly about the chocolate) which seems to represent a data point that maybe there is better awareness and planning, at least in some parts of the sector.

Money will remain a problem though.

^{100% of the SBD rewards from this #explore1918 post will support the Philadelphia History Initiative @phillyhistory. This crypto-experiment conducted by graduate courses at Temple University's Center for Public History and MLA Program, is exploring history and empowering education. Click here to learn more.}