Category Archives: Preservation

Links related to the preservation of materials such as photos, paper, fabric, and more.

Operation Photo Rescue

Help save flood-damaged family photos with Preservation Houston and Operation Photo Rescue

Volunteer shifts available 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, December 9 and 10

Sign up for a volunteer shift now

Preservation Houston needs your help reclaiming family photos that were casualties of Hurricane Harvey. PH is partnering in a special program with Operation Photo Rescue (OPR), a group of volunteer photographers, graphic designers and photo restorers who repair personal photographs that have been damaged by unforeseen circumstances. As OPR says, “Insurance doesn’t restore memories . . . but we do!”

Volunteers are needed for a variety of roles, including checking people in and helping them with the necessary paperwork, sorting damaged photos and assisting the volunteer photographers. Three-hour shifts are available beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, December 9, and Sunday, December 10. The event will be held at the Heights Clocktower, 611 West 22nd Street in the Heights. Volunteer online and indicate the shift(s) you can work and your preferred job. Volunteers must be able to work an entire three-hour shift.

During the Houston sessions, digital copies will be made of damaged photographs and the original photos will be returned immediately to the owner. The digital images will be sent to volunteer restorers around the United States who will repair, reprint and return the restored photographs at no cost to the people who own them.

Volunteers are needed to help in every step of the process. Photographers who would like to volunteer for the program should e-mail Preservation Houston with the subject line “Volunteer for OPR” or call (713) 510-3990 during regular business hours.

Appointments will be required to submit photos for restoration. Preservation Houston will send out an announcement when online registration opens. Because of the incredible number of photos damaged during Harvey and other recent disasters, OPR can accept a maximum of ten (10) photos per household.

Thank you for volunteering and helping recover family treasures. We look forward to working with you on December 9 and 10.

Harvey Resources

How to Help

Donate to the Society of American Archivists’ National Disaster Recovery Fund.

Donate to the AASLH Hurricane Harvey Cultural Relief Fund.

Community Resources

Resources For Archives & Archivists

TX-CERA Sponsored Safety Workshop

TX-CERA is hosting a safety and disaster planning workshop July 24th at the MFAH. The workshop is targeted at cultural heritage staff that may work with mold and soot hazards impacting their collections. Staff so often plunge right into hero mode once a disaster hits their collections and inadvertently put themselves at risk while trying to rescue those collections. We hope to avoid that by this type of workshop.

Learn more about the event here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/safety-training-for-museum-library-and-archives-professionals-tickets-35122002856

ARSC Preservation Grants Program Application Deadline: December 15, 2016

The ARSC Program for the Preservation of Classical Music Historical Recordings was founded by Al Schlachtmeyer and the ARSC Board of Directors to encourage and support the preservation of historically significant sound recordings of Western Art Music by individuals and organizations. (This program is separate from the ARSC Research Grants Program, which supports scholarship and publication in the fields of sound recording research and audio preservation.)

The ARSC Program for the Preservation of Classical Music Historical Recordings will consider funding:

— Projects involving preservation, in any valid and reasonable fashion, such as providing a collection with proper climate control, moving a collection to facilities with proper storage conditions, re-sleeving a collection of discs, setting up a volunteer project to organize and inventory a stored collection, rescuing recordings from danger, copying recordings from endangered or unstable media, etc.

— Projects promoting public access to recordings.

— Projects involving commercial as well as private, instantaneous recordings.

— Projects involving collections anywhere in the world. (Non-U.S.
applicants are encouraged to apply.)

The program is administered by an ARSC Grants Committee including the chair, a member of the ARSC Technical Committee, and an expert on classical music.

Grant amounts generally range from $2,000 to $10,000. Grant projects should be completed within 24 months. Written notification of decisions on projects will be made approximately three months after the submission deadline.

Applications may be sent as an e-mail attachment to arscgrants@aol.com

Applications should be Word documents in Normal formatting, 12-point font, with accompanying letters and other materials scanned into PDF files.

For further details, guidelines, and application instructions, visit:
http://www.arsc-audio.org/committees/preservationgrants.html.

Grant applications must be received by December 15, 2016.

Questions about the Preservation Grants Program should be directed to Grants Committee Chair Suzanne Flandreau at arscgrants@aol.com.

MFAH Disaster Response and Recovery Workshop

THE MFAH TO HOST TRAINING FOR MUSEUM, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES PROFESSIONALS, CULTURAL LEADERS AND EMERGENCY PROFESSIONALS AUGUST 1-2, LED BY THE TEXAS CULTURAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE ALLIANCE

What

The MFAH will host a disaster response and recovery workshop, led by Texas Cultural Emergency Response Alliance, on Monday, August 1 and Tuesday August 2. Library, archive, and museum professionals in Houston and the surrounding counties are invited to share expertise and resources in this unique partnership.

The 2-day workshop will focus on disaster response and recovery situations specific to the region, including hurricanes, tornadoes, and flash floods, and will show participants how to respond to such large-scale natural events to both protect and preserve the objects in their care and to connect to a larger network of national emergency management professionals.

Program, Day 1:

Speakers

  • Jennifer Suter, Training and Program Manager, Harris County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management
  • Robert Emery, VP for Safety, Health, Environment & Risk Management, UT Health Science Center
  • Paul A. Tabor, State Critical Incident Stress Management, Director Texas Department of State Health Services
  • Kirk Lively, Director of Technical Services, Belfor USA
  • Trey Johnson, Executive General Adjuster, York Insurance Group

Program, Day 2:

  • Lectures and Training Exercises
  • TX-CERA, Assessment and recovery techniques for wet recovery and salvage of cultural heritage collections.

When

  • Monday and Tuesday, August 1-2, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Where

The American General Meeting Room
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Audrey Jones Beck Building
5601 Main Street Houston, Texas 77005

Cost

  • $80.00, lunch is included. Free parking in MFAH parking lot.

Details
The MFAH is an experienced disaster management leader and advocate for protecting cultural heritage resources in the region.

The Texas Cultural Emergency Response Alliance (TX-CERA) is a statewide resource for cultural heritage and disaster management and part of the nationwide Alliance for Response program. Through a series of regional forums, it builds bridges between the cultural heritage and emergency response communities before disasters happen. Their programs lead to new partnerships, policies, and cooperative planning efforts. For more information, visit:

Contacts

  • Steve Pine, Museum of Fine Arts, spine@mfah.org,
  • Olivia Primanis, University of Texas, Austin, primanis@utexas.edu, or
  • Melanie Sanford, Textile Preservation Services of Texas – info@conservingthreads.com

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2-day-disaster-preparedness-and-recovery-workshop-hosted-by-tx-cera-tickets-26365409650

MFAH Hosts Disaster Recovery Conference, Annoucement

The Texas Film Round-Up Comes to Galveston!

roundup

The Texas Archive of the Moving Image is excited to bring the award-winning Texas Film Round-Up to Galveston on June 23 – 25! Beginning Thursday, June 23, we are providing FREE digitization of any Texas-related films and videos, including home movies, advertisements, PSAs, educational films, and more at the Rosenberg Library at 2310 Sealy Street, Galveston, TX 77550 during library hours.

We will continue accepting films and videos through Saturday, June 25. We encourage all of you to dig up your family films and videos out of closets, sheds, or drawers and bring them to the Texas Film Round-Up. To qualify for free digitization, participants must be willing to donate a digital copy of their materials to TAMI’s archive. We also collect copies of Texas-related films that have already been digitized.

TAMI will also host a public screening, “What does Waikiki have that Galveston doesn’t?,” on Saturday, June 25 from 4:30 – 6:00 pm in the Rosenberg Library’s Wortham Auditorium that will help raise funds to restore an early and rare film of the 1931 Pageant of Pulchritude from the Rosenberg Library’s collection to full color, a new digital technique that has only recently been developed.

Help us restore this treasure, never before seen in color, to its intended state. The screening will feature many films from the Rosenberg Library, including fun, mid-century tourism films, an interview with filmmaker King Vidor about the 1900 storm, and footage of the 1925 Galveston Bathing Girl Revue transferred from 35mm nitrate film.

Get more program details on the Round-Up page!

Emergency Response & Recovery Workshop

TX-CERA or Texas Cultural Emergency Response Alliance is preparing a workshop on Emergency Response and Recovery. Please find detailed information at the link below.

Please feel free to forward this email to other interested parties. All are welcome!

Mon, Jun 13 at 9:00 AM, Denton, Texas

An Introduction to Emergency Response and Recovery of Material Cultural Objects
A Texas Cultural Emergency Response Alliance (TX-CERA) Sponsored Workshop

The purpose of this one-day workshop is to introduce participants to emergency response and recovery for material cultural objects in private and museum collections. Participants will learn protocols for responding to disaster scenes and working with local emergency responders. Health and safety issues associated with disasters and collection techniques associated with various types of material collections will also be covered. The day will end with a museum mock-disaster table-top exercise and a question/answer session with the instructors.

From more information and to register for the workshop:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-intro-to-emergency-response-and-recovery-of-material-cultural-objects-tickets-24853320952

Contact TX-CERA

TX-CERA is an affiliation of institutions and persons interested in preserving the cultural heritage of Texas. Through education and advocacy TX-CERA hopes to serve as a resource for cultural institutions in order to mitigate loss of cultural and heritage collections due to disaster. The organization will develop a roster of heritage and collections professionals in Texas to create a network of ready support in the event of an emergency or disaster.

Please contact us if you wish to volunteer with TX-CERA

Members of the TX-CERA Steering Committee

  • Steve Pine, Senior Conservator of Decorative Arts, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
  • Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa, PhD, Associate Director Conservation and Preservation, Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
  • Laura DeNormandie, Chief Curator, Texas Historical Commission
  • Diana Diaz, Photo Conservator, Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
  • Frances Gale, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin
  • Jennifer Lee, Preservation Services, University of Texas, Austin
  • Jessica Phillips, Head, Preservation, University of North Texas, Denton
  • Olivia Primanis, Senior Book Conservator, Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
  • Shelby Sanett, PhD, Lead Security Management and Program Analyst, (NARA) College Park, MD
  • Melanie Sanford, Conservator, Textile Preservation Services of Texas, Allen

Preservation Week at HMRC : The Blue Tile Project

The Houston Metropolitan Research Center is hosting an event for Preservation Week featuring the Blue Tile Project. You know those really cool tiled street signs that can be spotted around Houston? This group is trying to find and preserve them. The event will be Wednesday, April 27th from 6-8 at the PreservationWeekFlyer. The flyer is attached. Hope to see a lot of AHA! Members there!

Preservation Week events for the public at Rice University

Do you need help managing your digital photos or videos?
Curious about ways to better organize your files? 

Please join us for the following events,
presented in honor of National Preservation Week.
No need to rsvp.

Preserving and Accessing Films and Videos
A presentation by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image
Tuesday, April 23rd at 10am I Farnsworth Pavilion | Rice Memorial Center / Ley Student Center
(building #43 on the campus map)
Light refreshments will be served.

Managing Your Digital Photos: Practical & Inspirational Tips

Brown Bag Event: Wednesday, April 24th at Noon
Digital Media Commons, Herring Hall, room 129
http://libguides.rice.edu/personal-archiving

Events are free and sponsored by Fondren Library

Parking:

The closest lot is the Central Campus Garage (building #51 on the campus map). Enter campus through Entrance 20 off of Rice Blvd, take a right at the second stop sign, and the underground lot entrance is the first left. Please note that all campus parking requires payment; a credit card is required.

HMRC Conservation and Preservation program, July 26

WHO: The Friends of the Texas Room (of the Julia Ideson Library, downtown), present their quarterly meeting, free and open to the public.

WHAT: Laney McAdow and Mary McMillen (both on staff at the Houston Metropolitan Research Center) will speak on the conservation and preservation of books, documents, letters, newspapers, leather, and photographs and conduct a brief demonstration of techniques for preserving the life of these kinds of materials.

Mrs. McMillen worked 25 years in the Harvard University Library System, including 16 years as collections conservator at the Graduate School of Education. She studied bookbinding and conservation at the North Bennet Street School in Boston, and is a member of AIC and The Guild of Bookworkers.

WHEN: Monday, July 26, 2010, 6:30pm reception, 7pm program

WHERE: Museum of Printing History
1324 W. Clay Street
(between Waugh Drive and Montrose, one block south of West Dallas)
Free parking is available in the lot across the street or in the small lot on the left, adjacent to the Museum building.