New Jersey Cultural Alliance for Response Disaster Preparedness Training and Plans

FAIN: PG-252850-17

Thomas Edison State University (Trenton, NJ 08608-1101)
Michele Stricker (Project Director: May 2016 to June 2019)

Three workshops on disaster preparedness training in the preservation of humanities collections, to be offered by the New Jersey State Library in partnership with the New Jersey Cultural Alliance for Response (NJCAR). Workshops would be open to NJCAR member institutions and would focus on risk assessment, disaster plan development, salvage priorities, salvage methods, and wet material recovery. Of NJCAR’s 60 organizational members, 25 collect humanities materials and include small historical societies, municipal and university libraries, and mid-sized regional museums. Representative members include the North Jersey History and Genealogy Center of the Morristown and Morris Township Library, the Vietnam Era Museum and Educational Center at the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, and the Hoboken Historical Museum. Training would be offered by the Digital and Preservation Services Department of LYRASIS.

The New Jersey State Library (NJSL), an affiliate of Thomas Edison State University, as a lead institution of the statewide membership organization, New Jersey Cultural Alliance for Response (NJCAR), proposes a project to provide disaster preparedness training for the humanities-collecting institutions of NJCAR. These 25 collecting institutions include small historical societies, municipal libraries, and mid-sized regional museums. NJSL will contract with Lyrasis, a preservation consultant, to present a two-session workshop in each of the three geographic areas of New Jersey. The two sessions will focus on risk assessment, salvage priorities and methods, and disaster plan development. At the end of the first session, workshop attendees will have learned the tools necessary for their “homework” of creating draft disaster plans for their institutions. At the second session six weeks later, attendees will review their plans together with the workshop leader and continue their training.