California Online Training for Emergency Preparedness & Wet Salvage
This four-week online training is offered to individuals affiliated with cultural heritage organizations in California who are unable to attend one of the in-person wet salvage workshops. The web course will introduce key concepts of disaster recovery including risk assessment, preparedness, response procedures, and recovery actions.
Description
The “Ready—Or Not”: Cultural Heritage Disaster Preparedness Project provides free emergency preparedness services to California organizations that care for cultural and historic resources. This project is supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library.
This four-week online training is offered to individuals affiliated with cultural heritage organizations in California who are unable to attend one of the in-person wet salvage workshops. The web course will introduce key concepts of disaster recovery including risk assessment, preparedness, response procedures, and recovery actions. This course provides participants with essential knowledge and emphasizes practical skills in creating disaster plans and hands-on salvage techniques for cultural heritage collections. Each participant will receive instructions and a supplemental material kit to be used during the online wet salvage exercise. There will be discussion forums for participants who would like to deep dive on topics with their peers and the instructors.
Instructor-led sessions are on Mondays 11:00am-12:30pm PT (10/27, 11/3, 11/10, and 11/17). Students will gain access to the online materials on 10/20 to prepare in advance for Session 1.
Participants will engage in live online sessions and self-paced learning that include:
- Training in risk assessment and mitigation, emergency preparedness and response, and related emergency planning topics;
- Practical activities to support disaster plan creation;
- Instructor-facilitated scenarios (table-top exercises) to simulate the experience of responding to a disaster;
- Hands-on wet salvage training focused on formats commonly found in cultural collections, including books, documents, photographs and audiovisual materials; and,
- Discussions to facilitate an understanding of how disasters can physically impact collections and how to be effective "first responders" for collections.
Who Should Attend
These online workshops are open to individuals affiliated with cultural heritage organizations in California, including libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies, government departments, state historic parks, cultural centers, tribal nations, county clerks, and others who work with historic and cultural resources.
Advance registration is required.