Lisa Duncan, Art Conservator, LLC

Contact your congressman immediately to advocate for preservation!  Last week, President Obama released his 2011 budget that would eliminate funding for Save America’s Treasures (SAT) and Preserve America (PA), and cut funding for National Heritage Areas by 50%.  Without this funding conservation jobs will be drastically reduced and will thus lead to the deterioration of our cultural heritage.  I had the opportunity to work on a Save America’s Treasures grant at the Center for Creative Photography and would hate to see this program disappear. Save America’s Treasures alone has been responsible for more than 16,000 jobs and the preservation of numerous collections since it was created just ten years ago.

You can contact your congressman directly or fill out an online request through the National Trust for Historic Preservation website.

“Graphics Atlas is a new online resource that brings sophisticated print identification and characteristic exploration tools to archivists, curators, historians, collectors, conservators, educators, and the general public. The Image Permanence Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology began initial development of this resource in 2006.”

Link below:

http://www.graphicsatlas.org/

The Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) released a series of videos, A Race Against Time: Preserving AV Media, that are worth a look.  The videos are well done and discuss the many facets of preserving these collections.

follow the link below:

http://www.ccaha.org/education/videos

The National Park Service released information on cold storage in collections. It is worth a read and a viewing of the videos.

Follow the link below:

http://www.nps.gov/history/museum/coldstorage/html/intro1_1.html

After going to the link, the videos are located via a flash player at the bottom right of the screen.