19 - The "Ready --Or Not" Disaster Preparedness for Cultural Organizations

The “Ready—Or Not” Cultural Heritage Emergency Preparedness project is a three-year initiative to assess emergency preparedness at California organizations that care for cultural and historic resources (e.g., archives, libraries, museums, and tribal nations). Administered by the Northeast Document Conservation Center, funded by the California State Library, six consultants have visited more than 300 cultural organizations across California in the first two years of the project. This poster presents the details about the California “Ready—Or Not” project and demonstrates a statewide model project by preservation professionals that reach cultural organizations. It also includes examples of organizations that used this initiative to write disaster plans and get prepared for man-made and/or natural disasters within their organizations. “Ready—Or Not”s objective is to assess more collecting organizations to assist in disaster planning and preservation of collections. Attendees will be encouraged to sign up for a free on-site emergency preparedness consultation for their organizations.