Hello everybody. We're going to go ahead and get started, but you can continue to introduce yourselves and say hello using that chat box on the left hand side of the screen. My name is Tiffany Amig and I'm the CAP program coordinator here at the foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, more simply known as FAAIC. I'm joined today by several collaborators, including Chris Reich, Wendy Jessup, and Michael Henry, whom I'll introduce in just a bit. A couple of technical notes before we start. On your screen, I see that most of you have found that chat box on the left hand side. You should continue using that to say hello, but you can also use it to ask questions throughout the webinar. If you do post a question there, you might receive a response right away in that chat box from my colleague, Jessica Unger, who is helping me on a technical level today. If you don't get an answer right away, know that Jess is collecting those questions and we'll discuss them at the end of the presentation. You'll also see a web links box down below. If you want to visit any of the links, just click on the link and it will highlight it in blue and then you'll click on the browse to button to go to that site. And then finally, there's a files box that contains some files related to the program. If you'd like to download those, just click on the file name to highlight it and then click on the download files button. Today's webinar will be recorded. So if you're not able to attend the whole session or you want to view the information again or share it with a colleague, we will send you an email link to the recorded presentation. And we're going to try to get that out by Monday at the latest. I'm really excited to be talking with all of you guys today and I want to take a minute just to thank you for being a part of the collections assessment for preservation programs very first year. I know that many of you served as assessors with the former conservation assessment program that was administered by heritage preservation. And I'm just curious, I wanted to do a quick poll to see exactly how many of you were involved in that program in the past. So if you want to just click this, the poll that popped up on your screen and the answer yes or no as to whether you were an assessor for the previous cap program. I will share the results with you in just a minute there. So it looks like almost 70% of you have served with the previous cap program, which is great. So as you know, this new program is a bit different from that previous program. Our goal today is to highlight new aspects of the program to try to explain FAIC's philosophy behind those changes. And then to talk through some suggestions on making your work with cap as smooth and as successful as possible. First, though, this program would not exist without the support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And I want to give you the chance to meet Chris Reich, with whom we've been working to build this new program. Chris is the Chief Administrator for IMLS's Office of Museum Services. I'm going to turn things over to Chris. Thanks, Tiffany. I really appreciate it. I'd like to join with FAIC and Tiffany in welcoming all of you to this afternoon's webinar and in thanking you for your participation in this program. All of us at IMLS appreciate your assistance in working with small to mid-sized museums as they strive to improve the care and conservation of the collections entrusted to them by the public. The collections assessment for preservation program, otherwise known as CAP, is made possible through a federal grant award from IMLS to FAIC. With these funds, FAIC is able to administer this program and coordinate the participation of both museums and assessors throughout the country. While the participating museums are not actually receiving federal grant awards, the federal grant funds that IMLS has been able to provide to FAIC support their participation and your participation in the program. As Tiffany mentioned, many of you were involved with the previous iteration of CAP, so most of you surely know that this new collections assessment for preservation program builds on the long history of the former conservation assessment program, also known as CAP, that was funded by IMLS and administered by Heritage Preservation for over 20 years. With the dissolution of Heritage Preservation, IMLS launched an effort to identify a new cooperator, and we are really delighted to now be working with FAIC to continue our agency's commitment to helping museums plan for and implement the best possible management and conservation of their collections. I know Tiffany will go over a lot of the same material, but we just want to share that over the past year, FAIC has devoted many hours and much energy to developing new program materials and processes to support this program. Together with IMLS and a dedicated steering committee, FAIC has developed a program that we feel certain will meet the needs of the field. Some new and improved features of CAP include improved preparation materials tailored to the size and scope of participating museums, the integration of assessments of building and environmental conditions in the overall collections assessments, a structured follow-up opportunity for museums and their assessors, improved training opportunities for all of you, the assessors, and linking museums to training and other resources as part of their participation. So thanks again for joining us on this webinar, and I hope you have a wonderful experience with the CAP program this year, and now I'd like to turn things back over to Tiffany who will walk you through some next steps for assessors. Thank you, Chris. As I mentioned earlier, what we want to do today is to talk through some of the new elements in the CAP program. To provide a little bit of background, when FAIC first applied to work with IMLS on an updated version of the CAP program, the organization conducted surveys and phone interviews with both assessors and museum professionals who'd participated in the previous program. It was clear that the program was extremely valuable in helping museums establish priorities and lay a foundation for further collections care work, but it was also clear that there were changes that could be made to improve the program. So after hearing from former assessors and participants, we worked with IMLS and with a steering committee to help work through some of the details of these changes. The steering committee was made up of two former assessors, Michael Henry, who's joined us today, and Barbara Moore, a conservator in private practice in New England, as well as three members of the museum community who had previous experience with assessment programs. Now, I know that all of you received an assessor handbook that details the steps of the new program, and I don't want to waste your time by repeating everything in the book. But I did think that it would be helpful to use the steps of the program as a framework through which we can talk about the changes in the program. So you'll see us go through these steps that you've probably seen before in the handbook and maybe on the website. So the first step is application acceptance. Our changes to the application process really only affect the institutions that apply, so I'm going to kind of skip over this one. But you should be aware that on March 31st, we began notifying museum applicants of their acceptance. As of now we have 74 museums in the program, and you'll find them listed on our website. I included a quick link to those participants in the link box at the bottom of your screen if you want to check them out. I did want to mention that we have additional funding that will allow another probably four museums to participate this year. So if you know a museum that's a good candidate for a cap and is ready to do that this year, please let them know that applications have reopened on our website. We held an orientation webinar for participating museums last week, and they just received the list of approved assessors this Monday. The museums will now be reviewing the approved assessor list and identifying those of you whom they would like to interview to serve as their assessors. I believe in the previous cap program institutions were sent a list of just three or four assessors and heritage preservation did some work in advance to match assessors to institutions. We have completely opened the list to museums to select from. So they have a list of around 50 collections assessors and around 50 building assessors from which they can choose. We did that because we heard feedback from both assessors and institutions that there was a perception that the process of matching was unclear and it didn't necessarily allow for the best matches between museums and assessors. So as we indicated on the assessor application, the museum staff has access to a lot of the information you provided in your application, like your, your self selected areas of expertise, and that will help them make their decision. And of course, if a museum contacts you and you feel as though you're not the best fit, you should let them know. You're, you do not have to accept any, any job that's offered to you. You can also let them know if there's another assessor that you've enjoyed working with in the past and would like to work with again. So if you're a collections assessor and you have an existing relationship with a building assessor that you can recommend, please let them know. This will hopefully allow them to gather the best assessment team for them. So yes, I'm just trying to keep a little bit of an eye on the comments, but I will, I will answer most of my questions at the end, but I did just want to clarify that the list is a pretty complicated Excel document with a lot of different fields. And it does list contact information and specialty information in addition to basically everything that you included in your application other than your resume and the statement at the very end. So it does give them a lot of information to consider. Step three is the contract. The museum project lead will be responsible for drafting a contract for you to sign. You have a sample contract in your handbook as an attachment and the institutions were provided with the same sample contract. I know it's a little bit fuzzy here on the screen. Don't feel like you should be reading it right now. It's really just to show you again what that contract sample contract looks like. You can also find a word version in the files box at the bottom of the screen here, as well as on the assessor resources page of the CAP website. You don't have to use this template. If you happen to have a standard contract you want to use, that's fine. We just ask that you include everything that's listed in the introduction paragraph at the top of the sample contract. So be sure to take a look at that. That information is important because it makes sure that FAIC is included and protected in the agreement. One important note about the contracts, we'd like them to contain your schedule for the assessment, meaning the dates you plan to have your pre-visit phone call, your site visit, and the date you expect to have your report finalized. So we want a lot of planning in advance. Keep in mind that the museum is trying to go through the same process with another assessor at the same time, and you'll need to coordinate those dates with both of you. I need that, or I know that everybody's busy and it's probably going to be difficult to identify dates that you and another assessor are available. And I've asked the project contacts at the museum to lead this process and to create an email thread that copies both assessors when they get to the point of working through the schedule. When you've completed your contracts, I'll ask you to send them to me. You can send them via email. It doesn't need to be an original copy, and I will sign them and return them to all of you. FAIC does need to complete and sign the contract, or we won't be able to pay you and no one wants that. I've asked some museums to do their best to get a contract in place by June 1, and I'm just trying to keep everyone moving along in this process, so you can expect to hear from museums soon, hopefully. Excuse me. On the site questionnaire portion, I just wanted to note that our staff will send you an email with a PDF version of the complete application and site questionnaire for the museum or the museums that you're working with. I'm not sure if that was done electronically before, but it will be done electronically now. We've added the step of a pre-visit phone call because we've heard that nearly all assessors did a pre-visit phone call anyway, and we wanted to add some structure to that process. We also wanted to give the entire assessment team the opportunity to meet one another before the site visit. So this should be an opportunity for you and the other assessor to begin familiarizing yourselves with the institution and to begin planning for the site visit. We want the call to include both assessors and the project lead at the institution on a conference call to ensure that everyone is hearing the same things at the same time. So at this point, I want to turn things over to Wendy Jessup and Michael Henry to talk about the dual assessor approach to the site visit and report. I'm going to come back in at the end and kind of talk about the end of the process, but I wanted to introduce Michael and Wendy. Wendy Jessup is a conservator for Wendy Jessup and Associates in the Metro D.C. area. And Michael Henry is principal engineer, architect and founding partner at Watson. I was waiting for the rest of the thing. Hi Michael. This is Wendy Jessup. Hello everybody. We're sort of operating without a PowerPoint slide screen for some reason, but we're going to muscle on through. Michael and I have had the great opportunity to work together on over 60 caps with about half of those with each other. We've also done a couple dozen other cap like assessments that were that were funded through other organizations, either the organizations themselves or through with other funding streams. I specialize in preventive conservation and have been involved with the cap program since 1989. I'm currently on the course development team and the instruction team with Michael for the Getty Conservation's new museum collections environments course that's coming up in June. And Michael is also an adjunct professor in the graduate program in historic preservation at the University of Pennsylvania and a guest lecturer at the literature program and art conservation. And in addition to having worked with Wendy, I've had the good fortune of working with many of you who are in attendance here today on the webinar. And as a result of all of these conservation assessments, I've learned a lot about from you who are conservation assessors in particular about what we're trying to achieve with preventive conservation of collections. And how how we might best accomplish that through the building and through the systems that we're using contain these collections. So the assessment program for me has been as much a learning curve as it is, has it has been an opportunity to provide guidance to institutions. So, many of you have probably done as we see from the poll a number of assessments under the prior prior program. We'd like to discuss what's different about the new program from the assessor standpoint. All caps going forward will not have a building assessor, regardless of whether the museum is a historic building or a purpose built a more modern building. This will bring additional emphasis on the building and the systems and their environmental management functions. In addition, historic buildings will continue to be assessed as the largest object in the collections, which has been the traditional role for the building assessor in the past program. Collections that set emphasis will include identifying potential causes of the observed conditions. And I think this is an important distinction because I think many times in the past, the conservation assessment might have taken the form of a condition assessment, focusing on observed conditions, but not necessarily working backwards to causality. And as a member of the steering committee, one of the things that we hope to remedy in this program was not just looking at conditions but tracing them back to causes. All of this requires that we think about museums and preventive conservation of their collections holistically as a set of interacting systems. And these systems range from governance to climatic loads to building performance to collections care. And then the end result of the new program is that we have a single work product that's produced jointly by the two assessors. And this is a departure from the way many assessments were done in the past. So, going to the key points in the dual assessor approach, Wendy, we'll talk about that and what we're going to cover today. We have five key areas in the dual assessor approach. The real value that's involved in collaboration, what's involved with count and collaboration, what it does and why it's important. The integration of climate and site and building performance and systems with the collections and collections preservation and protection. How can we identify what causative factors are and what we are seeing and why it's happening. And then, as Michael said, the importance of having a single work product with a cohesive set of recommendations so that the client can use this for a variety of purposes as they go forward in their collections improvements program. Now, this last bullet that we've got up in the screen where it says when it works and when it doesn't work, it is really about the collaborative process and some of the pitfalls that can occur with the collaborative process. So, we're not saying that the collaboration doesn't work, it's just what are some of the stumbling blocks that can happen with that. And looking at the next slide, please. We're on collaboration. This is the first one of this. When we start thinking about a camp assessment, we think very strongly that teamwork begins before the site visit so that the limited amount of time on site can be focused on the institution, its buildings and its collections. This is particularly important when working with an assessor who you've never worked with before on an assessment. You may be familiar with them from their written work or from conferences or whatever, but it's really good to have a sense of how do we work together with a client institution. So, we advocate trying to get to know the other assessor in advance of that first phone call with the client organization as Tiffany said, step five. So, you get to know each other's working styles. It's important to understand where the strengths and the experiences are, how people work with each other, and establish the goals for responsibility and format for the final report. It's also good to exchange information in advance about your preferred contact information. Do we better communicate via email? Do we communicate better via text or telephone? It's really important we found even after all of these years of working together, Michael and I will always approach a new job on a new way that thinking about what is this institution, what are some of the needs, how are we going to approach the new project, and what are our observations of the materials that we've received from the client. So, next slide, please. We're going on to engaging the client. An important part of any assessment is understanding the issues that are not immediately observable, as these might be causes of the physical conditions that we see. Engaging the client is an important part of this project. To me, this means that the client is the additional collaborator in this process. From the initial phone call through the site visit to the report generation, the client needs to be involved and be encouraged to provide their perspectives. This type of collaboration helps to build trust. And I think sometimes it's so important to be able to build trust so that they can address, so that you can ask some difficult questions when they may arise. Not always will they arise, but sometimes there may be something behind what you're observing that you've got to ask a question about. And to be able to build trust through collaboration is so important to be able to get at the issue that's ahead of time. It's important to schedule an entrance interview to understand the goals and objectives for the site visit. It may have changed. The client may have learned something new since they filled out the initial questionnaire and since that first phone call, so it's important to revisit the goals and objectives. And to understand the organizational structure, the governance, what's the history of the institution and what's the culture of the institution. Sometimes institutions are very, very fastly across the gamut.  Is it one staff person? Is it three? Who's responsible for what within the institution? And it's also important to understand who you need to talk with during that. And that gets all set up during the initial part of the assessment. Then we also recommend strongly that together the assessors jointly walk the site together, observe, listen to the client, listen to what they're talking about, see what they're pointing out, ask questions that only they can answer. Don't make assumptions. And from this type of engaging the client throughout the process, it's really important that both assessors hear as much as possible, even if it's outside of their wheelhouse, even if it's, you know, for the collections assessor, even if it's something that has to do with the building and vice versa. So next slide, please. Integrating buildings and collections. So this goes right to the heart of the dual assessor's approach under the new CAP program and the systemic approach to improving preventive conservation of the collections in the building. It's, as you see in one of your resources, which is a guideline for conservation assessments that was developed by the Getty Conservation Institute, this is necessarily an outside in approach. Understanding the nature of the climate at a particular location. One of the things that we've experienced over time under the old program is that we end up going to sites that are outside our normal climatic zone. In other words, the need to understand the unique situation contextually and climatically that your host institution exists in. So a certain amount of preparation before the site visit, looking at climate data, including the prospects of climate change and the potential impacts of those helps set the stage for understanding the loads or forces, thermodynamic and moisture forces that are imposed on the building. Another aspect of this is just considering the site and the macro environment around the building. What are the influences of shade, water drainage, other buildings, traffic, local pollution from traffic, all of those factors that specifically have to be dealt with at that location. The next step is to consider the building envelope itself and I think in many respects, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers document, ASHRAE chapter 23 in the applications handbook, which is their guidance for museums, galleries, archives and libraries, sets out a useful way of looking at building types. Much of this is also presented in the Canadian Conservation Institute documentation on their website concerning building types and building envelopes. And these are useful tools when we observe a building and its exterior construction. These are useful ways of looking at those buildings and categorizing them with respect to their potential performance. This largely falls on the architectural assessor, but as Wendy has emphasized in a joint assessment, it's an exchange of information. The architectural assessor shares with the building with the collections assessor in real time the types of limitations that the building envelope might have with respect to producing a useful interior environment for the collections. We also want to look from an architectural standpoint at the spatial functionality of the building, the arrangement of the spaces, the types of spaces, and how they're suitable for collections. This speaks directly to issues not only in exhibition but also in collection storage because one of the risks that we're always dealing with are physical risks of handling collections through spaces and buildings. So the spatial characteristics of the building are important and how much those can be changed or altered to improve the conditions for the collections. Part of this feedback assessment is for the collections assessor to start identifying what the vulnerabilities and risks to the collections are and share those with the building assessor so that the thought process can begin. During the site visit as to what the possible strategies are because again we're looking at identifying causative factors because those are the things that we want to remediate. We just don't want to correct damage or conditions. We want to actually go back to the causes. I'd like to say something about the risks in the spatial organization and I think it really has to do with what can be going on in the areas around the collection spaces that can cause damage or influence the environment of the collection spaces. Is there a food service next to the collection storage? Are there restrooms or some other lab facilities up above collection storage? What are the perimeters? Are the exhibits open without being inside of cases and are you near a door because it can bring in pests? All of the relationships between the functions and the collections in the building are very important to take into consideration horizontally and vertically. I also really like somebody made an earlier statement on the chat room which is don't clean up before the assessors come in. Don't let the clients clean up. Tell them to just leave things as it is because it's so important to have the evidence of how the museum is operating. This is part of the understanding of what's going on in the museum or in the site with the collections and how the building is cared for and how the collections are cared for. I'm going to go on to the next slide please. Identifying issues and causes. And throughout the assessment, it's really important to take the time to observe the conditions together, compare notes and begin to link the causes with the conditions. As I was saying before and as Michael was saying before, what are the adjacencies? Are there building deterioration issues that are affecting the collections? Are there operational issues that could be affecting collections? Look beyond the materials and the environmental causes to consider organization or economic factors. We would always say is it an issue of people? Is it money? Is it a governance issue? Try to suss that out because only through understanding a bit more of the entire organization will you be able to tease out recommendations for developing strategies for making improvements. There may be institutional capacity limitations which have to be resolved before you can implement these strategies for improvement. Taking these into account, you should develop a range of possible strategies that range from the simple, no-cost, low-cost options to complex, higher-cost, lower-duration projects. And the strategies need to be realistic and achievable by the institution with the resources that they have. This is an important point because when we're dealing with the CAP program and the client base in the CAP program, which are small to medium-sized museums, we often find that they are resource limited or capacity limited with respect to what one might ideally want in a museum with respect to preventive conservation of the collections. So it's important for us if we're going to create a set of strategies for improvement that can be handled to best effect, it's important for us to really set the stage for realistic and achievable steps that can be undertaken by the institution. This is for their own benefit and by breaking these down into a range of steps they can develop a sense of accomplishment and equally important they can show that they've accomplished many improvements before going on to the larger ones which require funding. So in doing those smaller improvements first, they develop a track record of improvement which then in our experience helps them score more points with potential funders. The other aspect of this strategy development is to identify the really critical risks. The image that you see on the right hand side was a very particular type of collection material that was not only vulnerable to relative humidity but was extremely fragile and of dimensions and proportions such that it was difficult to handle. And one of the issues at that museum was that they were spatially constrained. There was no prospect in the near or intermediate term of expansion or acquiring additional space. The congestion was the really big issue and so in that CAP assessment we focused on how to resolve the collection storage problem first and foremost. Focusing less on things like exhibition and exhibition spaces but really going to this problem that they had of congestion and handling risk and again handling risk was even greater than the relative humidity control risks to this collection. And so having set that up as the priority and the high level strategy for implementation, the institution was able to acquire funds for a customized storage system that dealt with the unique dimensional aspects of the collection but also was able to reconfigure storage and access to the collections within the confines of the existing space. So from the standpoint of developing strategies it's really important that we not go in with a handbook of solutions but that we study the problems that we identify. And then we come up with solutions that speak to the highest needs of the institution so that they can make significant improvements. I think one thing with this example that we're showing on the screen here is we thought about what are the options for relocation of the collection. They thought because it's part of a larger organization that they had and they had offsite storage, could this material be moved offsite and then be brought back for exhibition purposes in their existing building. But because of the nature of the artifacts, because of the fragility of the artifacts and their vulnerability to environmental changes and the rigors of travel, that was eliminated even though it would have stayed within the larger institution systems. So we ended up really looking deeply into what are some of the other options and it was really gratifying as an assessor to be able to see the finished product. Other institutions, other situations may have a more building specific approach to the strategies, particularly when we get into some of the more challenging climates like hot and humid climates where moisture vapor control is critical. And we're trying to make either site improvements to reduce collection of water around a building or to improve the envelope to reduce moisture migration through the envelope into the interior so that we're not doing so much dehumidification. So some of the solutions may be more directed towards the building and the non-mechanical aspects of the building as sort of the first line of environmental defense so that we can improve the interior for the collections. And so the dual nature of the assessment requires that the two assessors sort this out. Which solutions might be building solutions, whether on a historic building or a modern building, but yield great benefit for the collections first and foremost? The other thing is that you've got to think about capacity and the capacity has to do with staffing, but it also has to do with resources such as, and I'm noticing some of the comments that are being made in the chat, has to do with access to the web or being way off the beaten path geographically. It's really important to be able to fully understand that you can work within what's existing and understanding that you've got limitations as to what may be possible. And this I think also moves us into understanding what is the, and how to best write the report so that it becomes useful for the organization. And so if we could move on to the single work product slide of a dual assessor approach. So a couple of things that have worked well in the past. We gravitated towards a single work product under the earlier campaign, and we felt that it was a more successful approach than dual separate products from the two assessors. Along these lines, what has worked well is during the exit debrief with the museum contact and other stakeholders, it's important to preview recommendations. And presumably those recommendations include the strategies for improvement. So the next step in that is to get the feedback from the stakeholders before you leave the site. It's important that the institution hear your preliminary conclusions before you leave rather than when they get a draft report. In other words, there should be no surprises. In fact, what we have done before is we take the, we will meet together the evening before the closeout session or the hour or so before the closeout session and actually provide a written list of strengths and constraints and opportunities with some of our recommendations. And then what we've also done is taken to documenting the closeout session using those as sort of a bulleted list of our observations and where we go and then capturing the feedback. And it's been very, very helpful in framing our thoughts about what should go into the report. So it is most useful to the organization. As assessors, we may be invited to work with them again in the future, but more often than not, we are leaving them. They have to live with their organization. They have to move forward and they're all very committed to that. So we have to provide them with a workable strategy so that they can move ahead with what they want to do. So the, so part of this is what you might call a debrief document that runs maybe two or three pages that summarizes the results of the site visit. And that means that in a two day site visit, we have to be really good about time management because that final debrief, that exit debrief is an important time to double check on what we've heard through the listening process. Make sure that we've really gotten it right about what the issues are that the museum staff is faced with in their care of the collections in the building. Because if we've misread things, then our recommendations aren't going to be closely aligned with what their needs are. And in particular, what their capacity is. So the stakeholder feedback during the exit debrief is really important. We also want to talk with the museum staff or our contact about who's the report audience. Is this report going to be shared with governance? For example, you may have a historic site that is overseen by a municipal municipality or a county government, or even a state government as opposed to our traditional nonprofit. So the audience for the report might not just be the museum, but it might be elected officials. If they're responsible for governance, or it might be the board, or it might be a foundation or a potential funder. We found that in the past, many of the CAP reports are the basis for a funding application somewhere along the line. So understanding the audience and who will receive the report and how it will be used is important at the beginning. We want to review the content, the overall structure with the client before we leave, so they know what to expect. Because expectations on this are really important. They only get shot at a CAP once every so many years, whereas we do CAPs routinely. So their understanding of what the product will be like will be critical to establish. And then between the two assessors, since we're dealing with a single report, it's important to establish responsibilities for content. And lastly, since it's a single report, who's producing it? Because at some point, all of this product gets merged into a single package. And one officer or the other has to be responsible for getting it printed, getting it bound, and getting it delivered. And then before we leave the site, we also want to commit to a schedule for delivery. And I think as part of the content, report content, sometimes they're looking at our clients, in our experience, they're looking for something wider, especially for future funding or for getting some sort of approval from the governments or some sort of board training. But sometimes the staff and many of these same institutions, the staff that are on the ground, handling the artifacts, handling the objects, doing the collections care, being responsible for installing exhibitions and reinstalling exhibitions, packing, handling, just general collections family. Sometimes they need specific guidance and how to make some improvements. These are some of the things that you can do to improve the collections here. And providing that type of resource is really very important as a part of the report. So what does a single product or product look like? The report structure, that's the next slide for us. Every project that we've done, every report is specific to each project. There is no template, but there's an overarching framework that we found to be very, very helpful and that we've been adhering to. And that consists of the executive summary, which is jointly written. And it provides standalone, substantive integration of key issues that are directed towards those board or the key stakeholders that were identified during the site visit. And this is an important distinction because often we see executive summaries and all sorts of reports, not just CAP reports, that run a paragraph or a couple of paragraphs or a single page. In some ways, executive summary is a misnomer because this part, as it's identified in the report, should stand alone at a sufficient level of detail that museum executives or board members or funders can see the depth of the issues, but also see really big picture that they're responsible for. So this part one executive summary, which as Wendy said is jointly written, may run for several pages and includes a listing of the key action items that need to take place, particularly those that result in constraints or capacity issues on that limit properly addressing the needs of the collections in the building. I also think that it's very important in this sort of standalone overarching issues summary to be able to address what the museum is doing well. You know, the strengths that they have and that will, that could be the community in which they and the community support which the organization receives the site. It could be the location. It could be the past history of stewardship. It could be funders. It could be the vision, but I think that's very, very important because this any report needs to be structured in my mind. I think Michael would agree any report needs to be structured so that it is as positive as possible to be able to have it be accepted and to be able to work through the more difficult challenges that are there. So we have to be very, very positive in what we we are providing. We're not pulling any punches, but I think it's also very, very important to make sure that kudos are given where they are and to be able to structure the language of the report so that it is accepted and heard by the organization at the various levels.  We did have one assessment where many problems were traceable back to the fact that there were two boards. One was an operating board and one was a foundation or funding board. And we were on the plane heading back home and we said, you know, they have to have one board of governance and they can't work from two with two boards. And that was the key issue in the executive summary. And we thought we'd never hear from them again. But in fact, that's what they did was they dissolved one of the boards. And we worked with them for 10 years after that. So it's something you have to tell the truth, but it's the manner in which the truth is told. But it also goes to this idea of going back to causative factors because we could we identified a number of problems at that museum. And they were pretty straightforward environmental management and collection storage problems. But the key issue that led to all those problems had nothing to do with the staff or staff knowledge or training, but it had to do with shifting priorities that emerged from competing. And I'll say, I'll say competing board objectives. So, you know, this is this is a key part of getting this message across then the architectural assessment is consistent with the sort of outside in approach. It's part two, largely written by the architectural assessor, but also reviewed by the collections assessor so that we're identifying the key issues that affect collections preservation or collections conservation as might be expected. And this part of the report, which we think of as part two is directed towards administration facilities and collection staff. It's it's a different level of detail than speaking to the board or to funders. Likewise, the collections assessment, which could be part three or you could do part two is the collections and part three is the architectural assessment. But I, but I, I prefer to go, even as a collections assessor, I prefer to go from the outside in the big picture to the to the climate on down in. The collections assessment is detailed at the collections level and described and is geared towards the needs of the collections, but also so that the administration and facilities folks can understand what the collections needs are. And this gets to the balance that we've often talked about with the New Orleans Charter of trying to trying to come up with balances in the needs of historic buildings and their collections and I would say any building, even some of the more modern buildings that are designed by name architects, which are important works of art themselves, that we actually look to finding something by pathways find recommendations so that we can build on and care for both in the context of the other. So we will share. We will have each other review our reports, because that's important so that we understand it and we can vet it. And this is where the collaboration is so important so that I feel that I can ask, ask the building assessor for greater clarification and vice versa. It's also helpful to have somebody who's not necessarily a building person read the building assessment, because sometimes we drift into jargon that doesn't necessarily translate for somebody who's not a building professional and and and I think the same thing can happen on the collection so the sharing of the parts two and three and reviewing it together helps communicate our joint message, because it helps us refine the product. Moving on to the last slide which is the what works and what does not work. This is, this is more directed to either collections assessors or building assessors who have not had a chance to work as an integrated team. Or collections assessors who have worked on more recent museums that don't involve a historic building and so they've never had a chance to work with a building assessor and focusing on what works. We think of it as a kind of a body system. Many times, the collections assessor, whether it's Wendy or somebody else that I've worked with will point out to me things that they've seen on the building that they've learned from experience, maybe consequential to the collections, or in the interview process. The body system applies because one of one person may ask a question a certain way. And the other person may ask the same question a different way in and you get a more comprehensive answer that way. What doesn't work is going solo. We cannot satisfactorily address collections preservation and buildings collections conservation and buildings without taking an integrated approach, and that starts with the team. What works is seeing the forest. We can look at representative trees. But as in the case of the institution where two boards, we really have to be able to step back and see the big picture, looking at things holistically, but looking at things as a larger system of interactions of cause and effect. Listening is an incredibly important skill because our window of observation when we do a cap assessment is limited. We're not only looking at only one or two days of weather rather than four seasons of climate. But we're seeing museum on a particular day it may be cleaned up as Wendy has said it may be a low visitation day so that we have access to all of the staff so that we miss seeing how the traffic flow is through the museum. The stress of visitation. So we have to look at our museum staff as expanding our window of observation and that's where the interrogatory the question and answer process so critically important. It also tells us a lot about capacity. And then by doing that we can avoid dictating standards, if you will. And then lastly, to make this dual assessor process where we really have to balance the workload. There are some projects where one might have one assessor might carry a larger workload than the other. But over the longer term, we like to think that it balances out. So Tiffany, we're looking forward to the questions and we see some of them coming up on the screen. So we'd like to turn it back to you so that we can get to those questions and answer some of that and have a continue with the discussion. Thank you very much for the opportunity to share our ideas and to actually help us think about this in the future in the future CAP program. I'm really committed to the program. I think it's a very good program for both the assessors and for the institutions. So thank you Tiffany and everybody for listening. And I'm sorry for those who've said that you're losing sound. I hope you can hear us again. Thank you Michael and Wendy. I know you guys will be around in just a few minutes and I almost feel bad that I have to cut back in and get to a few more boring things before we move on to you. And if you guys continue to have trouble hearing me, please let me know and we'll see what we can do. But do to make sure that you're checking your internet connection because that could be a potential problem. Okay. So I just wanted to get back to the final change that we made to the program. And that would be the addition of a one-year follow-up consultation. There's a lot of work and investment that goes into this process as you've heard from all parties involved. And one of FAIC's goals is to better support museums as they implement the recommendations in their CAP report. We've heard from some museums that participated in the old CAP that it took a while for their staff to be able to process the report. So sometimes while they're trying to implement certain aspects, they realize something was unclear or they hit a hurdle that wasn't uncovered during their visit. So about a year after the initial site visit, the assessment team will gather for a follow-up phone call. At which time the museum can ask about any of these issues. This will also be a way, I think, to hold museums accountable to accomplishing something in that first year, knowing that they have to report back in. We also hope that this will encourage ongoing relationships between museums and preservation and conservation professionals. I do want to take just a minute to clarify how the payment process will work because I think this is different from how heritage preservation processed payments. This slide shows a completely made-up fee structure, so please ignore all of the actual numbers. But let's just pretend your total fee for an assessment is $4,300. When you send your invoice, you should send a copy to both FAIC and the museum. FAIC is going to send you a check for the allocation amount, and the museum will then send a check for the remaining amount. Just wanted to mention that quickly. And then the last little point is just that we're going to ask you to complete an online survey when you've completed an assessment. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes. It's just really important to us. We've made decisions that you've heard about today on how to shape the program based on our best intentions. But we're going to keep a critical eye on everything for this first year and beyond, and we'll need your input for that. These surveys are also an important element in our reporting to IMLS on our progress, so please take the time to complete the survey when I send you the link. So in your handbook, you'll find attachment B, the contributed time tracker, and I've also included a handy Excel link in the files box. You can print this out or keep a digital version going on your screen or whatever, but we just ask you to track the amount of time you spend as you go along. You don't have to send this to us directly, but we'll ask you on the feedback form how much time you've spent on the project, and we want to make sure we're getting an accurate understanding of the resources that you're committing to this. And finally, of course, you don't have to wait until you get a survey link to give us feedback. I've said it before, and I will continue to say it. Please feel free to call or email at any time. My contact information is readily available here. It's on the website. It's on my email, so please feel free to contact me whenever it's convenient for you. Okay, I want to go back because I did see a bunch of questions pop up as we went, and I want to address some of those. I'm going to go all the way back. John Brandon asked if it's acceptable for an assessor to approach a museum from the list of CAP participants if the assessor would like to do their assessment. I don't see a problem with that. I assume you'll do so in a professional way, and so I don't see a problem with that. The next question is from Lenora. What would be the best place to find current information on the range of environmental monitoring devices currently used by museums, particularly the newer digital types? Yeah, I'm probably not the best person to answer that.  She's written some very good tech notes for the park service, and I believe that... Maybe, Rachel, I don't know whether you want to respond on the chat room, but I think it's in the AIC Wiki as well. Great. Yeah, and we'll watch that chat link. It looks like a few people may be responding, but I think this also gets to the other question about sharing resources, which I think is wonderful. And I wanted to just comment that FAC is excited to be able to support that idea of having some kind of resource dump for all of you to share. I want to think about the best way to approach that, whether that's a cloud-based, something simple option or a hidden page of our website. Currently, the Assessor Resources page is open and visible to anyone who visits our website. We might want to tuck some of those resources away. We may not. But maybe outside of this webinar, if you all have feedback on that and want to send it to me, I'd appreciate that. But we will work on some opportunity to share resources. I love that idea. Let's see. Actually, just a follow-up note. Someone asked if it would be okay to recommend another Assessor that they like to work with. I just wanted to add a little addendum onto that, that if there's someone you work with who's not on the approved Assessor list but wants to do a cap with you, we'll just ask them to apply. So, the list isn't fixed. There's no deadline to the application process to become an Assessor. We'll just keep accepting those applications on a rolling basis. So, if you know someone who did not get their application in on time, just have them go onto the cap website and complete the application. As long as they're eligible, it'll be good. John Brandon asked, does the exit debrief occur within the two-day site visit? Absolutely. Well, we've done it both ways. It's been more successful when it's done as we are finishing up the site visit. There have been circumstances when we've had to do a phone call with, say, an executive director or the collections person, because they've been called out of town, but it's advisable to do it there and then and have the leave behind that's written up that we can talk about. Michael, do you want to say anything about that? I think it's also important to do it while you're there because you may want to go back and look at something again after you've gotten some feedback from the staff. So, that's where the time management issue comes in. Great. And there was also a question from Ronna Rivers, directed to Wendy and Michael, asking whether you could speak to the question of the cloud or other tips for sharing information while you're writing the report. We do it sort of an old style way. One of us will start their section and then we'll pass that word document back and forth as an email attachment. That works for us and it's worked for me and other assessors, but I'm sure that some folks would prefer to put a document up on the cloud and edit it and add to it in real time. You're beginning to do that internally in my office between my staff and myself. We are starting to put reports up into the cloud and that we can all work on them. I'm not sure that I'm yet comfortable with the technology, particularly with a distant co-assessor on this. It's just a matter of trying to make sure that we've got control over it and making sure that the cloud doesn't go down. Here in the office, when we're doing it here, if something ever goes wrong, we can always jump into the next room and say, hey, what was your last minute on that? We were going over a couple hundred miles or even around the corner with another assessor. I'm hoping that we'll be able to do it at some point, but I'm not sure that we can just yet. I think the other part of it is that passing a document back and forth, at least for me, is much easier because I allocate certain chunks of time to work on that document. Then I have to go to something else. When I'm done working on it, I pass it back to the other assessor to look it over. I think that really, whether you use the cloud or whether you pass documents back and forth, for two people, it's pretty straightforward either way. It comes to a question of personal preference as opposed to maybe something where four or five people are involved and you might want to have it up on the cloud then so that you know what the current version looks like. Actually, there's one more thing to say about this. I may have missed it, but I think it's very important to, once you've got the initial draft put together, to submit that and request feedback from the client and request written feedback. If you can encourage them to do track changes or put in their own written correspondence, correlated documentation and comments on your document, it makes it so much easier for following up on getting the final in. Okay. Let's see. We had another question directed toward Wendy. Yeah. It's with a comprehensive executive summary. Do you also write a comprehensive chapter of conclusions at the end of the report that's separate from any list or outline of recommendations? Not usually. I think it depends. I've had a couple of times when the client has requested it, but at least my sense is that if we have done our homework right, and I apologize if this sounds arrogant, it's not meant to, but if we do it right, there shouldn't be a need to do that. I don't have a follow up list of it because it should be involved. It should be included either in the, you know, in the sections, the specific recommendations for the individual sections, but then the overarching executive summary should have it as well. And then Leslie asked, is the time for the follow up conference call billable? Definitely consider the time that you're going to spend in the follow up call when you're creating your initial estimate for the institution. So I would, you don't think of it as a separate event, but consider it in creating your fee. So again, your fee structure is your fee structure. But think of that as including the work you're going to do in advance of the site visit and then all the way through your follow up phone call. Let's see. There was another question about the building assessors and whether they're included within the find a conservator window on the website. And if not, how do applicants find them? So applicants are not using the find a conservator tool on the website to choose an assessor for cap. At least that's not the direction they've been given because the two are separate lists. So the find a conservator tool on the AIC website is made up of peer reviewed conservators who are members of the AIC. And there are building assessors and conservators who do cap assessments on both, but separately and for the cap program institutions were given an Excel document that has this list of both building and collections conservators from which they can choose. And I'm going to be sure to send you all that list because I think it's going to be helpful for you all to know who all is involved and to have the same information that our institution has. So when I send out a link to the this webinar, once we get that uploaded probably in the next day or two, I'll include a list of of the the assessors that I sent out to the institution so that you have that. Let's see. Could you describe the educational and training resources you're developing, Wendy that question. Actually, I saw that and and that is actually something that is being developed through the Getty Conservation Institute Museum collections environment. There is a managing, I'm sorry, managing collections environment and there is a website that is associated with that. So I would certainly I would defer to the GCI and I know that there are at least two people on this call that are in addition to the Michael and me who are very involved in that in that project, but it's a it's a really good resource.  And in fact, yes, thank you. Great. So another question. Is it possible for a first time assessor to shadow a team locally for purposes of mentoring? That's a really great question. I would I've actually gotten that that question from a couple of other folks. I leave that up to individuals who are listening to if you are willing to host a first time assessor and, you know, have them come along with a site visit with you. Can you just send me an email? Let me know and and I would be happy to connect you with some of those folks who are interested in shadowing and just checking through. I want to make sure I didn't miss anything. There are a lot of really great comments that are coming up in the chat box. I wanted to make sure that everyone knows that when we send out the link to the recorded version of this webinar, all of the chat comments will be attached to that video. So you'll be able to see those as well. So you can go back and review them, which is great. And if I didn't get to your question, please feel free to email me separately. And if it's a Wendy or Michael based question, I will bug them on your behalf. Sorry, Wendy, I didn't get their permission in advance to say that, but but I will. Great. Any any further questions that I missed or just do you see anything that I missed? Oh, here's one. How much do assessors include photographs? Oh my goodness. Stop. No one leave. This is a really great question about including photographs in their reports to document findings. I think photographs are so important and including in your report. And I know I'm new to this, but being able to to to show a museum exactly what you're talking about, especially if this is a specific, you know, issue is going to be really important. Remember that you may have one or two members of the museum staff with you at different points in your site visit. But it's going to be easier for them to understand and easier for the board and for other folks who are reading the report to understand exactly what you're saying if they have a visual with that. So I love the idea of integrating photos. It's also really helpful in allowing the institution to to tell their stories. So if they are trying to get support to implement the things that you've suggested in your report using those photographs as visuals to tell that story is going to be extremely helpful. So I would encourage all of you to take photographs and integrate them into your report. I have also urged the the institution to take photographs of the process so that it's not all on you so that they can they can do that as well. Yeah, I'm actually just I'm glad Lori said she just put that question in because I was thinking about that as we were talking about the photographs photos are critical. Electronic copies are also very important for the final report. So I think I think that what I will often I have in the past submitted both electronic and hard copies these days. So over the last few years I've set out only the electronic disk a good disk or whatever of it with electronic sources there that they can print out themselves. That's great and I saw another question from Roger that asked if assessors can get a list of the successful museum applicants. That list you can get to it right on our website and you can get to that specific page by highlighting the 2017 cap participants link under the web links section on this screen and then clicking the browse to button and you'll go right to that list. All right, well I'll say what I said before and that's continue to send me questions and ideas. We already have a bunch of great ones. You can expect to hear from me either tomorrow or Monday with an email with a whole bunch of new useful information. And we'll continue to send things your way as they become available. I thank you all so much for your time. I know everybody is very busy and I appreciate you taking the time today to spend a few minutes with us. I look forward to working with all of you and I wish you a very great week. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much guys.


Hackers hit the Freedom Community forums an hour ago, and our team already defeated the attack, but what they tried to do was bring down the site with a SIN attack. I'll explain that and how to protect yourself or your website should this happen to you. So the Freedom Community forums are at www.community.tm, and I will hide myself so you can see them. This is the site that was down for about half an hour due to a flood of fake TCPIP requests called a SIN flood or a SIN attack, and as you can see the forums are back online with an active chat, and if you don't know about this just head on over to community.tm and interact with us here on the forums. So this is the graph of our network traffic. You can see a tremendous spike right here, and I'll zoom in a little bit, and if you look at this one chart here, which is the network out chart, there was a lot of these SIN requests preventing legitimate traffic and causing the forums to go down. So here is normal traffic down here, and here is the attacker. So for those of you who want to learn more about this, I've collected the articles that we read in order to learn how to defeat this attack very quickly, and you can find all those articles down there in the description below so you can click them and read them. But basically a SIN attack is someone faking millions of requests to try to get your server to respond, but they're all fake requests. So here's the description. In a SIN flood your server is bathed in a wash of SIN messages and your kernel, the trusting fellow that it is, responds to all of these requests in good faith and waits for the response. Now there isn't any response, and the solution to this attack, and this is what you can do to protect your site should this happen to you, is to turn on what is called TCP SIN cookie protection. So here's how it works. If an attacker is flooding you with fake requests, they're not going to respond. When you send a cookie, this tells the server remember if I sent a cookie, and if I didn't get a response, then consider this an attack and ignore future requests. And this describes, this article describes how to turn on your cookie protection, but the reason it's not on by default, you might be thinking, well, if this is such a good thing, why don't all web servers have this turned on by default? And the third link talks about the potential problems this can cause by denying legitimate traffic. People who you want to visit your site may be prevented from visiting the site because of all of these settings regarding the protecting against the SIN flood. So all the links are down there in the description below. How does this make you feel? How do you respond to people who are just out there to cause grief and trouble for a friendly, welcoming community? Well, to me, it makes me feel good that we've attracted so much attention that there are some people going out of our way because of jealousy or envy or who knows why to try to take us down. But how does it make you feel? Tell me in the comments below. And let's ask the chat. This is me hiding myself, and let's communicate with our team, our forum users. Hi, Freedom Family, this is George. A smile for the camera. I am recording an episode of George's show to describe why the forums went down for a little while and what we did to bring them back up. So you can see there is an active community here that's talking to me and I invite you to do the same. So Nerd responded, hello, George. Kronaut said, oh, hi, George. Oliver Harper said, hey, George, just engaging with the community, trying to get feedback on my channel. And Defender833 said, Harper, okay, I like the idea of the slender man. So you get the idea. Go to community.tm, chat with us, get some great feedback for your channel, share your feedback with others. And as always, comment down there because every single comment will get a reply beneath every episode of the George show. That is the job of the community team. No comment left behind is their motto. Want to meet the community team? Click that I up there. That'll take you to the video introducing who the initial members of the community team are and how to join them. But I can tell you how to join. Just be active in the comments below. And if they notice you, they will invite you to join the community team. And I'm sorry that this video is not the high production value of yesterday's video, where I introduced the new freedom studio and how large freedom partners may be invited to join us here in the Philippines. All expense paid, we fly you out here so you can film for a month or longer high production content. Missed that video? Click that I up there. That'll take you to the new freedom studio, where you can see me doing a cartwheel and failing at it, as well as a few questions like, should we do a fitness show? So check that out. And who am I? I am George, CEO and founder of NETV. Normally that says freedom, but today I'm wearing my NETV shirt because, for those of you who don't know, NETV, ANY.TV is the name of our company that powers freedom. So freedom is our brand. Freedom is the beautiful family that we all are. And what is the spirit of freedom? Say it with me. To help each other grow together as a family. So freedom is the brand what we're all known by, but NETV is our legal name. So it's like, my name is not George. Did you know that? My legal name is Yuray Vanos. So Yuray Vanos is what I was born as in Slovakia in a little town called Gilina. And when I came to Canada, well I didn't come. My parents brought me. I was only five years old at the time. Then Yuray is George in English, just like Jorge is George in Spanish and Yuri is George in Russian. So I'm going by the English version of my name George, but my legal name is actually Yuray Vanos. Or I go by George Venous. So I hope this helps you understand what NETV is. And I am George and you've been watching. And we will grow together as a family because this is the freedom family. You are part of it. We are all part of it. And we're all growing together. So grow with us and partner with freedom. That play now button right there on the video bar is all you need to click to get started.