CCAHA Offers New Online Programs, Offices Remain Closed

Like other organizations across the country, CCAHA's offices will remain closed until public health concerns related to Coronavirus and COVID-19 are fully addressed and state officials announce it is safe to reopen. With so many of our clients and followers working from home due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we're working hard to develop additional programming opportunities while helping spread the word about the many professional development and teleworking resources that have emerged in our field in recent weeks.

CCAHA's new offerings include a series of Community Conversations on a wide range of important subjects, with specific focus on collections needs related to Coronavirus and COVID-19. This week, our first Community Conversations meet-up, Remote Alternatives for Collection Care, was hosted via Zoom, and it was a tremendous success, quickly reaching capacity. Check our Events page for news of more Community Conversations in the coming weeks.

We have also invited our lab staff to share more interactive Facebook Live videos on a variety of conservation and preservation topics. Last week, CCAHA Manager of Digital Imaging Maggie Downing shared the presentation, Creating a Digital Preservation Policy, which discussed what a digital preservation policy is, who it is for, what it looks like, and why it's important. If you missed it when it was live, you can find a recording on CCAHA's Facebook page. Our next Facebook Live video is coming up this week on Wednesday, April 1, at 2:00 PM. CCAHA Paper Conservator Chloe Houseman will present Comic Cons: Best Practices to Preserve and Conserve your Comic Book Collection. The discussion will focus on comic book industry standards for housing and storage, Chloe's research into these storage practices, and how they may not always align with preservation best practices. For all of the latest CCAHA program updates, visit our Events page.

Finally, we're working closely with our partners at DHPSNY to aggregate professional development and teleworking resources into a single hub. In the meantime, we have used our Facebook and Twitter accounts to share important updates from colleagues and partners, and we will soon add a single aggregate COVID-19 page to the Resources section of our website. Check back in the coming days for more information. As mentioned, our partners at DHPSNY are working hard to get this same information out, with a special focus on New York State collecting institutions. For more information on DHPSNY's programs and resources, visit dhpsny.org.