Attending: Willameena Gentle (aph); Roslyn Jehne (cfc); Christine Law and Victoria Ramshaw (nfsa); Elizabeth Estbergs (act chief Minister’s Dept.); Jennifer Lloyd (nla); Ellie McFadyen (naa); Patrya Kay (nma); Jo Palmer

10:00am, Tuesday 21^st February at the AWM.

[NOTE; institutional reports are mostly edited for confidentiality/security reasons.]

“Sorry I can’t be there for this meeting but other work commitments this week will prevent me attending. Here are a few things that I would like to mention:

• 
  In late November we conducted a 2 day scenario workshop in Darwin at the Museum and Art Gallery of NT. Day 1 covered prevention and preparedness for 35 people. Day two was a scenario for 20 people run in the MAGNT loading bay area.
  
• 
  Earlier this month we ran a series of 1 day hands-on scenario workshops in Melbourne: 2 for the State Library of Victoria (1 for the conservation/preservation teams, 1 for collection managers). Another workshop was held for the Museum of Victoria conservation team. This was then followed by a second day of scenario discussions facilitated by us, where several site specific written scenarios were discussed and brainstormed by the group.
  

• 
  The SLV’s OH&S manager attended both SLV workshops to speak on OH&S and Work cover issues. Aside from discussing the usual OH&S Act conditions she raised an interesting point that we don’t always think of: the role of Work cover in incidents that result in injury and risk of injury. If a situation results in a report to Work cover they may request that affected sites not be disturbed until investigations are completed. This may have response delay implications for collections if they are involved. So we may need to discuss this issue with them as a part of our preparedness.
  
• 
  All disasters are subject to appropriate OH&S procedures these days. The time it takes for our responses is governed by human safety issues, the safety of the site and the right of staff to refuse to carry out work in compromised situations. This also has delay implications for the collections.
  

• 
  Heads of conservation at some of Melbourne’s cultural and collecting institutions are very keen to start their own group modeled on DISACT. They are interested in using our MOU model to develop resource sharing arrangements. We may hear from Sarah Slade (SLV) or Catherine Lovelock (MoV) re a request.
  

Questions were asked on the availability and value of priority lists. Many organisations have difficulty in gaining curatorial cooperation to keep them current and also in making them focussed enough to be useful.

The problem of box guttering and hail blockages was also considered; Willa reported that advances have been made in designs and that she’d advise the group on details.

After the meeting the following details were emailed to the disact-L;

At the last DISACT network meeting Willameena Gentle of Parliament House advised the meeting of a new guttering system designed to overcome storm loading problems. The system is distributed by SmartFlo systems and is sold as the SmartFlo or EnviroFlo guttering system. For more info see the suppliers page at

http://www.smartflo.com.au/

and the tech specs are at

Two local distributors for the product are Reece Plumbing Centres and Sankey Australia Pty Ltd.

(Bernard Kertesz)

Various species are called rosewood, most often because of the fragrant smell rather than any figurative characteristic of the timber. The overseas species are all in the genus Dalbergia or Pterocarpus, family Fabaceae (aka Leguminosae).

In Australia the following species appear to be the main ones commonly called rosewood;

Besides these other plants have been called rosewood including Acacia excelsa.

The more commonly used Rosewood appears to be D. fraserianum of which we have a specimen in our timber samples library. I don’t find the wood smells anything like roses; I sniffed a newly sanded surface and it just irritated my nasal passages. It is described by various writers as being oleo-resinous to the point where the seepage of the oily resin makes it difficult to get a good finish. The oily exudate can apparently be cleaned off with methylated spirits to facilitate finishing. It is this oily exudate that may be causing the staining.
2 Some thoughts on Priority Salvage Lists:

(Bernard Kertesz)

Priority lists are generally prepared to provide guidance in salvage planning for disasters. They are;

• 
  used to direct salvage teams straight to material which must be salvaged first,
  
• 
  not always the most important/valuable/essential material but may be the most vulnerable
  
• 
  the category of vulnerability may itself be dependent on the nature of the disaster/emergency.
  

For cultural heritage collections a similar principle applies. Highest priority items are those which must be salvaged at all cost because they are

• 
  vital and irreplaceable
  
• 
  very vulnerable
  
• 
  of very high monetary value and/or
  
• 
  essential due to high usage demand.
  

A Priority Salvage List is only useful if it’s possible to generate a precise location for the item/group. The most vulnerable materials in any collection are probably its paper-based, photographic and modern media materials. The vast majority of disasters involve water damage and then mostly affecting these classes of materials so the assumption can be made that salvage decisions will most likely involve priority decisions regarding these materials (the history of most collections would bear this out). There are difficulties where a collection lacks discrete locations, where the management system is not at the shelf/box level. An example could be archival collections where a whole class of material is located by bays but where the critical material constitutes only a couple of boxes within. To identify the whole class of material as priority makes the list unmanageable. The clear location of loan items is another risk.

There is the problem of assigning priorities in a location with different collections. In this instance the relative sensitivities determine the priority so, for example, even though an area contains high value textile items and medium value film or sound material, their relative sensitivities to water could mean that the latter may require primary action.

For this reason, many organisations have compiled structured priority lists by location rather than collection type. Decision making is based on a preservation matrix approach; the collection material in an area is tested against a risk/value matrix as below. This has the advantage that the compilers need to think about the risk profile of the area and they can use the matrices to work on strategies to attempt to minimise the risk status of identified priority one and two material. Boxing of material or reformatting could reduce the risk or impact of water or fire damage enough to push it down the priority list. In this approach, the priority rating can bear little relationship to the financial or intellectual value to the organisation.

			VALUE
		High	Medium	Low
	High	Priority One	Priority One	Priority Two
RISK	Medium	Priority One	Priority Two	Priority Three
	Low	Priority Two	Priority Three	Priority Four