Protecting California’s Cultural Heritage
California is home to one of the most diverse and expansive cultural collections in the world, spread across thousands of institutions who are the primary keepers of local and tribal history and art and serve as the state’s collective memory. Unfortunately, according to a new California Cultural Heritage Protection Landscape Analysis (PDF), many of these collections are at grave risk from natural disasters, inadequate storage facilities, scarce resources, and simple decay over time. The State Library has undertaken a number of initiatives to support the protection of California’s diverse cultural collections, many of which lack disaster response plans and long-term protection strategies for the cultural keepsakes in their care.
The California State Library protects and preserves California’s cultural heritage through our collections, preservation strategies, and grant funding. We prioritize the stories and experiences of marginalized and underrepresented communities, and we preserve the past and protect the future for all Californians.
Physical and Digital Preservation
The California State Library maintains a dedicated Preservation Lab responsible for the long-term care and physical preservation of its collections. Preservation technicians employ specialized conservation methods to repair damaged materials and implement preventive measures through training and monitoring programs.
The Digital Preservation unit ensures that the library’s digital preservation practices align with industry standards. It also creates digital surrogates of rare, fragile, or unique items to reduce handling of the originals. These digital versions are made accessible to the public through the library’s online catalog.
Digital Concierge Program
The California State Library’s Digital Concierge Program (DCP) is a content-creation, digitization, and digital preservation center dedicated to preserving and sharing the collections hidden throughout California state government. Digital Concierge collaborates with state departments to identify and showcase the most culturally significant, sought-after or at-risk parts of their collections and records, in addition to the collections held by the California State Library.
20-21 Cultural Collections Protection Survey
In 2020, the California State Library conducted a comprehensive survey of the state’s archives, historical societies, libraries, museums, and tribal nations to better understand and protect cultural collections in a time of increased risk and limited resources. More than 450 organizations of varying sizes and areas of focus completed the survey, helping build a database on the condition and preservation needs of California’s culturally significant collections. See the final survey report.
Cultural Collections Preservation Assessment
The State Library also coordinated a parallel effort to assess the preservation readiness of nearly 20 individual organizations stewarding various types of cultural heritage collections. These assessments helped organizations identify risks to their collections and develop achievable preservation strategies, including environmental management, exhibit practices, digital collections policy development and disaster/emergency preparedness plans. See a final report providing an “on the ground” perspective of the challenges faced by these organizations.
Cultural Heritage Disaster Preparedness Project
The Cultural Heritage Disaster Preparedness Project connects communities holding at-risk collections with the resources needed to protect those collections from destruction and make them available to all Californians. Through its partners, the California State Library offers disaster preparation risk assessment and grant opportunities to California archives, historical societies, libraries, museums and tribal nations. In partnership with the Northeast Document Conservation Center, Ready — Or Not preservation consultants provide consultation and conduct free site visits for California organizations stewarding cultural resources and then deliver an assessment report with their observations. In partnership with Myriad Consulting & Training, cultural organizations can apply for Groundwork Grants to implement assessment recommendations and disaster plans.
For more information, please contact lena.pham@library.ca.gov.