Collections and Community Resilience Project

Enabling disaster readiness through digitisation and knowledge sharing

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

The Collections and Community Resilience Project (CCRP) was a Victorian state-wide initiative that provided regional communities with the opportunity to digitally preserve their collections and receive onsite training in collections care, preventative conservation and risk mitigation in the face of natural disaster events. 

This project was free of charge, with all organisations receiving high quality digital files of their collection items, relevant resources and high-level training to ensure long-term safekeeping of their collections. In total, 18 organisations took part:

• Ararat and District Historical Society

• Ballarat Tramway Museum

• Barwon Estuary Heritage Centre

• Bunninyong Historical Society

• Churchill Island Heritage Farm

• Coal Creek Community Park

• Emerald Museum

• Glenelg Shire Council

• Leongatha and District Historical Society

• Morrabool Shire Council

• Mount Dandenong Historical Society

• Myrtleford Historical Society

• Narre Warren Family History Group

• Nilumbik Historical Society

• Nullawil Historical Society

• Port of Echuca

• Stawell Gift Museum

• Swan Hill Community Collections ((Lake Boga Flying Boat Museum, Swan Hill Library, Pioneer Museum, Swan Hill Genealogical Society)

Once organisations were selected, AMaGA Victoria worked with participants to host a public digitisation day where local community members were invited to learn about digitisation and ways to document their precious personal items for safekeeping.

WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION

The selected organisations received 6 days of onsite training, broken up into two separate three-day sessions, approximately three weeks apart. In the first session, they received training in collections care and digitisation, and practical hands-on digitisation time.

In the second session, they received further digitisation and catalogue photography time, as well as chose from the following four themes for a half-day intensive workshop:

• Disaster planning and response (preparing for and responding to a disaster) 

• Collections care and preventative conservation (environmental monitoring, cleaning, condition reporting and conservation planning) 

• Storage and moving (how to store, move and develop storage solutions) 

• Collections management (cataloguing, policies, acquisitions, loans) 

In total, 80-100 items from each organisation’s collection were photographed, and the participants were provided the knowledge and skillset to continue their collections management and digitisation journeys.

ELIGIBILITY

To be eligible for the project the organisations had to: 

• Be a small to medium-sized community museum, collecting organisation, historical society, Keeping Place, gallery, or community organisation (i.e. sports club, volunteer association) 

• Be situated in a regional location or interface local council area (including Cardinia, Casey, Hume, Melton, Mornington Peninsula, Nillumbik, Whittlesea, Wyndham, Yarra Ranges) 

• Have 3+ volunteers or staff available to participate in training at all onsite days 

• Be available between August and December for two separate, three-day onsite training sessions, to be held three weeks apart 

• Have an available space at your organisation to undertake training and photography work