Abstract
For many years, museums have been creating emergency management programs with the primary goal of protecting their staff and the vulnerable, historical items that they highlight. Today, museums are creating emergency management programs and emergency response plans to respond to the increase in severe natural and man-made disasters that pose to be a great threat to museum staff and collections. No matter the size of the museum, creating an emergency management program can help these cultural institutions effectively protect their staff and collections by documenting all necessary steps to evacuate staff and collections, life safety trainings and getting the proper funding to mature their emergency management programs going forward. Additionally, as the world has changed, the ways in which museums have integrated themselves in state sponsored emergency management programs and shaping their exhibits to educate the communities that they serve of the threats that have significant impacts on their community.
For this project, multiple resources were consulted from how museums can create an emergency response plan to case studies from museums around the world that have effectively created emergency response plans and have been able to test their plans during real-time events. From the sources consulted, it became clear that documentation is imperative to the success of the institutions’ emergency management program and training of staff.
Documentation and proper training of staff are imperative to the success and maturity of many museums’ emergency management programs. Without the proper training and documentation, it can be difficult for these institutions to properly evacuate or protect their most vulnerable collections. Additionally, it was concluded that the way in which museums interact with their community has changed in recent years, particularly with the increasing threat in the severity and frequency of seasonal weather across the United States. By integrating into the local emergency management programs, museums have created a unique advantage for themselves that many businesses have not and are willing to educate their community on the new threats by which they are most impacted.