i think we'll give a few more minutes for our panelists the remaining
panelists to join in laura lot from aam and jessica and then
we'll get started
[Music]
okay laura is on the webinar so it's 302 and i think
we should get started so hello everyone i'm paula genkapadia deputy director in
the office of museum services at imls welcoming you to today's realm
webinar on kobed and museum uh we want to thank
all 700 plus attendees that have pre-registered for this webinar
for making time uh to learn from the scientific findings of the realm project
and also from aam and your peers who will be joining
me in a conversation uh during the later part of this webinar
i'm as many of you know is the primary source of federal funding
for our nation's museums and libraries but in addition to being the funder
we play a critical role as per our mission
to convene and converse with various stakeholders
engage in research all aim to better inform our constituents the realm
project is one such important effort and we are
delighted to engage with our partners from oclc
battelle am and other museum and library associations
as well as funders like melon carnegie and many of the other cultural
organizations today's webinar is divided in two parts
sharon streams from oclc we'll be presenting the first half
and they'll be you know sharing a pretty comprehensive
overview of the findings thus far especially applicable to the museum
sector the second part of the webinar will
focus on a conversation that i'll moderate with laura lot from
am kevin hines from the carnegie museums
and jessica hickey from the arizona science center we will discuss the state
of affairs as they stand today best practices
lessons learned and what more you need you know on behalf of the museum we
wanted to share with you that the webinar
is being recorded and uh we will be taking questions
uh in two parts one we will pause after sharon has finished her presentation of
part one and then we will take a second set of
questions after we have uh we are done with the conversation
with laura kevin and jessica please do know that we
may not be able to answer all questions but we have kept that
in in our mind and the last slide of the presentation has the contact information
of all of us the email addresses so if your question
has not been answered feel free to write uh you know to any of
us i think i have permission from all the
panelists here and they'll be delighted to you know ask
answer your questions uh remember that you know like i
mentioned this is an effort on behalf of imls
uh but this effort can only be successful
if what we are sharing is helpful for you
but this is in no way uh you know it's it's a start of an effort
it will continue and we would like to be informed and educated
about your needs so that we and the steering committee of realm
and imls can align the work that's going on
so without further ado i would now like to turn it over to sharon streams
to present the findings of the realm project
thanks so much paula and good afternoon everyone i'm really happy to be
with you today and i'm going to be asking um daniel
to um drive the slides on my behalf so let's
um let's go for it um let's go one more um well yeah yeah
you can you can see me so you don't need to see
my picture um but i'm i'm here to speak to you wearing um
one of my hats which is as the realm project director
for the oclc which is a global library technology company
my other primary role is director of web junction which is a program that
provides free professional development continuing education for
library staff across the country and beyond and
so while i've had the privilege of working with um
with libraries and museums on on certain projects my
experience and knowledge is grounded primarily
in the library sector so i'm really also looking forward to
listening and learning from you today through your questions and comments
so as paula mentioned i'm going to give you an overview of the realm project
and to start what is realm an acronym for well it's for
reopening archives libraries and museums and it's a project that formed out of a
research partnership that developed early er this year
between oclc and imls and the scientific
research company battelle and this project was devised in the
really early days of the covid pandemic and to produce unique and
original research that's directly relevant to how libraries archives and
museums can handle materials and conduct operations that will help
mitigate exposure of kovid 19 to both staff
and visitors so the short url that's on this slide
will take you to the hub for the round project so this
is a website where you can find all the information that i'm touching on today
all the results so both about about the project and
and the results of the project we continually add new information to this
hub and we also announce these updates through a mailing list
that's dedicated to the realm project and so we do encourage you to subscribe
to that if you're not already receiving project updates
we issue those just maybe once every two weeks
and we have over 10 000 subscribers thus far
you can also follow oclc imls and aam all and other organizations
to get news and information uh through social media
um about the project for those of you on twitter
who wish to surface information related to the project
so you know we'll see it this way too use the hashtag
um realm project and um then that will help continue the conversation
next slide please
so first this slide capture is just a really high level summary of the primary
activities that realm has been conducting over the past eight months
and then i will give some further details about
all of these after that so the project has produced
two scientific literature reviews this year and a third one
is currently underway we have had ongoing consultation
and engagement with an executive project steering committee
working groups and other subject matter experts that all have representatives
from across museums libraries archives both at the
individual institution level the group level and the association level
we have created toolkit resources that are
intended to make the information the the research
easy to read easy to share snapshots that distill
the sort of more dense research findings and also to gather and share
illustrative examples from institutions that show what those
institutions are doing in terms of policies and planning
and operational considerations and also sharing guidelines that may be created
by other organizations that are also drawing upon
science-based evidence-based information and that are relevant to
one of the sectors or all of the sectors
we are sharing the project information and the resources
through that project website that i mentioned but we're also
drawing upon a network of member associations
and support organizations that are um disseminating
out to their membership as well so we really rely upon that whole you know
broader national network
and of course so much has been so fast and rapidly changing with of cour
with the pandemic and the response at both the local level
and the state and national level that a lot of
the project is listening learning and adapting along
the way next slide please
um i think it's thank you okay so um but just a a couple
level sets right before i get into more details
is really to just to say what realm is doing is providing data to you
to help us all better understand the virus
and the project is saying you know please use that data to
help inform your practices and policies
but what the project is not doing is devising and issuing
one size fit all recommendations or guidelines
i think most of you you know really understand
that you're so embedded in your communities that every institution
is different and you need to you're developing policies and practices that
work for your local context in good coordination with your local
experts in public health departments and and
in response to your user community next slide please um
that being said we really understand the enormous string that
um you have all been under um as you're striving to make
sound thoughtful decisions in an environment
that's really a combination of urgency complexity and uncertainty
so with this project it started out as a response to initial
concerns initially around circulating library
collections as well as frequently touched surfaces
at that time earlier this spring surface-based materials-based
transmission was considered of a grave concern and so the project
was to really understand more uh in detailed uh matter what is the
what is going on with her surfaces and how might
the institutions adapt to that we're seeing over the course of the
project sort of a change in focus with less concern about materials
transmission to other transmission routes too and
we see that as we do the literature reviews
and of course you know track the general conversation
but what this project has been doing is really accumulating
scientific knowledge along the way and formulating a cumulative
picture because there was such a sense of urgency
we didn't wait and say okay we're going to conduct
all the research and ask all the questions and do it thoroughly
and then you know a year later issue a report
so what it's been doing is just issuing findings
just as we have discovered them so you get
you get um information immediately but it's only one piece of the puzzle
um so one of the things is to try to string that together into more of a
cohesive story um i've we've seen this also happening
in the in the news media and in the general you know there's like one
one study is published and uh you know journalists will lash on
to that and it sort of fans a new theory um that might sound like settled science
but it's but then something comes out a couple
months later that's you know adds a different um twist to
things so um again that's that uncertainty and
complexity that's in there um also the project is not trying to
cover the entire breadth of the questions and the considerations related
to covet 19 but has been more focused on a few
research questions to that to really you know
be one piece to help your local decision making
in combination what is coming out of other
you know public health departments in the cdc and elsewhere
i wanted to just draw attention to a really excellent article that's in the
british medical journal it was published earlier this spring
i'll just pop it into chat here that gives a really nice
overview about this this very situation of how
of trying to make well-informed and thoughtful decisions under complex
conditions i mean you read it you'll probably
recognize yourself in it and basically you know these are experts who've worked
in this in in these types of public health crises before and they say
um you know you're doing a great job and just recognize that
that it's not possible to just have solid
answers all the time and right away next slide please
okay with that i just wanted to talk about what's the
status of covid19 research overall and this is um this is a summary
from the first two literature reviews um the
the second and one which which was published in mid-october
and i just put a link to where you can find those
next slide please
and kind of maybe sound sort of perversely but i'm
going to start with what is not known yet and these are the known unknowns and
and you hopefully have heard these in other places too but it is important to
bear in mind um these these important things that we
do not know yet and one is it's not known how much a
virus an infected person sheds so shedding you know when they cough or
they sneeze or through other excretions um how many
virus particles are coming off them and um
and at what point in their infectiousness so
i'm not known and for other viruses there's quite um
a significant variation from just a very small
number of particles to more the hundreds or thousands
we also don't know whether people are getting infected by touching objects
um there have been um only maybe a couple cases that where
objects have been more definitively determined to be the
source or strongly um considered to be the source
so that's still a question mark around that
um and third we don't know how much or how little virus is needed to cause
infection so how much you need to get inside your
your bloodstream your your lungs or airflow
your air passages in order to get an infection next slide please
um so with that backdrop um the literature reviews have been driven
by three questions one is how might the virus spread
through general operations at your at your
museum or libraries or archives um how long does
the virus remain active or infectious on surfaces
that it's sitting on or embedded in and then how effective are prevention
and decontamination measures against the virus in those
settings and in the situations
so you'll notice that these literature questions are focused about the behavior
of the virus of sars kovid ii in the environment and not about the
disease covid19 that results so not about
what happens after a person that's been infected
but more about how the virus is able or is not able to infect somebody and how
we can prevent that next slide please
so at the time of the the mid-october literature review
basically where things were was that sars kobit ii was generally understood
to spread primarily through virus containing water
droplets that are expelled from an infected person
from a sneeze or coughing or speaking singing
talking all those things i think we're all um now pretty well aware of
that um also uh
but then there's the possibles um so the the most likely or the dominant
transmissions are really that direct contact infected person is directly
or very close to another person and the virus is transmitted through those
droplets aerosol particles um there's there has
been growing evidence that those are another form of transmission
at the time in in you know this fall that was not settled science though you
had sort of uh you had researchers on on different um
kind of ends of of the um of that question um so we're cons we
call that possible but not settled yet um and then there's also again
on the on the other end are contaminated objects uh
surfaces which are also called fomites as i mentioned earlier
you know viruses do get transmitted through services
it's just more of a question of whether that's happening and to what degree
it is for this particular virus um but as the months have gone by it's
considered to be um definitely not a you know a dominant
form of transmission but is still possible other
other forms of transmission are bodily fluids other excretions
um and you know from tears um urine that that sort of thing so
those are have been studied more as the times gone by as well
next slide please
we also our understanding that environmental conditions
are a factor so temperature and relative humidity
so uh higher temperatures um seem to
um have the when in higher temperatures the virus
dies off more more quickly and conversely in
in colder temperatures it can survive longer um similarly with relative
humidity high relative humidity um slows the
spread and lower does not there's also things of air quality other
pollutants in there fresh outdoor air that's clean
seems to be a better environment for reducing risk of transmission and then
of course air flow so getting um you know being able to
recirculate air spaces so that that fresh clean air
is is frequently coming in and replacing contaminated air
um at the time you know there is still lots of questions underneath about the
level of the risk that these various factors have
so it's something like these are ish these are points of concern
but still a lot to be understood about them
next question next slide please
and on the prevention and decontamination tactics
um there's things that just over and over again
show that are effective one is the um practicing
physical distancing so that those droplets cannot
as easily pass from one person to another
hand washing or hand sanitizing to um mitigate the any
possibility of transference from from either a
from a from a surface a person um to one's own
um person but then with the other possible excretions i
think there's been more focus on toilet hygiene also to make
sure that transmission isn't happening through the
urine or feces and then masks or the as the primary form of ppe
um is is really kind of a something that really covers all of the
territory of those possible risk of transmission
um of course not 100 but really reduces that risk
and again you know maximizing fresh air open spaces
um it helps with those environmental factors
then when we get into uh how do you treat spaces or materials that
are suspected or known to be contaminated with the virus
that's when you get into certain surface cleaners and disinfectants that
have been
shown to be to be effective against viruses either sarskovid2 itself or
similar viruses and then to a lesser degree there's been
research around certain forms of uv light treatment that
in certain situations and used
appropriately can also um decontaminate
a surface or space
so that's the literature review and now i'm going to move into the
talking about the lab testing so next slide please
and most of the pictures on these slides are taken from the actual
uh lab um workers and and research for the project
so next slide and the research question that has been
driving the the lab testing with there have been
six tests thus far is how long does the virus
remain active on materials that are commonly
found in archives libraries and museums and again when i say active that means
viable or infectious or in kind of a
not entirely accurate but helpful is alive so um this is not uh
so i might use those um terms interchangeably
but hopefully the meaning is is clear to you
what we wanted to do with this research question is really to match
real world conditions so for example of collection items you know
the the sort of maybe the the easiest method
at considered the time was if you just leave something alone
just let it sit there if you think it's been contaminated
how long would it be where you would say it's virus free
um uh if the answer was you know more than a than a few days
or a week well then it gets the the practicality of that becomes quickly
beyond the point of diminishing returns so
quarantining or leaving let things lie was offered originally as kind of a
relatively pragmatic tactic um but it really needs to be considered
in the balan balance with all of the other elements in play so if
you have people coming in your space you can't
say don't touch anything don't touch the banister don't touch the
walls don't touch you know the interactive displays um
or if you have a huge number of of materials that have been handled that
you're concerned about but you don't have any space to store them that's
another consideration um and then finally
you know it's it's a one it's it's one question if you have
a surge of covid19 cases rising in your community
um versus um you know there are occasions when there there is not any um
any um signs that is not is active among the people that
may be using your facilities
so for those of you who may be following this scientific research about
the virus you might be aware that there are
two types of tests and this is in really basic ways one that a
is a test is just detecting presence of viral matter
so little bits of a virus rna but it's not really determining whether
those virus particles are inactive or active so are they capable
of infection or not so one test is just looking at presence
of virus the other one is focused on measuring
infectious virus particles only so i just want to be clear that the battelle
research for the realm project is using that latter method so what i'm going to
be showing to you is presence of infectious
virus materials next slide please
um so here are pictures of the material of
one of the tests where they're prepping the materials for the lab
so as i mentioned there have been six tests
thus far that have been completed and in each test
there are five different materials that are tested
and what they do is take a sample of each material
and cut it into these small rectangular coupons so you can see stacks of the
coupons of the various materials that are that were tested here
and then then those materials the the researchers
apply the virus that's suspended in this synthetic saliva or fake spit as it were
so they're applying it on there so it's sort of simulating
you know a sneeze from an infectious person
they sneezed on this material and it got all over it
next slide please
then those are materials are put into a test chamber
either in a stacked or unstacked configuration
so they might be laid out on a rack that looks like cookies drying on a rack
or if if it makes more sense of how that material
is used in the real world conditions they could be stacked
where their surface to surface is squished together
um so that there's not really so that the virus kind of sandwiched between
materials and then those um those racks with the
coupons are put inside a chamber where they can control the temperature
um for the all the tests done today the
temperature was kind of simulating let's call standard office temperature so
between 68 and 72 degrees fahrenheit and relative humidity
30 to 50 percent this chamber doesn't have outside air
air coming in or light so it's kind of a you can
consider it like a stagnant um a stagnant space
and then that's uh held in a biohazard safety level our level three lab
so these are labs that are designed to be able to work with
very hazardous substances you know like infectious diseases patel's worked
with things scary things like ricin and
anthrax sars mers
some other viruses and there's only 200 labs in in the
whole country for this so it's very um
particular that they can have this infectious virus in this lab
next slide please so then at each pre-selected time point for the test
the the test samples are are removed from the chamber and then
they are added to a cell culture so basically some cells that are
um to see if the virus actually kills those cells so that if it does
that means this is infectious virus um and depending on the level of
cellular interaction the researchers use a formula to
calculate from that how much infectious virus is present
so they're able to track that from that initial level that they put on
there just putting another link in the in the
um chat there that will take you to the
test plan that gives all the gory details about this
um but they are able to to measure the amount of infectious virus
all the way to the point that it gets to what is called the limit of quantitation
and this is where there there are fewer than 26
particles of virus left on the coupon after that point there's not enough for
it really to show enough interaction with the cell
culture so instead they look at it under a microscope and just look
at each coupon for that day and say do we see any virus on there or
not and when the answer is no they do not
see it on any of the coupons then it's considered hitting the limit
of detection so no virus is found at all
next slide please so that is the process in a nutshell and now here's an
example um from uh let's look at test six which
was the most recent test findings that were published which
was on hard surfaces listed here glass marble laminate brass and powder
coated steel
and let's go to the next slide and uh first
show you what this looks like in graph form so
each of those are color-coded lines on the graph
and you see that the brass which is a light blue line
and the marble which is kind of a rust line they dropped
all the way down to zero the limit of detection
on day two um and while the others also dropped
significantly that day there were still virus detected until
uh day six
so um that's what um patel um presented to to us in the form of a
chart and if you go to the next slide this is kind of the the friendly um
easy to read version of that slide that shows the five materials that were
tested under hide services and again that marble and brass
no virus found after two days sitting in their little quarantine space
and then for the other three not after six days
and next slide please um and then this
graph shows all of the materials that have been tested to date
and the results of those same types of tests
through those six testing rounds so this kind of gives you a glanceable
thing where we have in some cases after just one day virus completely gone
and then in other cases after eight days there were still some
virus detected on the surfaces
i'm gonna drop another link in here next slide please
here are just some snapshots of the toolkit resources
that you'll find on the website that encapsulate
and synthesize some of the things that i just went over
about the literature review and about the the testing
that again these are all pdfs that you can download you can share
with your constituents with your decision makers with your
health departments just as as as fodder for your decision making
and next slide please
and then i just want to end before i turn to questions
um with some things that you can go for more information
is so again if you go to the the hub the the the realm website um there is one of
the main sections is called research so you'll
find the research both the full reports the testing plan as well as
charts and graphs and and and summaries um to explain the
results the resources section have the toolkit
materials and there's one section that's dedicated to
museums in particular and as i said in addition to graphics and
illustrations of the realm of sponsored research
there are also guidelines illustrative examples that we have
curated and pulled in that have been created by other organizations
or institutions there's a form that you can submit
questions to the realm inbox it'll be either me or my um
my colleague kendra who will probably be answering you
we do read those and we do really appreciate your questions
um those questions have helped inform an faq which you'll also find on the
website there we update those as a new kind of if
there's new thematic questions that come up but it does answer
all of the most frequently asked one and then again
join that mailing list if you want to get direct news and updates from the
project all right thank you thank you sharon
and now we can take some questions do you want to take a quick look at the
question box and maybe take like five to eight minutes we
are a little tight on time uh to answer any question that may
benefit all the attendees
i am not seeing the questions okay in my
are there any that i don't see anything in
in the question box okay yeah i have a question for
elizabeth from imls do you see any questions coming up that sharon can
answer
there's a couple questions that have been coming in i've posted those for our
organizers and panelists in the chat
okay i see a question speak a bit more about virus found on a surface versus
infectiousness of the virus when found
so it's definite i would say it's it's
definitely possible you know again if someone sneezes or coughs on a surface
and they are infected with covid that it's going to transfer
virus particles through that sneezer cough to
the surface that they um that they uh splattered on just as same as if it
was a person right a person an object can receive it
i think what the sort of the big question is
because we don't know how many virus particles it takes for someone to get
infected but there's also the the how how likely or how
possible or how much would it take for someone to then
touch that surface and then need to you know you're not going to get sick
just from touching it then you have to be able to transfer it say you know
to your mouth or to your nose your eyes or somehow so it gets inside your body
and capable infection um so the um the
so far with trying to do um tracing back of
of sources of transmissions it's been uh there's only uh there are very few cases
that have been where where that form of transmission has been
found to be the source of it um but it's also really
hard to trace trace that so um
and without knowing both how much an infectious person sheds and how much it
takes to infect someone there's just some of these you know those known
unknowns get in the way um so what we're doing with the lab
testing is kind of showing the lifespan of a virus on surfaces so
it sort of answers the first part is um if you get virus on a on a substance
how long will it sit there and being active
and how quickly does it you know does it attenuate or dissipate
what we can't answer yet is and then if someone touches it with then then how
likely are they going to get infected
and then
okay boy now they're now they're all flying in so
uh were tests done in live environments um they were done in a laboratory
environment so the the materials many of the materials were
donated from actual institutions so they came out of either
circulating collections or spaces others were purchased from members but
they were infected with virus that was grown
in a lab and then held in a lab so it was not going into say like an
infected environment and scraping off virus from spaces
um i see a link to an article in the washington post i think it's the one
that came out yeah just a couple days ago about
um airborne transmission and and over cleaning yeah i think um there's some
really you know there's some really good um you know discussion about this about
um the difference between over cleaning and appropriate cleaning i did think
that the article in the washington post was sort of a little bit blithely
assuming that having people wear a mask and wash your
hands was just a no-brainer in a given um you know if everybody did that very
consistently and across the board i think that
that those two things would would cover a lot of the territory
um but i but you know we understand what we hear from
from the community of museums and libraries is that
there isn't a hundred percent adherence so having
some cleaning and disinfection um tactics
um to use in cases where you're concerned that trans
that something may have been contaminated seems appropriate
i don't i want to just do a time check because i know i think we should take
one question and then i think we have to move to part
two because we don't have too much time left
um and i and i will continue i will put responses in the chat
during the part two that would be perfect that'll be perfect
for me yeah good time yeah do you want to do that now absolutely
go on because we just have half an hour perfect
okay thank you so much sharon and i think uh
i love seeing the the questions uh that are coming in the
in the question box keep them coming sharon promises to answer them now
or you know we will answer them later so at this point
um let's move on to part two of our webinar
and uh like i mentioned we have laura lot from aam
and kevin and jessica so thank you all for joining
laura i would like to begin with you giving us
uh an update on the state of affairs as they stand now
you have been an active partner with imls you're serving on the
steering committee of you know the realm project you have been in conversations
with our director across vni on you know right from you know march
onwards and we are doing a lot of communications with you
um i want to start by saying a big thank you to what you
are doing um to keep the sector informed uh so if you can take a few minutes and
shed some light on where things stand what are some of the changes you're
seeing what are some of the needs that you're seeing
um you also received a cares act grant from imls
am did so what are your plans for that so let me turn it over to you
and take some time to enlighten us thanks paula i appreciate that um those
nice comments and and the opportunity to be with all of
you today and i will be really brief because i think the um
how how all of this gets applied in museums is really critical and i know
kevin and jessica are uh have some great information to share
um but i i just want to whenever i'm asked about
to talk a little bit about the state of museums these days i have to start um
with an acknowledgement in about the state of museum people
um i know we're talking a lot about science and data and facts and figures
and i won't go into um you know all of the ways that
we know that this current environment is um
is impacting uh the people that work in and make up museums and and certainly
our audiences i think that i just want to say the most
important thing for you to know is that um you're not alone um all of us on this
webinar and i know at imls i know crosby and paula share this we're
deeply grateful for all that you're doing to serve your communities despite
these unprecedented times to keep people safe in and around your
museums and to give people respite and
inspiration and information so thank you for all you do i wanted to if
you could um advance the slides for me that would be great
whoever is behind the magic while doing that um i just wanted to share a couple
of um key points from our recent coved um uh
19 impact survey uh which was um results from over 850
museums uh across the country uh they answered
these questions in october so since this is a rapidly changing
situation i i'll add a couple of comments uh an observation since then
um but uh this was an update to a june survey that we did that got a lot of
press with the terrible news that one in three museums was at risk of permanently
closing um due to the financial implications of
the current of the pandemic and the closures
across the country um the full report is on am's website so
i'm just going to cover a couple of key things here
next slide our survey confirmed that 98 of museums were closed
to the public at some point this year so this is a widespread impact
and the next slide will show you that 29 uh remained closed um
uh even in october um so never never really opened this year
many children's museums many small spaces that didn't have space for
distancing um and of course this was before the
latest round of reclosings of museums in many
uh communities due to the latest spikes in the virus
um next slide even before this latest round of reclosings 40 of these still
closed museums did not have an identified date to
reopen um and now i suspect that most museums won't be
reopening until after the new year or significantly into the new year
um perhaps when we reach a point where a large percentage of the population is
is vaccinated which means that a lot a large portion of our field will have
been closed for an entire year the next slide show is an attempt
to show kind of the precipitous rate of closures
last march this happened really fast as you all
know and the orange line shows how slow and spread out the reopening of
museums has been across the the rest of the year um
there's a little green line that shows that museums had
to some museums ended up having to reclose in june and july when we had
that spike and then they're sort of slow reopening
over the following months almost flat um purple line there um so this is a
real moving target as i said and um we will continue to
monitor this um with you know the latest reclosings
and hopefully reopenings next slide
um museums that are uh open are experiencing on average 35
of their normal attendance so even those that are reopening are still um are
still struggling to to get folks um in the doors even though
we have no information that there has ever been a coveted
outbreak traced to a museum either among staff or among visitors which is
which is good news um and i think shows that museums are taking a lot of
precautions to keep their spaces uh super safe for um for people
the next slide um there's a lot of information on
the financial implications of all of this but the major point here since
we're talking about sort of reopening and safety measures i
wanted to point out is that um museums have spent
uh you know significant amounts of money preparing to reopen safely on average
about twenty seven thousand dollars and as high as three quarters of a million
dollars so we know that some of the measures are
pretty expensive next slide um as i mentioned up front
about one in three or 29 percent in the latest survey
um uh said that there was a significant risk of closing
permanently um or that or the museum just didn't know how it would survive
and this is something that am is is first and foremost focused on in our
work both with the um cares act grant that we received and and
all of our other um work around uh advocacy and sort of
helping museums both to um make the case that they uh
that they are in uh need and need to be supported as well as
providing resources for museums to look at different ways to reach audiences
digitally um to embrace new audiences so there's
some data out there that shows that 50 of the online audiences that are
accessing museums in that new way for them this year have never actually
stepped foot in the actual museum so it's a whole new audience
uh for museums and and so we want to help to
find ways to keep that and build on that the next slide
um my last slide here is that back in march
aem launched a free comprehensive page of resources on our website to help
museums navigate these impacts of the virus and this has
continued to grow and be updated with help from the field along the way
so there are a number of reopening
checklists the information that sharon just
prevented presented from the realm project around
best practices for um certain cleaning services
uh sample reopening plans for museums and then other information around the
financial implications of the pandemic on museums and looking
at different business models and fiscal strategies and really importantly
continuing to center equity in our work as museums
even well and especially while we manage the implications of the
pandemic which we know are
especially um harming our communities of color
so lots of information there and i will leave it at that for now i think
how much laura for sharing you know very insightful data
we have also been um you know referencing uh some of your findings so
now let's move uh and get some insight from
the practitioners point of view uh kevin and jessica welcome and i'm going to
introduce both of you together so that we again
optimize time and not lose uh any more time in between
we would love to know from you what you are doing
uh within your institutions uh because i'm sure you know these
uh eight nine months have been uh like all hands on the deck
approach and very fast iterative problem solving in a sort of approach
but as you are sharing uh along with what you're what along with
sharing what you're doing within your
institutions uh we would really like you to share
some of the lessons learned how you have adapted
you know what you started with and it didn't work maybe uh so some lessons
learned and anything that you have created
um you know um as as you were sort of building and as you were going
anything that you can share with the sector you know through this webinar uh
would really be good because we know that everyone is scrambling so with that
i turn it over to kevin uh for you to first present
okay thank you paul and thank you for having me here today
uh next slide after uh three months of closure beginning in
march we opened our doors back up in june
uh but before we did that we focused on three primary areas
our staff safety and protocols visitors safety and protocols and our building
cleaning and safety we did a lot of work ahead of time
drafting policies um
[Music] we we implemented the temperature taking
made sure we had ppe available
socially distancing everybody not only in their offices but when they had to
eat setting up plexiglass the one thing i
think that was really helpful to the staff
was safety and de-escalation training that
um when we opened back up there was a fair amount of pushback in particular
wearing a face mask and it did cost uh friction with visitors
in pennsylvania there's a requirement that if you have a medical
condition we can't question it so you can come in
and a lot of people would come in without a mask
if they didn't have a medical condition we would have to remove them from the
property we had to do it a couple times so
but we really prepared weeks in advance of opening
next slide
from a visitor's standpoint um we made it very clear to visitors
what they could expect when they would visit
we wanted them to wear masks we wanted social distancing
directional signs we made sure that there's ppe
available not only for employees but for visitors
you can have a mask and maybe a strap breaks
we wanted that to be available about a week or so ago and i don't know
if you know in pennsylvania they closed down museums this past saturday
but prior to closing down we implemented mandatory temperature taking
for visitors we had not done that from the start
but we did implement it and surprisingly we only had one person
push back so i think people felt comfortable
knowing that i know the employees felt comfortable knowing we were doing it
and actually appreciated it next slide please
some of these uh things on this slide may answer questions i saw in the chat
room but we we own 28 buildings over a million
square foot under under roof um so as you can imagine we
really had to have detailed protocol for cleaning
daily weekly monthly uh especially deep cleaning if someone is uh infected or
believed to be infected um we had deep clean um
we deep cleaned the touch the high touch areas with
please don't ask me the technical side of this i just know what it's called
qt3 or vital oxide misting
but the other questions that i saw being asked were about air filtration
and um we took this pretty serious because
uh there was an article that came out about airborne
uh infections so we made sure we had mervy
pre-filters bag filters epithelders we spray the filters with an
anti-microbial vericide periodically especially when we change
them and then where it was possible we
increased the outside air flow to the museums upwards of 10 15
percent not as easy in an art museum as it is at
a science center but we did what we could to increase
that and then the other thing and sharon had
touched on this we do atp testing in high touch
areas which tests for uh energy molecules
molecules or living uh cells it doesn't test for the virus but it
tests for living cells so if there's something living there we clean it
next slide please
um lessons learned um probably we while more than likely we will do
visitor temperatures from the get-go um the one thing we
learned in taking temperatures with employees
was we started out taking temperatures of employees
in their cars as they were pulling in well the ambient heat from the car
affected the temperature learned that real fast
um we we decided to take the behind the scenes cleaning
and make it visible so that visitors and the employees saw we were doing it
because if you don't see it you don't think it's done
uh we separated working groups repurposed areas for lunchrooms
and we kept ahead of ppe um helpful resources and again this may
answer one of your questions about the hvac there's a site called
ashrae and the head of our facilities is the
one that uh suggested that this may seem silly we actually googled
a lot of higher education institutions they have a lot of backing
a lot of money and a lot of ability to come up with white papers on
what to do and in some cases we used it as backbone
and then we also keep close on trade magazines aside
from am and what we're presenting today there's a lot of information out there
uh on boma and iamfa that's all thank you
excellent very very tangible examples and tips thank you so much
jessica absolutely hello thank you everybody my name is jessica chavez uh
minus what my name says under my uh picture there but i'm with arizona
science center and i'm vice president of innovative learning strategies
which is a little bit different for this uh webinar i was brought in
actually just because of the adult education background that i have in
working with our our facilities and our departments
just really getting them aware of what kind of transition it would be
going into reopening and we actually in fact opened twice
uh so our first reopening was um at the end of may
and then we decided there wasn't a government order but we just decided
with our board that our numbers were a little bit uncomfortable
uh so that we were gonna take a step back which is where we pivoted with our
online virtual platforms we then opened again uh in the middle
late june uh where we opened to the public where
we had some great learnings from that so i have some
um high level of what we did and how we transitioned but a lot of
similar things to kevin as far as our cleaning our procedures and policies
it took a lot of great minds to get that going so if you don't mind going to the
next slide i can start with that overview
and just how we tackle some of our guests in arizona it's a little bit
different we have a mass mandate across the state
now what that looks like when people come
into our institution varies uh we've seen a lot of interesting
things whether it's a a gator mask or a a regular standard
mask or we've even seen some with a mesh uh
opening in the mouth area so we've had to do a
lot of uh regulating and training our staff as to what that looks like
so i'm just giving you a little tidbit of what the training was and the ongoing
training that we do to get our staff on board as well as to be able to educate
the public because really we are one of the first
places to uh reopen as a cultural institution in
the state uh and some are still actually closed in
fact uh but one was really just everyone getting a baseline
of what coven 19 was we have four different generations in the workplace
who have a different understanding and different uh depth of how much they read
into things and so really getting everyone aware of
covid19 what's the baseline verbiage that we're going to be using
on staff as well as being able to share with the public
part two was our reopening processes and procedures and
knowing that it's a living document we have several iterations of what our
reopening plan looks like and as our lawyers contributed our board
contributed we have a covid committee uh that contributes in a daily
leadership meeting that actually goes over all of the covet information
to make sure we are staying as current as possible and then part three guest
interactions and professional best practices you know we are a public
institution we have lots of littles um on our site and how do we show that
empathy as we open to the public and still have an inviting place where
people can learn and be a model as to what this could look like
during the pandemic so next slide please
so one of the things we did as far as staff was we have daily health
screenings so much like kevin we are taking temperatures of our staff
each day but they also fill out a health screening just
as part of their procedures when they come in as well as a location tracker so
we know who's on site and offsite every day
um again trying to stagger how many people we have
on site and we are at below capacity as our ceo will say we are small and
scrappy uh so we make sure we spread out
accordingly as well but on top of that just something that's
a little bit different than kevin we are not taking temperatures of our guests
in arizona as you can imagine walking to our doors
varies the temperature a little bit and so we found that was not something that
was really uh doable for us on our end so um
definitely adding um as guests enter we have security
there to just kind of reinforce that we do have a mask
policy we have hand sanitizer waiting with a guest
um experience expert there to greet them as well as just understanding the safety
practices along our ramp as you go down about the pandemic
next slide please
all right and so getting into the guest experiences so
um in arizona fortunately or unfortunately as you've probably seen we
have made the news quite a bit uh for covid and just our numbers are a little
high so it's been really important to making sure that we educate our guests
and we do have a mass mandate and because we are a
non-essential business we are very strictly enforcing that so even um
down to where the cdc would recommend uh not using gators
you know maybe or maybe not we have decided to take a strong stance on not
allowing gators which are just those handkerchiefs that
just kind of go up because you actually need double layers and some
of our guests were not complying accordingly
we do not allow the just the face shields again because of the
transmission so we do have ppe available for our guests in two different sizes
child and adult depending on what they need in addition
to that we are providing each guest with a touchless tool as they enter and they
pay so um some of our exhibits that were had
interesting materials that we weren't quite sure what could be
cleaned appropriately in a quick manner we have taken
away from the public at this point but we have a lot of interactive
exhibits that actually really interact with our touchless tools
so upon entry everyone gets a touchless tool and a brief
introduction as to how to utilize that a lot of our signage has changed just to
um educate to keep people safe and aware of the space that they need to adhere to
so having um occupancy limits on each of our
galleries training our staff if we exceed those occupancy gout you
know occupancy areas in our galleries and how
to work with the staff and then also having one-way traffic in
our main area so really just trying to control space in the flow as
much as possible and then we do collect those touchless
tools upon their exit they are available for purchase which has been a popular
item but really ensuring that that is
available for them and i guess um next slide which is
lessons learned where we have um which is a little bit
different so plan getting different brains in the room so to really get
our our procedures and policies it took more than just our operations department
it took me from the learning department it took
our facilities managers really coming together with different eyes to ensure
that we're really thinking about everything
down to making sure we have photos under our name tags so that they know that
we're human under those masks uh just simple things that really made
us think about the whole picture not just
um the day-to-day logistics of it really troubleshooting daily so we have
a schedule where we have a leader on site
each day so that's one of our leadership teams so that's really supporting our
staff so they they see a face to help reinforce mask wearing or just to
make sure that we're following procedures with a checklist that we're
walking around so it's a separate role than our usual day-to-day role but
something that's really been beneficial to not only our guests but
also our staff and then having a daily report in our
daily leadership meetings as to what's working what's not
how do we quickly modify whether that's just adding more signage
or changing our one-way traffic where it makes more sense to use
us even down to how do we when we opened our theaters how do we actually
structure it so we have procedures to keep things clean and spaced out
um knowing that there's no going back to normal
and that's okay but how do we pivot and how do we plan for right now
but also look towards the future and so again
with our safety on um procedures that we have on site really
mimicking and mirroring that when we do our off-site programming as well
and really knowing that the public looks to us as a model and so
we've collected a lot of data and you know i i
pride ourselves on this but the worst report is that we've been the the clean
police uh which i will take any day of being
the clean police uh you know when you come to visit us
because they know that they're safe um and so that is kind of just the
lessons learned and what we would change i think having our security
to support us and having friendly security has been huge
uh really having our staff understand how to interact with the public and to
model those safety practices having visible cleaning crew
on staff making sure on our website we model
those types of things and then last but not least to some of
the couple of the resources we used i really enjoyed
the realm resources next slide please um the realm resource was a great for
decision making and libraries so basically their opening checklist if you
haven't checked this out please do because it was a great
way to do a self check as to where we need to be
um as well as some other resources like aam and our ceo is very big about
bringing different resources in to speak to our leadership team or our
president's club just so that we're really aware of
what's happening in the industry and i think that's huge because
you know what's happening in pittsburgh is a little bit different but we can be
learning from each other so that's been a really big
emphasis and then our cdc coveted track tracker um even the arizona one we are
following that down to the minute so that's been a great resource and uh
knowing that um in our situation in arizona we might
have to make different policies and procedures
that our governor may or may not have decided just yet just to make sure that
we're keeping our guests safe and we're being a model of science
i think that's it and i think my i'm so impressed you know
you all are like doing so much but i know that i
suggested only four to five slides but you packed it with
information which i'm sure will be very very beneficial
uh practical information you know one of the goals behind us
doing this webinar was really to connect research to practice and i feel
really good as your hostess and moderator you know i feel
we definitely accomplished that and i hope the
uh the attendees would feel that too uh we only have like about six minutes left
um but i would like to um dan if we can um yeah i think i'll ask the last
broad question to all of you and it's really
a wrap-up you know for this webinar uh you
saw and heard what the realm project has generated
and what's coming up in terms of toolkits and other resources
you shared and heard what others are doing and jessica just like you
mentioned i think one big need is for a continuing
uh community of practice a forum where you know the ideas can be
uh can be exchanged but my question my final question for all three of you and
take two minutes this is rapid fire right
um what are some areas of needs for your museums and your
communities that the realm project or imls can
address and i'll repeat it what are some areas
of needs um you know face that that you are facing as your museum
or your community is facing that the realm project or imls can
address and anyone can go first
and you might want to unmute yourself i was muted
one thing that would be really helpful is a
standard calculation of the
positivity rate because it's confusing to people
when for instance in pennsylvania allegheny county
would measure one way the state would measure it another way
and we as a museum would like to have a metric
by which we could measure and say to people we will close if this
goes to this number we will open if it you know goes down to this number and
it would just be good and maybe it's impossible to ask realm to do this but
um you know a positivity calculation that would be consistent
that everyone uses would be i think a great thing for us to have
thank you kevin
who wants to go with jessica or laura can go next um i guess you know just as
a support just i mean the continued research and data sharing and just
you know staying as current as possible as you know we know science changes
uh and so just as much as we can share and just make people aware i think this
was a great opportunity to have a webinar like this and to have this as an
ongoing thing would be really beneficial for everybody
and to get other institutions involved great
that's what i was talking to our communications department that maybe
this is a start of a series right where we continue the conversations
thank you laura your last words yeah i i a lot of the
museum folks that we're talking to are thinking about um reopening as
we think about post pandemic and what you know
uh rehabituation we need to do to welcome people back into
our um our spaces and make them feel comfortable there and make them feel
compelled to you know leave our um our their comfy
couches and and our online presence and programs and
websites uh to get back into museums spaces and
and and programming so we're thinking about
that and um how we can help you know architect
that feature we want okay great um i know that our next slide
was supposed to be q and a but we are really running short of time we just
have one minute um i do want dan to bring up the uh the
slide with our contact information uh if everyone wants to take down
the emails maybe a quick picture of this slide and like i mentioned this uh the
webinar is being recorded and you will find it on the realm site
or the imls sign site as soon as they are ready but
maybe if our gracious panelists are available for you know two three
more minutes um let's look at the chat box or the
question box and see if we can take maybe just two questions and then i
promise we'll wrap it up
do we have any questions
for our panelists paula i see a question in the chat i know we probably don't
have time to delve into this but around research on disinfecting surfaces or
reducing transmission in historic house museums of course we know that's a big
part of the um of the field and i uh i i don't know if there
are materials specific to that kind of museum that
we could include in you know future testing but we'd be open i know i am
also sought you know advice from museums on what you
know kinds of materials could be tested and on what conditions so i think i
think there's an openness to do that if we know what
you know what we're missing is that right and
yeah and i'll just say um this is sharon is i i mentioned that question
submission form that can also be considered that a comment form so if the
if the commenter would like to just drop a form
in there and kind of list again like laura was saying specific materials
or conditions that you're thinking of then we can either crosswalk that to
research that we already have or it'll just inform our our planning
going forward
okay i think that's pretty that's a wrap and i just want to thank
all of you for participating on this webinar and
sharing your expert insights and i would just
like to thank all the attendees uh for you know your time and
wishing that everyone's remain safe and you know my mask up and like
maintain the social distancing all the things that we talk about and
jessica i loved what you said that the community
looks at museums as as role models and and that's a very big responsibility
that we have uh not only you know um still
still bringing in that fun and inspiration uh
in these you know times that can be depressing uh but also role modeling so
thank you all it was a pleasure hosting this webinar
and i want to thank imless and oclc and all our partners for doing some
really really important thank you thank you
thanks paula thank you
you