The last week in March we were delighted to welcome a National Heritage Responders disaster response team to campus to help with our ongoing archives recovery.The NHR team was a group of experts from around the country from various organizations, schools, libraries, and archives. Some of the team were experts in historic buildings and they went through and assessed Uncle Sol’s cabin, the James Still Classroom Building, and the Combs house. Some of the team were AV/film experts and they checked the cassette and VHS tapes that were cleaned and dried in the summer. And some were paper and book experts and they spot-checked the boxes volunteers previously cleaned.
With volunteers from Kentucky Humanities and the Daughters of the American Revolution, the NHR team then removed half a chest freezer’s worth of thawed archive items and they got cleaning! Volunteers were instructed on how to safely clean the various materials. The Great Hall was full of books drying in front of fans, tables covered with slides lying on paper towels, and clotheslines of photo prints and papers.
The NHR team also taught a community class on how to preserve family heirlooms and how to clean and care for them in the case of flooding. The class was live-streamed on our Facebook page and can be watched on our Youtube channel.
The NHR team is preparing a full report of their assessments and work on campus to aid in potential future fundraising, planning, and archive reconstruction.
