International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection

The article was published in the Security Director News (Business News for Security Practitioners) website on 3.22.2011.

By Leischen Stelter

TOLEDO, Ohio—Protecting 30,000 works of art when more than 430,000 people visit the Toledo Museum of Art each year requires a combination of security measures. The most important security asset will always be security officers, said Tim Szczepanski, chief of protective services for the museum. “I’ve never been a believer in replacing people with technology, although I would like to have the latest and greatest technology available,” he said. “But I don’t think there are any machines out there that can talk to someone and have an inkling about what a person is up to or be suspicious of someone. There’s no substitute for a good security officer.” The museum employs and rotates 80 part-time proprietary guards, which complements its full-time contract guard force.

However, Szczepanski said he recognizes the value of technology as part of his overall security program and has made a big push to improve the museum’s video surveillance system. When he first joined the museum 18 years ago, there were only 15 cameras in place, eight or 10 of which worked at any given time, he said. Now the museum has more than 250 cameras. The museum also has an advanced security alarm system in its galleries as well as in its storage areas and on individual pieces of art. The alarms use a mixture of motion, glass break and other detection systems that alert authorities of issues.

The museum has also improved its access control system. It uses a card access system in its storage areas, but primarily uses a key-based system to allow access to certain areas of the museum. The museum recently adopted a key-control system from Morse Watchmans, which allows employees to use a personal identification number to access keys. Szczepanski said the key-control system has made employees more accountable. “When people obtain a set of keys this way they think about it more than when they swipe a card in a reader,” he said. “They know the keys are being issued to them and it’s being recorded in their name, so for that reason we haven’t had a problem with employees giving out their PIN numbers.”

The system has also been effective in reducing the number of lost keys and the museum has not lost a single key ring since putting the system in place, he said. Szczepanski said he regularly runs reports of overdue keys to notify employees if keys haven’t returned in a timely fashion, but also to make sure keys haven’t been lost. This is a vast improvement over the old system, which was basically a guard handing out keys and recording the name of the person along with the date and time. “Accountability was basically nonexistent and we never knew where to start looking if a key came up missing,” he said.

Szczepanski said it is simple to reprogram the system now to give new employees permission to certain rooms, but the system did require some time to initially set up. With more than 200 key rings, it took about three weeks to physically program employee information into the database, assign key permissions as well as PIN numbers. But after that initial set up, it just takes a few keystrokes to make the necessary changes, he said.

This article was published in the ENewsletter from Northern States Conservaton Center on January 7, 2011:


by: Stevan P. Layne, CPP, CIPM

If you concentrate on protecting exhibits and ignore the vulnerability of the building where they are kept, your exhibits are not protected. Your first concern should be fire and theft.

The greatest threat to collections is still fire. If it burns, it's gone, and the best of exhibit cases, alarms, or locks won't help.

Given time, proper tools, and just a bit of knowledge, a thief who gains access to your building will eventually penetrate the best of exhibit cases. Professional thieves penetrate bank vaults. They remove and haul off steel safes. Moreover, most thefts from museum collections and cultural properties are inside jobs. Staff are the culprits.

Protecting collections should begin with concentrating on these two vital areas - long before artifacts are placed on exhibit.

Fire Protection

Your building needs a sophisticated early warning smoke detection system.  Devices need to be monitored by a licensed central alarm monitoring company or a proprietary central monitoring station. The system should be tested regularly, with detection devices both cleaned and tested.

During any construction periods, when systems may be deactivated, a roving patrol should inspect/observe the construction area around the clock. Strict fire prevention measures should be in place, and consistently enforced. Coordination with response agencies should be carried out in a professional manner. Fire suppression should be quick and efficient either by fire departments or automatic systems.

More Fire Protection Guidelines are in the Cultural Property Protection Manual available from the International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection (IFCPP), American Association of Museums (AAM), and Layne Consultants International (LCI).

Theft Prevention

Every employee should undergo a background check that looks into their history and character. Professionalize and document the entire application/hiring process. Checks should include criminal histories, verification of former employment and education, and, for anyone with access to collections, a credit history. Consider annual criminal history checks as well as initial checks upon hiring.

Policies should be in place giving management the right to inspect all containers, lockers, briefcases, backpacks -- at any time, any place on museum property. Require all employees to enter and leave through a specified entrance staffed by security personnel or under observation of a surveillance camera. Closely regulate key control and after hours access.

Guidelines for screening staff, selecting an alarm vendor, and training security staff are found in the Cultural Property Protection Manual.

Exhibits

Now let's talk about exhibits. Exhibit cases themselves offer a variety of opportunities to improve protection. Following an exhaustive review and the input of numerous professionals, a guideline for the

protection of exhibit cases was adopted in 1997 and revised in 2008 by the American Association of Museums (AAM) and ASIS International. It may be found in Suggested Practices for Museum Security.

Hanging Art Protection

The protection of hanging artwork isanother matter. From the use of security hangers, such as Temart's t-hangers, to the installation of wireless artwork protection devices, there are now a number of protection alternatives.Relatively low-cost, battery operated devices (Art Guard) protect hanging art. Other devices may transmit wireless signals to monitoring stations, or roving security officers. There are excellent systems available following a reasonable review of vendor literature and references.

Note that most general alarm manufacturers do not provide devices that protect artwork from being removed, vandalized or even approached beyond recognized barriers.

Video Surveillance

Video surveillance is a valuable tool. The quality of the video and the surveillance camera locations are important. So, too, is alert action by monitor operators. Some video providers advertise the ability of their systems to interpret actions of passersby and initiate alarms when intent to steal or vandalize is recognized. These are mostly false claims, as the systems are programmed to detect motion and not much more. When video surveillance providers claim that buyers may reduce the number of security officers by adding cameras, it's a sure sign of an inflated marketing campaign. Nothing can replace the presence of an alert, professional, well-trained security officer. Where securityofficers are not available, any staff member or volunteer may serve as a deterrent patrol.

Protecting Exhibits

There is no generic solution for protecting exhibits. You must determine the best solutions to the threats you have identified in your situation.

Protection begins with the perimeter of your building and should include a 24-hour sophisticated intrusion detection system. Roving patrols should observe all exhibits no less than once every 15 minutes. That's an arbitrary figure based on the configuration of your gallery spaces.

We are often asked how many officers are necessary for a given space. There is no reliable answer to that question, as the number of officers assigned should be based on many factors, including space, layout, visitor patterns, and other staffing. You may opt for physical barriers,hardened steel exhibit cases, alarms within exhibit cases, wall mounted wireless artwork protection alarms, or a combination of all of the above. We actually prefer the latter situation.

Talk to the professionals in the cultural protection business, not alarm sales representatives or vendors calling themselves consultants. If you deal with a consultant, make sure that they have no vendor connection or relationship. Not all museums boast proper electronic protection systems. Some are as antiquated as the artifacts. If you're talking to other institutions, do your best to find out how good their systems are.

Stevan P. Layne, instructor for MS304: Security I: Certified Institutional Protection Specialist and NA 107: Introduction to Museum Security, is the principal consultant and chief executive of Layne Consultants International, a leading provider of cultural property protection advice. Steve is a former police chief, public safety director and museum security director. He is the author of The Cultural Property Protection Manual, and the Business Survival Guide. Steve regularly presents to professional associations and has consulted with more than 400 museums and other institutions. Steve is the founding director of the International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection and responsible for the professional training and certification of more than 1,000 museum professionals. For more information visit his web site Layne Consultants International

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