The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum archive is broken down into different sections. Textual records housed at the library amount to 70 million pages of records from the Executive Office of the President, including the White House Office of Records Management, the Staff Member Office Files, the National Security Council, and the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Audiovisual records include 46,000 audio and video tapes and 375,000 still photographs. Electronic records include nearly 4 million photographs created by the White House Photo Office and approximately 80 terabytes of other electronic records, the largest electronic records collection of any presidential library.

The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, located at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, is much more than an archive. It is part of a larger complex that makes up the George W. Bush Presidential Center.” Its mission is preserving and providing access to presidential records and other donated collections, hosting public programs, creating educational initiatives, preserving artifacts, and producing innovative museum exhibits. As with other presidential libraries, the objective is to bring together historical artifacts, along with the archival material, to provide a resource for scholars and the general public.

As with all historic artifacts the Presidential archive collection is also threatened by destruction and/or extinction if not subject to careful risk mitigation and conservation measures. Every day, collections such as the Bush Library are subject to threats and risks that must be assessed and dealt with, in order to ensure that the collection can be enjoyed by future generations of scholars, historians, and others. Based upon insurance principles, collections are now looking at their greatest risks and implementing programs and procedures to reduce the risk of disaster and loss.

Among the greatest risks to be assessed are loss from flood, fire, or earthquake in certain parts of the country. Given the Library’s location in Texas, the likelihood of earthquake or landslide is geographically more remote, though the issue of fire or flooding is quite real. Other very real risks that the Library will face include, humidity and temperature variations, improper light exposure, theft, pest infestation, and general neglect of the collection.

A properly conducted risk assessment will evaluate what if any of the collection remains at risk and how such potential loss might be valued in terms of dollars. Other considerations include the likelihood of such loss, and the scale of such potentially destructive event. Once such factors have been identified, the collection’s management team can begin the plenary process, addressing each risk individually, and taking specific and constructive steps towards ensuring that the collection is protected to the fullest extent possible.

As part of the risk mitigation and assessment proceedings, it would be prudent to identify a conservator or conservators to partner with in the process. There is no doubt that risks vary by parts of the country, or with respect to the age and nature of items in the collection. In so much as this is dealing with a still living President, one might anticipate that the collections materials are in a more preservation friendly state, than say, documents from last century. Regardless, the threats remain common to all collections, this Library included, and accordingly, the proper preventative measures must be taken.

The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is a good candidate for this Risk Mitigation Report. The collection is vast, the institution is sophisticated and well-funded, and the risks can be readily identified and analyzed.