A good learning experience without the disaster…

Here’s an excellent web site from the Palmetto Archives, Libraries, and Museums Council on Preservation in South Carolina, where they know a thing or two about water damage, high humidity, and hurricane preparedness.  Click on their link to “Disaster Plan Template” to see a comprehensive, yet basic list of situations to consider in developing procedures for emergency response.  Great job, Palmetto planners!

Highlighting MOUs

Despite all our best foresight and planning for possible emergencies, sometimes we are all going to need a little help from our friends!  Check out this document as a great example of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between HSLs for help in emergencies.  If you have experience establishing MOUs or actually using one that you had in place when disaster struck, please add a comment here, or send along an example (ssy2n@virginia.edu).  

Upcoming online class for developing a disaster plan:

SoliNET is offering a variety of classes on disaster planning and preservation techniques over the next couple of months.  Check here for the list.  For those of you not in the SoliNET domain, check your regional organization to see what’s available.  Let me know if you find a nugget worth passing along to your peers!

Model disaster plans needed!

Calling all library disaster planners!  If you have a disaster plan (of any kind!) written for your library and we could add it to our “Model” tab here on the blog, please send it to me.  We hope to be able to provide as many examples as possible to people who might be just getting started or who are updating and improving existing plans.  It will help even to have a template or Table of Contents from plans that are already working.  If you can “de-personalize” a copy of your plan (delete personal phone numbers, addresses, etc.) and send it to me as a Word document or a PDF, I will add it to our list of models.

We especially need examples from hospital libraries, so that we can help address this issue for as broad a range of libraries as possible.

I have found that our own plan is not opening properly in some browsers off-site, so I will investigate and hope to ensure that all the resources we are trying to make available are easily accessible.  Thanks in advance!

Highlighting a great salvage/recovery site: NEDCC

The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) has many very helpful resources available to help rescue paper-based collections.  (Their own disaster plan template, dPlan, is featured on their pages.)  What I found especially pertinent, however, were the many preservation leaflets–there’s a “Click to view Preservation Leaflets” link in the left menu bar on every page.  The leaflets deal with every situation imaginable and are well-written and succinct.  NEDCC also offers a 24/7 “hotline” number to call with salvage questions.  I’m adding them to our blog’s list of sources for future reference!

Wake-up Call!

Check this out!  Did we think that our procedures are fine for shelter-in-place?  Take a look at this document from the “Redefining Readiness” work group, authored by some very well-spoken people from the New York Academy of Medicine.  Having any procedure is better than none, I suppose, but the questions raised by this document are as good as “lessons learned” before the event happens!  Back to the drawing board we go!

Emergency Management/Business Continuity Resource

The DISASTER RESOURCE GUIDE is a comprehensive site providing links to all sorts of resources for emergency preparedness, mitigation, and business continuity planning. Within the Articles menu, you will find a Nuggets link yielding useful, digestible pieces of information.

“Serving Through Disaster”

Check out the March 15, 2007 issue of Library Journal for the article, “Serving Through Disaster.“  It makes an excellent case for the importance of service continuity planning as a key part of any disaster plan.  For many Health Sciences libraries, it might be the most important part, as we rely more on timely access to electronic resources than we do on saving books and print journals in an emergency.   My favorite quote is by Anne Candreva, CIO of the Brooklyn Public Library, “The question of how quickly we can get back on our feet has turned into how can we make sure to stay there in the first place.”

Upcoming Disaster Preparedness Class in North Carolina

Robert James, a member of the NN/LM SE/A Disaster Planning Task Force, has put together a one-day class on disaster preparedness. The class, sponsored by the Association of North Carolina Health Sciences Libraries, is intended for medical librarians, archivists, curators, facility managers, disaster team members, and others responsible for disaster planning, mitigation, preparedness and recovery for health sciences libraries are encouraged to attend.

Attendees will receive training in:

• writing a library disaster plan
• emergency preparedness
• techniques for salvaging water damaged material
• continuity of library services
• regional library disaster assistance

Speakers include:

Robert James, Associate Director of Access Services
Duke University Medical Center Library
Writing a library disaster plan and emergency preparedness

Walter Cybulski, Preservation Librarian
National Library of Medicine
Salvaging water damaged library collections

Angie Santiago, President
Contingency Planning Association of the Carolinas
Service continuity planning for medical libraries

Dan Wilson, Assistant Director for Collection Management & Access Services
University of Virginia, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
Southeastern/Atlantic regional medical library disaster assistance

Date: Friday, June 15, 2007
Location: Raleigh, North Carolina

Click here for further information..

Preparing for Pandemic and Natural Disasters Webcast

The VHA Foundation has made available a nice webcast on disaster planning, which was presented in November 2006. It’s free to view, however, you do need to register and use Internet Explorer as your browser.