Successful Strategies for Emergency Planning…

Here’s an outline of what we talked about at the THeSLA meeting with regard to creating disaster plans for our organizations. Rather than focus on creating a comprehensive plan, which is the result of following the “Susan’s suggestions” thread here in the blog, I thought it might be more helpful to become aware of some alternatives that are already available to us and will not require the time commitment involved in creating a plan “from scratch.” So the “20 Tips” topic evolved into “Successful Strategies for Emergency Response Planning.”

1. Consider the scope of planning you will need for collections, your facility, people in your building, and for continuing your services.

2. Assess risks that exist in your area (natural, environmental, human-caused, facility).

3. Prioritize your collection for salvage: determine what is irreplaceable or core to your collection, and what is essential to your patrons. Order supplies for dealing with a “water incident,” particularly (see salvage companies/vendors links here on the blog). See the NEDCC’s Preservation Leaflets for instructions!

4. Identify your essential services and make plans to continue them during an emergency, both on-site and from a remote location. Develop partnerships with other libraries and remember the RML’s emergency number: 1-800-DEV-ROKS!

5. Some templates and/or guides to creating your plan:

• dPlan: maintained by NEDCC, provides templates for creating your plan, walks you through step-by-step, offers links to more information about risk factors, saves your input so you can work in small increments of time, creates a nice PDF document for you when you’re done.
• PReP: COSA’s Pocket Response Plan can be easily customized for libraries. It is available as a Word document or in PDF format at their site.
• SOLINET’s disaster planning guide: offers a template, lists of resources for salvage companies and supplies, etc.
• in planning for safety of people, consult existing sources for appropriate procedures…your institution’s critical incident management site (the one for UVa), a university’s emergency response information, FEMA, Homeland Security, your state’s Emergency Management web site.

6. Plan to update your plan regularly, at least once a year. Re-assess your risk situation and make sure all contact information is up to date.

7. Stay in touch! Check the blog (this one!) frequently for updates, be aware of local circumstances that may have an effect on your planning. Bookmark the NN/LM RML’s Emergency Preparedness web site and keep up with their planning. If you have questions, or would like to make suggestions, please send me an email: ssy2n@virginia.edu. Good luck!

Dan’s presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/dtw2t/t-he-sla-presentation1107

ANCHASL meeting in Raleigh: Disaster Preparedness and Response for Medical Libraries

Dan and I attended the ANCHASL (Association of North Carolina Health and Science Libraries) meeting in Raleigh on Friday, June 15 (click here to see the program).  The meeting was held in the beautiful Andrews Conference Center at the Wake Area Health Education Center.  Robert James (Duke University) is the president of ANCHASL this year, and had organized the meeting, which was well attended by both academic and hospital librarians.  In addition to the North Carolina members, a hospital librarian from Lowell, Massachusetts attended, as well as Beth Wescott from NN/LM.  The program for the day included a short business meeting for the organization, but otherwise focused on raising awareness about disaster preparedness and educating attendees about writing disaster plans, developing contingency plans for maintaining services, and salvaging collections.  The meeting featured informative and entertaining speakers on several different aspects of disaster preparedness and emergency response.  The information presented engendered some very productive discussion and questions.  Here’s a list of the speakers:

• Mark Schell, Durham County Emergency Management, on working with first responders and emergency managers 
• Robert James, Duke University Medical Center Library, on writing a library disaster plan.  As part of his presentation, Robert outlined use of the Heritage Preservation’s Disaster Wheel, and distributed copies of the wheel to all participants.  He also referred to the Field Guide published last summer by Heritage Preservation.
• Walter Cybulski, NLM, on salvaging water damaged collections
• Angie Santiago, of the  Contingency Planning Association of the Carolinas, on service continuity planning for medical libraries
• Dan Wilson, chair for the SE/A RML Emergency Preparedness Task Force, on how the RML can provide support to health sciences libraries in emergency

Getty Conservation Institute Workbook

The Getty Conservation Institute wrote a workbook called “Building an Emergency Plan:  A Guide for Museums and Other Cultural Institutions,” in 1999.  The publication is now out of print, but a free PDF version is available from their website.  It is very well organized and thoughtfully written.  Check out page 2 of the Introduction for an impressive table of disasters that have occurred to cultural institutions around the world in the past 20 years. 

Susan’s Suggestions for Pain-Free Disaster Planning

Suggestion #3: Start a shopping list for Disaster Supplies: as you write procedures, start a list of supplies or special items you will need for emergency response situations. Your library will own much of what you need already (plastic sheeting, duct tape, paper towels), but you will most likely need to order or buy other items. Our Comprehensive Disaster Plan includes two supply lists: the main list shows where emergency response items are stored, and how many are in our inventory. We set aside a space in a storage room on the main floor of the library for designated emergency supplies, and labeled them so that they wouldn’t be used for non-emergency purposes. In researching “disaster supplies,” we found that several companies offer packages of emergency supplies especially for libraries. We ordered several of these and stored one with our other emergency supplies on each floor of the library.

The second list contains “Shelter-In-Place” (SIP) supplies. These are stored in the area we have designated as our SIP site. This list is much shorter and very basic, but also very important. It includes a radio that is powered by a hand-crank mechanism rather than requiring batteries, and also has a flashlight. There is a self-charging flashlight plugged into one of the outlets in the room, and also a telephone. The supplies also includes a first aid kit, duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal off the room, and list of emergency contacts within our institution. For the details, please see our Comprehensive Disaster Plan.

Susan’s Suggestions for Pain-Free Disaster Planning

Suggestion #3: Start a shopping list for Disaster Supplies: as you write procedures, start a list of supplies or special items you will need for emergency response situations. Your library will own much of what you need already (plastic sheeting, duct tape, paper towels), but you will most likely need to order or buy other items. Our Comprehensive Disaster Plan includes two supply lists: the main list shows where emergency response items are stored, and how many are in our inventory. We set aside a space in a storage room on the main floor of the library for designated emergency supplies, and labeled them so that they wouldn’t be used for non-emergency purposes. In researching “disaster supplies,” we found that several companies offer packages of emergency supplies especially for libraries. We ordered several of these and stored one with our other emergency supplies on each floor of the library.

The second list contains “Shelter-In-Place” (SIP) supplies. These are stored in the area we have designated as our SIP site. This list is much shorter and very basic, but also very important. It includes a radio that is powered by a hand-crank mechanism rather than requiring batteries, and also has a flashlight. There is a self-charging flashlight plugged into one of the outlets in the room, and also a telephone. The supplies also includes a first aid kit, duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal off the room, and list of emergency contacts within our institution. For the details, please see our Comprehensive Disaster Plan.

Susan’s Suggestions for Pain-Free Disaster Planning

Suggestion #2: Write procedures/Start to gather information from other departments: You can do both these steps at the same time, which will make putting your plan together easier and faster.

Write procedures: For each emergency event on your list, write a short, basic list of instructions that staff should follow for each emergency. In many cases, your library will already have procedures that you can transcribe. For other events, check the web site for disaster planning/emergency response for your parent institution and adapt any applicable procedures for your particular location and situation. For events not covered by your organization, check the federal and state web sites and adapt procedures for your library. Also look at the established procedures for other health sciences libraries for ideas or existing procedures by checking this blog, or visiting the web sites of the individual libraries. Remember to create a page for Evacuation and for Shelter-In-Place procedures, since these are not events, but they do require procedures.

Start to gather information from other departments: you will need information from all of the library’s departments if you are writing a comprehensive plan. Begin to send requests for information to those who can provide the information, such as:

• Floor plans of your library (you will use these to show locations of alarms and fire extinguishers)
• Communication information: telephone contacts for all library staff, a list of library vendors, emergency contact information for your parent institution
• Essential services procedures from all department heads/supervisors

As you go, continue to request information from others as the need arises. It helps to include a “needed by” date in your message.

This step is really much easier than it sounds! To see how it translates into written form, check out our Comprehensive Disaster Plan. In the PDF that will open, be sure to click on the “Bookmarks” tab to access the quick links to all the parts of the plan.

Susan’s Suggestions for Pain-Free Disaster Planning

Suggestion #2: Write procedures/Start to gather information from other departments: You can do both these steps at the same time, which will make putting your plan together easier and faster.

Write procedures: For each emergency event on your list, write a short, basic list of instructions that staff should follow for each emergency. In many cases, your library will already have procedures that you can transcribe. For other events, check the web site for disaster planning/emergency response for your parent institution and adapt any applicable procedures for your particular location and situation. For events not covered by your organization, check the federal and state web sites and adapt procedures for your library. Also look at the established procedures for other health sciences libraries for ideas or existing procedures by checking this blog, or visiting the web sites of the individual libraries. Remember to create a page for Evacuation and for Shelter-In-Place procedures, since these are not events, but they do require procedures.

Start to gather information from other departments: you will need information from all of the library’s departments if you are writing a comprehensive plan. Begin to send requests for information to those who can provide the information, such as:

• Floor plans of your library (you will use these to show locations of alarms and fire extinguishers)
• Communication information: telephone contacts for all library staff, a list of library vendors, emergency contact information for your parent institution
• Essential services procedures from all department heads/supervisors

As you go, continue to request information from others as the need arises. It helps to include a “needed by” date in your message.

This step is really much easier than it sounds! To see how it translates into written form, check out our Comprehensive Disaster Plan. In the PDF that will open, be sure to click on the “Bookmarks” tab to access the quick links to all the parts of the plan.

Susan’s Suggestions for Pain-Free Disaster Plan Writing

Suggestion #1: Assess risks: Make a list of events for which your library could be at risk. Talk with long-term staff at your library and gather anecdotal information about emergencies or disasters that have happened in the past, and add to the list such emergencies as fire and bio-terrorism that may not have happened but which can happen anytime and anywhere. Check federal, state and local emergency preparedness web sites for more information about potential emergency events (FEMA, Department of Homeland Security, your parent institution).

Mission Statement for our Disaster Plan

The “Mission Statement” in the Introduction to our Comprehensive Disaster Plan provides the rationale for the content as well as the style of our plan. Here’s an excerpt:

Libraries exist today in an environment that has changed substantially within even the past five years, and that continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace. Within health sciences libraries particularly, the emphasis of the content of the collections has shifted to electronic resources and away from printed material, which raises different issues with regard to recovery operations and maintaining access to these resources during a disaster. Of course, the events of September 11, 2001 have added the possibility of terrorist attacks of all types to everyone’s agendas for emergency preparedness and recovery, so we will address some of these potential man-made threats in addition to the customary natural disaster responses.

The result of these changes is that we have attempted to include all emergency/disaster response and recovery information in one place, and to emphasize personal safety first, provision of service to our patrons second, and recovery of the collection and the facility third. This Comprehensive Disaster Plan will be used to prepare and train our own staff to respond effectively to an emergency, to help any patrons in the library at the time of an emergency, to work from home or an alternate location to maintain our essential services if necessary, and to coordinate efforts to salvage our collections and facility.

Writing a Disaster Plan

I’m trying to figure out the different outside resources available to libraries who wish to write a disaster plan. Here are some resources that I know about. Can anyone add to the list?

dPlan

Solinet

California Preservation Program (Added 10/11/06)