According to Heritage Preservation, the National Institute for Conservation 80% of U.S. collecting institutions do not have an emergency plan that includes collections, with staff trained to carry it out. The LiveJournal libraries community has an interesting thread about how to deal with emergencies at the library in the wake of the tornados that went through Kansas this weekend. Read one librarian’s story and the follow up discussion about other library’s disaster plans. Remember Greg Schwartz’s first day as supervisor when the tornado warnings hit. We’ve been learning a lot about how libraries deal with flooding in light of Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 and other recent catastrophes, but many of us may not know what our disaster plan is, or where it is kept. Today’s list of links is on disaster planning.
- Conservation OnLine’s list of disaster plans for libraries
- Mary Finley’s Disaster Planning for Libraries bibliography
- Writing the Disaster Response Plan: Going Beyond Shouting “Help! Help!” by Stephen Henson
- SLAs Disaster Planning Portal
- The Public Library as a Community Crisis Center by Barbara Will
- Digital Libraries – Coping with Disasters by Roy Tenant
As an Oklahoman, tornados are a BIG part of our disaster planning. However, they can and do occur in all 50 states at any time of the year (and all over the world as well). Please have a plan, and please take it seriously! All of these sites are good. I also found a sample disaster plan at http://www.mssu.edu/spivalib/HIDisasterPlan.shtml that seems to cover the basics, if you need a template for your institution’s plan.