While we are anticipating the “end” of hurricane season, it’s a good time to take stock of our current situations–are our plans up-to-date?  Is it time to start putting a plan together for your library?  Do we need to squirrel away some extra supplies, like plastic sheeting or flashlight batteries?  We’re fortunate to have so many excellent resources available to help us in our emergency preparedness efforts, and here’s a reminder of two rich sources for guidance and some checklists to keep us on target:

SOLINET:  their site has been re-designed.  Go to the Resources section, the Preservation tab, then check out the Disaster Resources page, linked in the left side menu bar.  Very comprehensive information; I recommend a “shopping” approach if you don’t need the whole store.  Some interesting classes coming up, too…I’m taking the one on Risk Management in November.

NEDCC:  here’s the link to their page listing all the Preservation leaflets that are available from the site…scroll down on the page to Emergency Management to find their process for disaster planning as well as a “fill-in-the-blank” disaster plan.

Happy shopping!

While most of us wouldn’t consider our libraries to be businesses in the traditional sense, we do have some similar features and some shared needs, especially when it comes to planning for business/service continuity.  The Homeland Security website has an excellent “Plan to Stay in Business” list for businesses, and if you click on the Continuity Planning link from that page, you will find a more detailed list of activities to help you prepare for an unplanned service disruption.  Also available from the Continuity Planning page is their Sample Emergency Plan.  It is available in PDF format, which you can quickly fill out right there and then print.  Network members will have to do some adapting to make it fit their needs, but it is certainly a great way to help us think through what we need to do.  Everyone who has been in any of the training sessions already for the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness & Response Plan will recognize most of what is presented on the Ready.gov site, so the site is helpful as a review, also. 

The Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) has released a new edition of its preparedness toolkit which includes some excellent guidelines for creating a “continuity of operations” (COOP) plan in the event of a pandemic or epidemic. The site has links to directions for creating a manual, and worksheets to walk you through the planning process for service continuity. Take a look for some thought-provoking information for us to consider about keeping our essential services up and running if staff are out with the flu. Thanks, VDEM!

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!

I subscribe to the emailed newsletter from the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, and the one from this past week contained some very interesting information for those of us involved in emergency preparedness particularly in public spaces and hospital settings.  Two headlines grabbed my attention right away; one being the the results of a poll taken of people living on the southeast US coast with regard to hurricane preparedness, the other being a post about the OSHA guidelines for pandemic flu preparedness, which seems to have been updated since we reported on it earlier.  However, the other posts are also timely, so check it out!

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.”

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.”

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. 

The above quote is from this article, which provides some very helpful suggestions for maintaining services after a disaster, taken from a business model, but they can also be applied to a library setting.

The above quote is from this article, which provides some very helpful suggestions for maintaining services after a disaster, taken from a business model, but they can also be applied to a library setting.