University Libraries (UL) personnel safely evacuated the entire facility within minutes. Three stations of the Albuquerque Fire Department, UNM Campus Police, and other key response personnel were immediately dispatched to the library. Key members of the University Libraries Disaster Recovery Assistance Team (D.R.A.T.) were also immediately called. The Associate Dean, Fran Wilkinson, and the Facilities Manager, Ed Padilla, were onsite within an hour after the fire started and provided critical information to the Fire Marshal, Campus Police, UNM’s Physical Plant and Safety and Risk Services. These two DRAT members remained on site the entire night monitoring the situation, reviewing pertinent parts of the UL’s disaster preparedness plan, and preparing an outline of the actions needed in the coming days and weeks. The Associate Dean notified members of Libraries’ D.R.A.T. and activated the phone tree to notify other essential personnel. The first D.R.A.T. meeting was called for 8:00 a.m. the next morning.

The D.R.A.T. meeting resulted in immediate plans to redeploy the 100 plus employees who normally work in Zimmerman Library including faculty/librarians, support staff, administration, and student employees. A fire recovery command center was established in a branch library (Centennial Science & Engineering Library) and all efforts were coordinated from there. Services to students and faculty were fully coordinated including:

• Reference service stations were set up in the Student Union building and the Student Services building with full electronic access to information services through the use of laptops and cell phones (first day after the fire).
• Notification to students and faculty about the closure of Zimmerman and where to find alternative services was sent through several internal electronic and print methods.
• Information stations/tents at both entrances to Zimmerman Library were staffed to answer questions and direct customers to alternative service sites.
• UL InterLibrary Loan department set up temporary offices and began providing access to books and journals normally located in Zimmerman.
• Online book paging system was set up that gave access to collections not unduly affected by smoke damage with a 24-hour turn around time.

Over the next few weeks, all journals, microforms, and newspapers located in Zimmerman Library were removed by the company hired to manage this aspect of the damage (BMS-CAT). Those collections remain in Ft. Worth, Texas undergoing remediation services (They are expected to be returned during the Fall 2007 semester. The reconstructed basement is scheduled to reopen in early in the Spring 2008 semester.)

Unusual Roles

The role and responsibilities of every UL employee were impacted by the fire in some way whether specifically involved in the recovery or by adding to an employee’s overall volume of work. All provided information about the fire and directed our customers to the alternative services in place. Many stepped in to staff the reference desks around campus. Our IT offices were located in the basement but fortunately, all servers were located off-site in the campus-wide IT facility, so no loss of data or access to online catalogs or websites were experienced. The library IT staff quickly began working to install new desktop and laptop computers for all displaced employees and for the temporary public services information desks. Our accountants processed the first payroll after the fire on time in spite of having to process it manually in a temporary location. Staff and students volunteered for the book paging system. This required them to wear hard hats and masks, working only two hours at a time on the 2^nd and 3^rd floors of the building to avoid excessive exposure to smoke damaged areas. A few key employees were called upon to coordinate the difficult job of sifting through the thousands of bound journals that were not completely burned to determine which were still salvageable - a job that required a hard hat, a respirator, and boots! Facilities staff also assisted with the removal of all journals, microforms, cabinets, shelving, equipment, and furnishings in the basement. All of the employees who normally work in Zimmerman worked in unfamiliar environments as they relocated in one of the other branch libraries, often at make-shift desks and shared computers. The employees who do not work in Zimmerman shifted their work spaces to make room for these redeployed employees - and always with grace and humor. We should add that approximately one-third (about 50 individuals) of all the displaced employees still have still not returned to their normal work environments as the rebuild of their spaces is currently underway. We anticipate their return in late 2007.

An unusual aspect to the recovery was that Zimmerman Library’s alarm system was only partially functional after the fire. The Fire Marshall permitted reoccupation of the building, but only if a manual “fire watch” was deployed until the alarm services were fully operational again. This involved scheduling individuals to patrol all areas of the building during our hours of operation. The fire watch squads were outfitted with hard hats and air horns and were tasked with alerting the building’s occupants at any sign of fire. UL employees were called upon to provide fire watch duty of up to five hours per week. More than three months later, fire watch duties were turned over to a security agency.

The basement area that burned will be fitted with a new compact shelving system thanks to funding provided by the state legislature and UNM’s administration, dramatically increasing needed collection space. Our collection losses also allowed for some creative thinking on the part of faculty in the various departments whose collections were affected. These scholars and researchers will provide input regarding which of the lost bound journals can be replaced electronically and which can be stored remotely, again, saving much needed space.

A fire loss of this magnitude also brings out the best in a library’s established contributors, the community at large, and other library professionals. We experienced an outpouring of help from each of these groups and have established relationships that will continue to grow.

While the Illinois Fire Service Institute Library has not been directly involved in disaster planning, response, or recovery efforts, the IFSI Library directly supports the training, education, and research efforts of the Illinois Fire Service Institute, the state fire academy on the University of Illinois campus. In terms of the scope of training, IFSI held more than 1,300 courses attended by more than 48,000 first responders at 375 locations in 100 counties throughout Illinois between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006. During that same period, the IFSI Library had more than 4,000 reference transactions, many related to the training efforts aimed at the first responders.

By providing information resources to first responders throughout Illinois, librarians at the Illinois Fire Service Institute are part of a chain of individuals (including curriculum developers, instructional support, and instructors) who indirectly contribute to disaster planning, response, and recovery efforts (Adam Groves, IFSI Archivist and Metadata Librarian).

Their research findings demonstrate the vital and integrated roles libraries can play in their organizations and the direct impact on training, research and emergency response with information services to meet users’ changing needs (Lian Ruan).

The IFSI Library has received nine LSTA (Library Service and Technology Act) grant awards in the past ten years to improve its services, collection and technology infrastructure to serve Illinois firefighters and emergency responders. The most recent grant project is entitled “In Memory of Our Heroes: Developing a Digital Image Collection of Illinois Firefighter Line of Duty Deaths (IFLODD)” (http://www.fsi.uiuc.edu/content/library/IFLODD/). It aims to collect, organize, digitize, preserve, and provide access to historical and cultural materials that document the ultimate sacrifice of more than 700 Illinois firefighters over the past 150 years.

It digitizes photographs, newspapers, fire station logbooks, and other resources that detail these tragedies for inclusion in an online database. It provide access to this history memorializes the firefighters to increase awareness of firefighters’ sacrifice

It supplies contemporary firefighters with valuable “lessons learned” from the various deaths to enhance the educational endeavors of firefighters and help prevent future tragedies. It helps build new relationships with historical societies and fire museums

(Lian Ruan). A new library building is under planning to support the library’s further development and further IFSI mission to help Illinois firefighters and emergency responders.

Libraries can be of help in disaster planning by creating pathfinders to related resources, such as the Resource Guide for Public Health Preparedness (http://www.phpreparedness.info/index.php) created by New York Academy of Medicine, or the Bioterrorism Resources pathfinder (http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/lhsu/resources/Bioterrorism.shtml) created by the Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Illinois-Urbana (Diane Richardson, IFSI Reference and User Training Librarian).

Also, librarians can play a role by acquainting themselves with special libraries that have emergency response collections and by familiarizing themselves with the resources these libraries make available to those involved in emergency management. Such collections may not be fully represented at OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) so extra effort is sometimes necessary to locate individual items. Facilitating access by local patrons to these collections through interlibrary loan is important service libraries can perform (Diane Richardson, IFSI Reference and User Training Librarian).

When a disaster happens, libraries can provide computer access and contact information for disaster relief agencies and for local organizations and governmental entities that may be involved in recovery (Diane Richardson, IFSI Reference and User Training Librarian).