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Archive for the ‘Toolkit Tips’ Category
Thursday, January 29th, 2009
Many of you are familiar with our “Disaster Plan Templates” page (see the menu bar of pages above), and our toolkit statistics indicate that lots of people are finding and using it. Here are a couple of recent updates to the page:
We created the “10 Steps to Service Continuity” planning template in December, in order to help fill a gap in our representative offerings. We needed a template for a plan that would more closely match NN/LM’s focus on service continuity. It also needed to be attainable in terms of the depth of knowledge and information required, the time required to complete it, and the format for producing it.
We have redirected the link to dPlan, so that it now arrives at the introductory page for dPlan on the NEDCC site. The introduction includes information about access and security of the plan and a great overview, so if you’re thinking of creating a comprehensive plan, check this out.
Posted in Disaster Planning, Toolkit Tips, Writing a Disaster Plan | No Comments »
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
In January of 1994, the Northridge area of California was shaken by a level 6.7 earthquake, which devastated the area, including California State University at Northridge. See Susan Curzon’s story of the destruction of her library at CSU, and how they responded by getting services back up and running in temporary shelters and with limited staffing. (This story and more are available from the “Library Disaster Stories” page here on the toolkit.)
![curzon_susan_photo_5-300x214 Earthquake damage to the rear side of the Oviatt Library. Image from Susan Curzon's story.](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090130220833im_/http://nnlm.gov/webreports/ep/uploads/2009/01/curzon_susan_photo_5-300x214.jpg) Earthquake damage to the rear side of the Oviatt Library. Image from Susan Curzon's story.
Today, in the “Emergency Preparedness News” section in the left column of the toolkit, you can see a story about the earthquake drill that is scheduled for Stanford University in early February. It is interesting to see how well their preparedness planners have used the lessons learned from previous incidents in their area and have planned the drill to deal with issues they know they will face when the next quake occurs.
The toolkit has two additional resources for preparedness and risk assessment related specifically to earthquakes. (1) See the “Earthquakes” RSS feed available in the list of RSS feeds on the left, and (2) under “Risk Assessment Maps and Charts” on the right, see the Earthquake map produced by the USGS showing earthquake probability for all of the U.S. The USGS says that over 75 million people live in earthquake-prone zones in the U.S., which affect 39 states.
Posted in Earthquakes, Emergency Preparedness in the News, Featured Web Site, Lessons Learned, Preparedness, Risk Assessment, Toolkit Tips | No Comments »
Monday, January 19th, 2009
Check out the latest new feature of the Toolkit! Scroll down past the Resources section of the right side menu bar to find a list of links to the maps that Dan has used in his training classes on service continuity. The maps are helpful for risk assessment for all regions–they add a larger picture to the very localized knowledge that most of us have about what has happened or is likely to happen in our areas. The maps in the “Risk Assessment Maps & Charts” section cover incidents of severe weather, earthquakes, wildfires, chemical and nuclear power plans, flood plains, tornadoes, among others.
![floodplainsus floodplainsus](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090130220833im_/http://nnlm.gov/webreports/ep/uploads/2009/01/floodplainsus-150x117.gif)
Posted in Disaster Incidents, Earthquakes, Fire, Hazardous Weather Outlook, Risk Assessment, Toolkit Tips | No Comments »
Friday, January 16th, 2009
Dan has created a tutorial page for the Toolkit (see above)! The first tutorial is one he recorded today, which provides a tour of this site, pointing out the features much as he does when teaching a class about the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness initiative. Just click on the “Tutorials” page above, then click the link to the tutorial. Dan will update the tutorial as events unfold or as seasons change and warrant new current awareness situations or as new resources become available. Let us know what you think!
Posted in Disaster Planning, NN/LM National Emergency Preparedness Plan, Toolkit Tips | No Comments »
Monday, December 1st, 2008
In the interest of helping NN/LM members to put together a concrete plan based on the “10 Steps to Service Continuity” training, I’ve created a template that members can use to draw up a basic plan for their libraries or information centers. It is attached to the “10 Steps to Service Continuity” page here on the toolkit (see the menu bar above) as a Word document. Anyone is welcome to download it and customize it at they see fit. I hope it will serve as a good starting point for us in trying to meet our goal of having plans in place, and that it will be especially helpful to smaller libraries, hospital libraries, or other entities who may not need a comprehensive disaster plan.
The template is designed to focus on service continuity, but it does include space for some personal safety and preservation information. My goal was to keep the template on standard size paper (8 1/2 x 11), so that nothing special would be required for printing. I introduced the template to the Tidewater Health Sciences Librarians group two weeks ago, and in discussing it, we realized that the template would be a good thing to complete, print and post in our work areas, especially in smaller libraries that are minimally staffed, or staffed part-time by volunteers who would profit by having the information close by in an emergency.
The 10 Steps template is an addition to the other ones available here and elsewhere, such as PReP, dPlan, and the customized PReP developed by Julie Page and Deborah Halsted (see the Disaster Plan Templates page, menu above), and isn’t intended to replace any of them. Rather, it is intended to provide another option, given that no two institutions are alike, and needs for emergency planning vary accordingly. One of this year’s initiatives for NN/LM will be to focus on best ways to help hospital libraries, and we hope that the 10 Steps template will be a good start.
Posted in Business Continuity Planning, Disaster Planning, Preparedness, Service Continuity Planning, Toolkit Tips | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
To augment the current awareness facet of the toolkit, Dan has pulled in several RSS topical feeds, linking them here in the left menu bar (scroll down a bit…). Topics include: Emergency Preparedness in the News, News from the NLM’s Division of Specialized Information Services, FEMA News Releases, and Videos.
Posted in Toolkit Tips, Video News Reports | No Comments »
Friday, November 14th, 2008
Those of us who viewed the MLA Fall webcast this week saw Julie Page showing a version of the Pocket Response Plan (PReP) from the Council of State Archivists that she and Deborah Halsted have customized for use by health sciences libraries. Click on the link below to access the form from the toolkit, and the form will also be added to the toolkit page, “Disaster Plan Templates/Samples.”
PReP form for HSLs
Posted in Business Continuity Planning, Disaster Planning, Preparedness, Toolkit Tips | No Comments »
Monday, November 3rd, 2008
I’ve re-titled the Toolkit page that was called “First Aid Kit.” The page is now called “Ready Reference.” While the page can still function as “First Aid” for those of us coordinating emergency responses, it needed a new name in order to keep internet searchers from finding the NN/LM EP & R Toolkit when they wanted to find boxes with band-aids and alcohol swabs in them. I also enhanced the Ready Reference page a bit, adding the full text of the NN/LM EP&R Plan and the flowcharts for preparedness and response, and will be on the lookout for other key items for preparedness and response. In fact, the Ready Reference page is, in essence, a toolkit within the toolkit.
Posted in Core Resources, Toolkit Tips | No Comments »
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
I’ve just completed an update of our library’s Emergency Preparedness & Response Plan. (You can also find the plan, along with other sample plans, on the page above devoted to disaster plan templates and samples.) I think the organization is improved and more intuitive, there is clarification of the shelter-in-place procedures, and I added pictures, so that staff will readily recognize some of the places and features mentioned in the text. Some new sections: procedures for Active Shooter/Violent Incident, and a photo documentation of what our collection areas look like now, since we have just completed a major weeding/shifting project. I hope the new plan will be helpful, and please let me know if you have questions or comments about it.
Posted in Disaster Planning, Toolkit Tips, Writing a Disaster Plan | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
It is good to see (via our statistics page) that visits to this toolkit are increasing weekly, and there are many “clicks” showing on the pages, such as Disaster Plan Templates/Samples and Service Continuity Planning. Today we are adding a category called “Toolkit Tips,” which we’ll use to highlight new or already existing features of the toolkit. We hope this will help everyone keep up with the continuing development of the toolkit, as well as uncover some buried treasure!
Tip #1: Check out the new Google map that links to Library Disaster Stories. It is located in two places in the toolkit: in the left column, just past the photos and the Article Archives, and on the Library Disaster Stories page in the top menu bar. Emily Vardell created the map, linking it to the stories, and worked with Dan to fine-tune its functionality on the toolkit. Click on the “View Larger Map” link (below the image of the map on this page) to see the entire map, along with a list of the stories and links to them. The symbols denote what type of disaster or incident is being described; i.e. hurricane, fire, earthquake, terrorism, flooding, tornado, and public health emergency.
We would like to continue adding to our Lessons Learned/Stories Told, so please let us know if you have a story to tell, and especially what you learned from the incident that might help other people prepare. Contact Dan at danwilson@virginia.edu or Susan at syowell@virginia.edu.
Posted in Disaster Incidents, Lessons Learned, Toolkit Tips | No Comments »
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