By Amy Knehans
Pharmacy/Health Sciences Librarian
Edwin H. Mookini Library
University of Hawai’i at Hilo
knehans@hawaii.edu

I moved to Hilo, Hawaii, in 2005. Hilo is located on the east side (windward) of Hawaii Island, also known as the “Big Island“. The town overlooks Hilo Bay and is surrounded by two volcanoes, Mauna Loa, considered active, and Mauna Kea, dormant. Disasters are not unknown in this area. (more…)

Since the beginning of the year, new resources have been developed, training has been conducted, and planning has taken place to enhance emergency preparedness and response in the region. These have resulted in new features for the Emergency Preparedness and Response Toolkit (http://nnlm.gov/ep/), a session conducted at the meeting of the Hawaii-Pacific Chapter of the Medical Library Association (HPCMLA), and planning for a summit for hospital librarians in April. (more…)

An emergency can be as wide-scale as an earthquake or flash flood or as local as a burst pipe in the book stacks. Do you know how to ensure the continuation of your primary services and access to your primary resources in the event of an emergency at your library? (more…)

In addition to its work on emergency preparedness and response with the NN/LM program, the National Library of Medicine has embarked on the following initiatives: (more…)

Submitted by Alice E. Hadley, Librarian
U.S. Naval Hospital, Guam
Condensed and edited for publication in Latitudes

On the tiny island of Yap in the far western Pacific, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, working together with Guam’s Ayuda Foundation, funded a project to establish the new Yap State Hospital Medical Library to replace the one destroyed in Typhoon Sudal in 2004. (more…)

The purpose of the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan is to help mitigate the impact of disasters on healthcare providers and their patients by helping Network member libraries maintain their information services in the event of a disaster. We can only know to what degree the Plan will have been successfully implemented in the Network by assessing the current level of and barriers to preparedness. Also, by identifying what kind of NN/LM support might be helpful, we can then provide that support to increase a library’s preparedness and ability to respond to emergencies. (more…)

It will be two years next month that Arizona was struck by storms and flooding severe enough for the President to declare a major disaster. As June comes to a close, firefighters continue to battle hundreds of wildfires throughout California, the result of lightning storms and dry conditions throughout the state. A little over a year ago, Hawaii experience severe storms, high surf, flooding, and mudslides in Hawaii, Kauai, and Maui counties. This past February, northeastern Nevada experienced a magnitude 6.0 earthquake that was felt across much of the West, from northern Idaho and Utah to Southern California. And the Pacific Basin is regularly affected by almost every hazard you can imagine!

So what can WE do?

On June 20, 2008, regional Network office staff and Medical Library Association chapter representatives Irene Lovas and Peggy Tahir met with Dan Wilson and Susan Yowell to facilitate the regional adoption of the National Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan, an important step in helping libraries respond to emergency situations like those described above. (more…)