Have you noticed an increased number of announcements or other activity from NN/LM surrounding Emergency Preparedness?  I hope so!  We have been working hard to keep Emergency Preparedness on the minds of our Network Members, since this is part of a national initiative across the eight NN/LM regions.   We have 5 State Coordinators for Emergency Preparedness who, along with Gail Kouame, are promoting the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness plan and related training opportunities around the region.

The focus of the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness plan is on service continuity for libraries - in other words, planning for how you would keep providing essential services in the event of a disruption due to some kind of event.  The NN/LM plan consists of a 10-Step Approach to Service Continuity.  There is a template you can download and fill out linked from our regional Emergency Preparedness page - http://nnlm.gov/pnr/services/emergency_preparedness.html

Here in the Pacific Northwest we have taken a unique approach to this topic.  We have started offering a series of webcasts highlighting each of the 10 Steps.  Webcasts regarding Steps One (Assess Risks) and Two (Protect Yourself, Your Staff, and Your Patrons) were offered in June and July.  Links to the archived recordings are now available and also linked from the regional Emergency Preparedness page.  The dates for the upcoming webcasts are also listed there.  The next one is scheduled for Tuesday, August 11th at 1pm and will highlight Step 3: Determine Your Core Services.

Many of you may have received some promotional materials in the mail that have been going out following the webcasts.  There will be a series of ten postcards going out, also highlighting each of the 10 Steps.  Here’s a sample of one of the postcards:

The goal of the intiative is that our Network Member libraries will have some kind of disaster/emergency plan in place by the end of the 10-month series of webcasts.  After each webcast, take time to look at the corresponding slot in the “10 Steps” template and fill in the information.  The template is not overwhelming and will serve as a helpful one-sheet resource to have on hand when (not if) an event occurs.  For more resources, you can also refer to the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness Toolkit - http://nnlm.gov/ep/

Finally, an article was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Hospital Librarianship titled “Take Ten: A Ten-Step Approach to Emergency Preparedness and Service Continuity.”  The article gives background about the Emergency Preparedness intiative and the focus on the Ten Steps.  The Regional Medical Library has permission to distribute copies of this article on request.  Email nnlm [at] u.washington.edu to request a copy.

If you have any questions about Emergency Preparedness for your library, don’t hesitate to contact us at 1-800-338-7657 (1-800-
DEV-ROKS).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 3:44 pm by Gail Kouame, and is filed under Emergency Preparedness, Member Services, Network Members, News From the RML. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.