Disaster Plan by MayDay 2010 Step 4

Posted by Alix on 22 February, 2010 in Librarians, Preservation, Uncategorized, disaster

LYRASIS Preservation Services will be publishing easy steps that you can take to complete your Disaster Plan. A new step will be presented every 2 weeks. If you follow each step you will have a Disaster Plan by MayDay 2010.

Step 4 Assess Salvage Priorities

In step 3 you were asked to identify essential services; the functions you need to get up and running first to best serve your staff and public. In step 4 we are going to address another priority. What are the salvage priorities of your collection. This includes the vital records of your agency and well as the jewels in your stacks.

Let’s talk about your vital records first. What records are necessary to support the functions you identified in step 3? What records are not backed up off site? These records should be on the top of your salvage priority list. This could include personnel records, shelf lists, accession records, and insurance documents. These are just examples; every agency will have its own. I would encourage you to find ways to back up these vital records. Perhaps you could make some sort of reciprocal agreement with an agency in another city or state. That way you can concentrate on recovering your collection.

What collections are integral to your mission? What collections are unique to you institution? What collections are the most fragile? Think not only of those individual items, but think in terms of whole collection areas. Do you have unique local history materials? Do you have runs of historic journals that are not easily replaced? Again, these are examples; every institution will have there own priorities. For many of us there are no research collections or rare items in our holdings, just materials that we would like to keep in an accessible state for our patrons. What then is the most fragile?

As you identify those records, items and collections – take note of their location. If you have just a few hours notice, can you quickly get those key collections out of the harms way? Or if you have limited access to an area of your institution, can you identify for others the things that you would like them to retrieve?

This is again time to refer to the policies of your organization; this includes your mission statement, collection development policies and any joint collection agreements you may have with other agencies. Also talk with your colleagues; they may identify items and collections that you hadn’t considered.

Why am I asking you to identify collection and records priorities? Here are three scenarios that may explain why. Think of what you would need to do if you knew that the near by river was likely to flood overnight. You have been told that evacuations begin in 3 hours. Is there any thing that you can do to reduce the possible damage to your collection? Perhaps move those vital records from their basement storage area. If you have identified the priority materials in advance – you know what you can do after you have seen to the needs of your visitors and staff.

Another scenario is that you get the call that your building now has a hole in it because a storm blew a tree through the windows and now water is pouring in. The first responders are willing to help you deal with collections near the hole, but they have limited time as they may be called to another emergency site do to the storm. Can you quickly identify the collections that would be best served by quick removal?

The last scenario: there has been a fire in your institution. Three quarters of your collection has smoke, heat and water damage. Are there collections of greater significance to your institution than others? What would you deal with first?

We are not trying to frighten you with the bad things that can happen to your collections. The purpose of this step is to identify those parts of your collections and vital records that would be the best served by your limited recovery dollars.

This step may take longer than the two weeks we are suggesting, but start today and be on your way to a Disaster Plan by MayDay 2010.

Step 5 will be presented March 8, 2010.

LYRASIS Preservation Services are funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Preservation and Access.