Registrations are now being taken for the upcoming NN/LM Hurricane Summit on Wednesday, February 8th, in Miami, Florida (click on the registration link below).  Seating is limited, so if you are in the Miami/Dade area and would like to attend, please register soon.  The event will be well documented and tweets will be displayed during the summit in the NEPRTimes section of the Toolkit.  A full report of the summit will be made available on the Toolkit in late February or early March.

When:              Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Where:            Louis Calder Memorial Library, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Purpose:        To provide a forum to discuss best practices and to develop new strategies for how libraries can prepare and respond to          natural disasters.

Moderator:     Dan Wilson, Coordinator, National Network of Libraries of Medicine Emergency Preparedness & Response Initiative

Registration:   http://nnlm.gov/sea/training/register.html 

Featured speakers:

Dr. Raymond Santiago, Library Director of the Miami-Dade Public Library System.  As Director, Dr. Santiago is responsible for a County department with over 600 employees, and 49 facilities serving over 2.5 million residents with a budget in excess of $50 million.  In recognition of his accomplishments, the Library Journal named Dr. Santiago the 2003 Librarian of the Year. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Public Library Association’s Charlie Robinson Award, honoring his efforts as a risk-taker and change agent. In October 2008 the Miami-Dade Public Library System was awarded the National Medal for Library Service from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Mary Moore, Chair of the Department of Health Informatics at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami and Executive Director of the Medical Libraries and Biomedical Communications.  Mary has been Director, Louis Calder Memorial Library, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.  She became involved in community engagement 25 years ago when she was asked to provide  curriculum development and program evaluation for a major DHHS grant that brought telemedicine services to isolated rural communities on the Texas-Mexico border.  Later she realized the value of library services in disasters. During Hurricane Rita she received a phone call at home from a physician who asked her to look up a treatment protocol.  That began her efforts in library participation in disaster preparedness and recovery.

Michelle Malizia, Associate Director of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, South Central Region (NN/LM SCR) located in Houston.  The NN/LM SCR, under contract with the National Library of Medicine, has a long-standing history of providing assistance to libraries after a disaster. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, they provided funding to libraries throughout Louisiana and Southeast Texas to help them recover after the disaster.  Michelle will report on a 2010 NN/LM SCR conducted assessment project of the needs of Gulf Coast libraries after a hurricane.

MaryEllin Santiago, Library Consultant. Ms. Santiago was Project Manager of the Gulf Coast Libraries Project, (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) that helped rebuild 21 public libraries lost in the storms of 2005.  She is currently working with cities across the United States to build and develop “Engaged Communities” that understand and value the public library as a key community asset.

Dan Wilson, Coordinator, NN/LM Emergency Preparedness & Response Initiative.  Dan oversees the maintenance of the national emergency preparedness and response plan, works with regional medical library liaisons and state coordinators on preparedness and response issues, provides training in service continuity, and facilitates mutual aid agreement with libraries.  He works at the University of Virginia’s Claude Moore Health Sciences Library where he is the Associate Director for Collections & Library Services.

Antonio Gonzalez, Public Health Preparedness Planner, Department of Public Health. Miami Dade County Health Department.

For more information, contact:

Dan Wilson

Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

University of Virginia

danwilson@virginia.edu

(434) 924-0192

Here are the elements that would be in place at a library that exhibits the highest state of readiness.  The list is based on our experience along with information we provide in our training program.  It’s likely that very few libraries, if any, have achieved this state, but it provides a bar for all of us to aim for.  As we move into the new year, we will be searching for and highlighting any library that has achieved this esteemed status.Comprehensive Disaster Plan updated at least once a year

We now have a virtual 10-Step program!  The program, under 16 minutes, is broken down into an introduction and 10 individual steps, so it can be worked on as time permits.  In between some of the steps are assignments that, when completed, will greatly improve the readiness capabilities of your library.  Please feel free to offer your comments or suggestions.

Click on this URL and then look below the photographs: http://nnlm.gov/ep/10-stepsservice-continuity/.

For a taste of the program, here is the Introduction:

Last year at this time a blizzard had just dumped up to 30″ of snow in parts of New England.  Here’s a time-lapse video of the snow accumulating on someone’s back deck.

It’s been nearly three years now since the Cologne Archives building collapsed on March 3, 2009.  Below is a firsthand account of the collapse from Bettina Schmidt-Czaia, director of the municipal depository, who was in the building at the time.  The article is from The Guardian Weekly.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/27/germany-cologne

Here’s NOAA’s time-lapse video of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season. Although an active season, only two storms, Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, had a direct impact on the mainland United States, causing flooding in the Mid-Atlantic and New England. Puerto Rico was spared Lee, but was impacted by Irene and Tropical Storm Emily.

Here are some of the disaster information outlets offered by DIMRC:

The National Library of Medicine(NLM) Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC) provides tools & resources around disaster medicine & public health. For daily news bytes, follow DIMRC on twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/NLM_DIMRC. If you are looking for a more in-depth review of items, subscribe to the DISASTR-OUTREACH-LIB listserv http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/dimrc/dimrclistserv.html

You can find a listing of NLM social media tools on the “Follow, Fan and Connect with NLM” page http://www.nlm.nih.gov/socialmedia/index.html