We met last week (June 22) with NN/LM staff from the Pacific Southwest Region (PSR) in the Louise Darling Biomedical Library at UCLA, along with representatives from the states in their region (see the photo of state representatives in the gallery here on the site).  Attending for the states were:  Amy Knehans from Hawaii, Cinda McClain from Arizona, Triza Crittle from Nevada, and Chapter liaisons Peggy Tahir and Irene Lovas from California.   After an overview of progress of the national plan and reports from the state representatives and NN/LM staff, we presented the recently developed curriculum for use by NN/LM staff in training members in the “10-Step Approach to Service Continuity,” which now includes a new risk assessment exercise and score sheet handout (thanks to the South Central Region for the encouragement to develop this idea!).

Judy Consales, Director, and Julie Kwan, Network Coordinator of the PSR taught a class called “Are You Ready?” in Hawaii, presenting both face-to-face and using AccessGrid, which was quite successful.  In addition to outreach efforts, Heidi Sandstrom, Associate Director, noted that their library has also continued to develop emergency preparedness plans, having recently enhanced signage and room numbers/designations to help with evacuations and troubleshooting in their building.  Jake Nadal, of the UCLA Library’s Preservation Department, spoke to the group about UCLA’s efforts to provide continuous access to digital resources as well as how to plan for preservation of print materials and other library resources.  The day closed with a discussion of goals for the region during the coming year, as well as some questions and ideas to be addressed, as outlined by Heidi.

Once again, we were energized by the excellent collaborative spirit of the NN/LM staff and the state representatives from the PSR, and benefitted from hearing about their successes as well as ideas for improvement of the plan and the resources offered (e.g. the Toolkit and the training materials).  The PSR training meeting was our last NN/LM staff meeting for this contract year, and we can say without reservation that NN/LM Directors, Associate Directors, all NN/LM staff, and the state representatives have been unfailingly enthusiastic, hospitable, creative, and committed to including emergency preparedness in their outreach to NN/LM members.

There are three new brochures available for use in promoting the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness & Response Plan.  There is one that presents an overview of the plan, one that features the Toolkit, and one about the “10-Step Approach to Service Continuity Planning” class.  Check out the new page, “Promotional Materials” here on the Toolkit (see above) for the PDFs of the brochures, and contact your NN/LM office for more information or to arrange a class.

Many thanks to Kathy Murray, who is the Alaska State Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for the Pacific Northwest Region of NN/LM, for sending us a report about a recent incident in her library.  Check out our “Reporting Forms” page to see her report and learn about what happened (did you know there may be glycol in the HVAC lines in your building?) and how they kept their core services up and running despite the damage from the leak.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has provided those of us in the southeastern to northeastern U. S. with an excellent risk assessment tool for hurricanes.  See their “Historical Hurricane Tracks” page/search engine at http://csc-s-maps-q.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/viewer.html; to query their data (from 1878 in the case of Virginia) and see a map showing where major storms have passed through your area.  You can query by several means, including zip code, which produces a very specific and detailed map of the location along with dates and degree of severity of the storms, as well as their names of the ones who were given them.

Now that the dust has settled from the flurry of spring activities for the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness & Response Plan team, here is a brief summary of the Hospital Librarians Summit that was held in Chicago on April 21 with excellent results.  Fourteen hospital librarians from across the country, half sponsored by the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness & Response Plan and half by the eight Regions of NN/LM,  attended the day-long meeting at the Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Illinois/Chicago.  The meeting was hosted by the Greater Midwest Region of the NN/LM, with arrangements provided by Ruth Holst, Associate Director.  Each of the eight NN/LM Regions was represented, most by two hospital librarians and an emergency preparedness liaison from the NN/LM staff in each region.  Participants received an overview of NN/LM’s Emergency Preparedness Plan, and the resources that exist for assisting librarians to develop and implement emergency preparedness plans, then heard presentations about the activities of NLM’s Disaster Information Research Center (DIMRC).  In the afternoon, David Esterquest, Emergency Preparedness Coordinator, Ruth University Medical Center, spoke to the group about hospital emergency preparedness, how roles are established and how communication functions, as well as how hospital librarians can assist and develop roles with their hospitals for emergency preparedness.

As a result of break-out sessions that were part of the meeting, here are highlights of discussions about the roles hospital librarians can play in emergency preparedness and response:

•         offer library space (e.g. community crisis center, communications center, day care)

•         work in evacuation shelters, bringing books and needed reference materials

•         aid other institutions in disaster area to help salvage damaged collections

•         collection managers of disaster-related resources

•         information facilitators to public and health care professionals/communicate with public library

•         internal planners with hospital administration (let managers know what librarians can do in a disaster)

•         government partners (e.g. internet access to fill out FEMA forms)

•         bibliographic searches to public and health care professionals

•         host sessions on emergency preparedness—invite speakers and bring in experts

•         assist with grant writing

Yesterday, Tuesday, May 5, we convened a meeting at our library to review our pandemic plans and conduct a brief table-top exercise.  The meeting produced some excellent observations and insights, both for successes and things we need to work out.  The first half of the meeting was a review of our procedures, based the table (see below in the “Planning for Service Continuity During a Pandemic” post) from our library’s emergency preparedness plan.  All the “key players” attended, including:  the library’s emergency response coordinator, the library Director, IT manager, web development manager, business manager, head of reference services, collection development manager, database coordinator, ILL supervisor, and Circulation supervisor.  All these positions played roles in the planning and in the response exercise.  The scenario we used for the table-top exercise:  it is 3 PM on a Sunday afternoon, when the University decides to close all the libraries on campus to enact social-distancing measures.  The closure is intended to prevent the spread of influenza resulting from a pandemic.  What is done immediately?  What is done Monday morning?  Before beginning the discussion of procedures for this scenario, participants drew slips of paper from a bowl, which designated them as “sick” or “well.”  One-third of the participants were designated “sick,” and therefore did not play a role in the exercise.  This pointed out the need for back-up in certain key positions.

Some questions arose that might be helpful to others in the planning process, among them:

• can you change the voice mail message on your library’s main phone from your home?  who has the authority and the access needed to do this?  who is the backup for that person?
• who has current staff home phone number information?  is someone responsible for keeping the list upddated, and for distributing it?  should lists be given to everyone, or to select people?
• do the appropriate library staff have access to the “Ask a Librarian” chat function from home?
• do you need an official “voice” for providing information about the status of the library?  if so, will that person have access to communication channels, such as announcements on your web site?
• can the person responsible for ILL/Document Delivery access resources needed to provide ILL requests to your patrons from home, i.e. is the required software installed on the home computer/laptop?
• is there a provision for emergency access to print materials for affiliated patrons in the event of a patient-care emergency while the library is closed?
• is there an institutional need for designating a way to account for time worked at home by library staff?  

Besides refining our procedures and identifying a few areas to be improved, everyone agreed that the meeting/exercise was an excellent way to keep emergency preparedness, and pandemic planning particularly, in our corporate awareness.

The U.S. Geological Survey has made available a wealth of information about earthquakes, among them the “Today in Earthquake History” page .  A look at the page for May 4 shows several significant earthquakes around the world, two of which were in Alaska in 1923 and 1934.  By looking at the “Earthquake Reports” section in the left menu bar here on the Toolkit, you will note that Alaska is experiencing tremors again today.  The USGS has also provided an excellent Preparedness and Response page, all important information, particularly for everyone who lives on the west coast of North America, Alaska and Hawaii.

This would be a good time to review your pandemic planning procedures and perform a table-top drill.  For instance, are you ready to continue access to your resources and core services if your library is closed for, say, one week?  Click on the link below to view  a table from the University of Virginia’s Health Sciences Library’s Emergency Preparedness & Response Plan detailing the assignment of responsibilities in the event of a pandemic.  Feel free to borrow.

Pandemic Planning Responsibilities

Also, if you would like more information on the interlibrary loan backup plan developed by the University of Virginia Health Sciences Library and the Health Sciences Library at the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill, please see the article in the April 2009 issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association.

At last week’s Hospital Librarians Summit, it was suggested that we link to a site that would show reports of weather-related events.  As a result, we now have a link to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center’s report of the previous day’s storms.  The link (Yesterday’s Storm Reports) is located on the right column of the Toolkit under the category Alerts and Reports.

The Disaster Information Research Center (DIMRC) of the National Library of Medicine’s Specialized Information Services division has produced a comprehensive web resource for health professionals including the Federal Response, International Resources, Genetic Sequence Information, PubMed Searches, Veterinary Resources and Información en Español:  “Enviro-Health Links–Swine Flu”