The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) has many very helpful resources available to help rescue paper-based collections.  (Their own disaster plan template, dPlan, is featured on their pages.)  What I found especially pertinent, however, were the many preservation leaflets–there’s a “Click to view Preservation Leaflets” link in the left menu bar on every page.  The leaflets deal with every situation imaginable and are well-written and succinct.  NEDCC also offers a 24/7 “hotline” number to call with salvage questions.  I’m adding them to our blog’s list of sources for future reference!

The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) has many very helpful resources available to help rescue paper-based collections.  (Their own disaster plan template, dPlan, is featured on their pages.)  What I found especially pertinent, however, were the many preservation leaflets–there’s a “Click to view Preservation Leaflets” link in the left menu bar on every page.  The leaflets deal with every situation imaginable and are well-written and succinct.  NEDCC also offers a 24/7 “hotline” number to call with salvage questions.  I’m adding them to our blog’s list of sources for future reference!

Drying a wet book is not as simple as we might think! At the ANCHASL meeting last Friday, Walter Cybulski showed a fascinating presentation on how to deal with water-damaged materials. Many of the procedures he outlined are contained in this page from Washington University in St. Louis, which gives detailed directions and contains some very helpful pictures of how to interleave paper towels in a wet book properly and how not to do it.

Disasters don’t always come in the form of earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes.  Recently, several sections of journal stacks at the Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University collapsed, falling sideways and creating a domino effect that spilled bound journals 4 and 5 feet deep through about a dozen ranges of shelving and completely blocking the door to a restroom.  Fortunately, the stacks fell when the library was closed, so no one was injured.  However, the shelving collapse did disrupt service provision for over a week.  The lesson here is to make sure your shelving is properly installed, braced top and bottom, and checked frequently for stability!

Suggestion #9:Create a list, ordered by priority, of the items or collections in your library that should be rescued in the event of a disaster. In the event that you had only a limited amount of time to rescue collections from your library, designate what materials should be retrieved. You might set up a table with the first column naming the collection, the second describing where it is located, and the third column designating the person on your staff who is the contact person for that collection. For instance, in our library, different people are responsible for our rare items, our Reference collection, and our monograph and journal collections. This list would be of help not only to your own staff, but to any emergency personnel who might be on site. This document would most likely be the beginning of your Collection Development section in the Appendix of your plan. Other elements of the Collection section might include whatever list you have determined as your core book collection (Doody’s, other?) and journal collection (the AIMS list, in our case).

Suggestion #9: Create a list, ordered by priority, of the items or collections in your library that should be rescued in the event of a disaster. In the event that you had only a limited amount of time to rescue collections from your library, designate what materials should be retrieved. You might set up a table with the first column naming the collection, the second describing where it is located, and the third column designating the person on your staff who is the contact person for that collection. For instance, in our library, different people are responsible for our rare items, our Reference collection, and our monograph and journal collections. This list would be of help not only to your own staff, but to any emergency personnel who might be on site. This document would most likely be the beginning of your Collection Development section in the Appendix of your plan. Other elements of the Collection section might include whatever list you have determined as your core book collection (Doody’s, other?) and journal collection (the AIMS list, in our case).

Kara McClurken, of Solinet, will be offering a disaster preparedness CE course at this year’s Mid Atlantic/Southern Chapter joint meeting in Atlanta. At the end of this course, Susan and I will be providing a 30-minute session on the “Top 10 Tips for Writing and Maintaining a Disaster Plan.” Other disaster preparedness programming at the conference includes Dr. Joe Bresse, CDC Influenza Branch, speaking on the bird flu and a disaster preparedness poster that Susan and I will be presenting.