Following a recent air‐conditioning failure at Voyager Museum that poured a flood of water from the ceiling over several bays of boxed archives, it became apparent that our disaster preparedness was not as robust as it should have been.
If we had not had access to a large meeting venue on site we could not have coped with the drying processes needed for the several thousand pages of documents and hundreds of microfiche that needed to be dried out. It could have been much worse, as in the next shelving bay were museum objects.
There has been very little published in the twenty‐first century that includes the museum component of emergency planning incorporated with libraries, records and archives. Today exhibition techniques include use of multimedia equipment, inter‐actives and computers in libraries and museum galleries, which can create a higher risk of electrical hazards than was the case in the twentieth century, for example.
Information and records are more likely to be stored digitally on CDs, DVDs, portable hard‐drives and memory sticks, while museum and library catalogues are on computer servers often on the same site. How vulnerable are they to a natural disaster?
Since our museum flood I had been looking for information on disaster preparedness planning for not only museum libraries, but incorporating the museum objects and collections as well.
Emma Dadson has brought together everything that you need to know about preparing for a disaster in your library, archive or museum.
From tables of preventative measures which can be easily adapted to suit your particular institution; to a series of case studies with a list of “Key lessons learnt” this is literally the “one stop shop” that you need for your institution.
There are lists of the types of equipment you need to have on hand for any emergency, tables of the time it takes to deal with specific items – e.g. crating up books to be taken offsite, sample documentation sheets, air drying techniques for all types of collection objects and preparing for unusual incidents, for example vandalism, bomb threat or loss of power over a long period of time.
Case studies from recent major natural disasters including the Canterbury earthquake in New Zealand and the Japan tsunami and earthquake give the reader some idea how long it may take for recovery after a large event. With major natural disasters and no power do you have alternative access to information stored on your computer servers?
Dadson has incorporated her years of expertise in emergency recovery and response into a work that is so compact.
There is a bibliography and excellent index, which in itself is a list of bullet points that need to be considered in emergency planning.
In writing up your plans, Dadson urges that you plan for both small and large events so that all eventualities are covered. A word of warning: this book should not just sit on your library shelf, it should be well thumbed, discussed with your colleagues and the techniques implemented. I wish this book had been available when we had our flood.
Are you and your institution prepared enough?
