Disaster Planning

Disasters come in all shapes and sizes, from natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes to emergencies like fire, leaking roofs, and mold.  An emergency can easily spiral into a disaster if you, and your institution are not prepared to respond.

ALA Disaster Preparedness Resources

dPlan: The Online Disaster-Planning Tool

A free template designed by the Northeast Document Conservation Center to help institutions of all sizes write comprehensive disaster plans.  dPlan can serve the needs of small institutions without in-house preservation staff, and library and museum systems that need to develop separate but related plans for multiple locations.

Salvage at a Glance Chart

Extensive chart listing type of materials, priority for salvage, handling precautions, packing method, and drying method.  Includes not only maps and books, but also parchment and vellum, prints and drawings, paintings, computer media, audio, photographs of all types, transparencies, motion pictures and microfilm.

Disaster Preparedness Plan for Small Public Libraries

Developing a Regional Disaster Plan

International Association of Emerging Managers

Resources on building a disaster resilient community, children in disasters, centers for disease control, help & resource guides.

Web Junction Disaster Planning

IT Disaster Recovery

In the wake of a disaster it can be difficult to know where to begin the technology recovery process.  With so many other pressing concerns how should you prioritize IT recovery?  What steps need to be taken immediately and which can wait?

National Park Service: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

Click on Disaster Recovery & Hurricane Preservation Technical Assistance for information specific to Katrina and Rita and some excellent assessment tools.

Smithsonian Institution

The site offers guidelines that cover many different categories of response specific to hurricanes.  From the experts at the Smithsonian Institution Archives: Disaster Recovery of Personal Property.

Ready America

Community and state resources and information from the US Department of Homeland Security and other state and local governments.

National Network of Libraries of Medicine

Excellent emergency preparedness and response toolkit.

Sample Disaster Plans