Resource of the Week: Disaster Mitigation Planning Assistance
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
A disaster plan for your place of work is something you absolutely must have…but hope you never have to use. Alas, since 9/11 and certainly because of all the natural disasters we’ve faced in the ensuing years, there is no shortage of information out there for whoever gets stuck with…uh, is tasked with the responsibility of preparing a disaster plan. And we found a site we particularly like.
The Disaster Mitigation Planning Assistance Website is a joint project of Michigan State University Libraries, the Center for Great Lakes Culture and the California Preservation Program. It provides a number of resources, but the unique thing here is a Disaster Recovery Resources database you can search to find supplies and services nationally — or in your own state.
The search process leads you through several steps. First you select, via a dropdown menu, a state or multiple states. (Canada and Delhi are also options.) You can ignore the dropdown manual and simply check the box at the bottom of the page if you want to do a national search. When you click “Next Page,” you are taken to a page where you can choose the types of resources you’re looking for — experts, supplies and/or services — via checkboxes. Click “Next Page” again and you’ll see a two dropdown menus. The one at the top, for services and supplies, allows you to specify what types of services and/or supplies you’re looking for — e.g., bags and boxes, air drying, computer data recovery, fumigation, odor removal, etc. (”All” is also an option.) If you’re looking for an expert, use the menu at the bottom to specify the area or areas of expertise — e.g., appraising, furniture restoration, mold, photographs, etc. Then click “Submit.”
Your search results are presented in CSV format, which can be imported into a spreadsheet “for easy updating of your institution’s disaster plan.”
If you’ve never prepared a disaster plan, you may want to look at what others have done. Here you’ll find the excellent, comprehensive Disaster Preparedness Plan put together by the Baltimore Academic Libraries Consortium, as well as a link to list of plans at Stanford University Libraries’ Conservation OnLine resource. (If you should happen to jump from here to the NYU Libraries Preservation and Conservation site, don’t miss the very useful Disaster Plan Workbook.)
The site also includes a short, annotated list of links to WWW Disaster Planning Resources, including the two mentioned above as well as the Library of Congress Preservation Directorate’s Emergency Preparedness site and SOLINET (Southeastern Library Network), whose Preservation Department has put together an awesome collection of Preservation & Access resources. There’s also a vendor database here, with fewer — albeit some different — search options available from a long dropdown menu.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 and is filed under Databases, Directories, and Guides, Fast Facts, Government Documents and Political Information, Resource of the Week, Source File.
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