Panel: Building Resilience: Disaster Preparedness Training for Special Collections

Abstract

Climate change has greatly increased the force and frequency of weather events. Many special collections and other cultural heritage institutions now find themselves directly threatened on a daily basis by these events through their aging buildings and geographical location, and are experiencing more and more emergency events involving their collections. There are few concrete resources on how to build in-house, institution-specific training programs to prepare for such threats, especially in ways that consistently convince all institutional staff of their crucial necessity.

This panel features four professionals from four different types of institutions, each of whom will discuss their own experiences with building and implementing disaster preparedness training programs and plans for their staff. Institutions include the Smithsonian (a large federal library); James Madison University (a mid-sized university library); the Folger Shakespeare Library (an independent research library); and Howard County Public Libraries (a public library system with historical collections). All four have different experiences with funding, institutional support, and numbers of staff. Panel attendees will be encouraged to think critically about how training might work and be expanded at their home institutions, come away with ideas to reuse or refit current plans, and learn from presenters what worked and what didn't. Speakers will share examples of preparedness elements from their own institutions, including supply stockpiles, different types of plans for different types of collections and operating schedules, a sample timeline of response to an unfolding disaster, and brochures or paper plans.