Technology Disaster Response and Recovery Planning

Citation

Calvert, P. (2017), "Technology Disaster Response and Recovery Planning", The Electronic Library, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 210-211. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2016-0181

Every library needs a technology disaster response plan. That ought to be obvious, yet there are very few that actually have a thoroughly developed and tested plan in place. Disasters can occur in different ways, from natural causes such as floods and fires, through to manmade disasters caused by error or even malicious action. In libraries, disasters will affect the collections, the buildings and the people, though here the focus is on the technology; fragile yet essential. This book in in two parts; the first has five chapters on the need for and the procedures for writing a technology disaster response plan, and the second part has two case studies. This is not precisely a guidebook to technology disaster response planning, but it is a very useful read for anyone who ought to be thinking about how a library can respond to a disaster.

The first chapter sets the scene. It defines the terms used throughout the book and gives the initial steps in technology disaster response and planning recovery. The second chapter covers a point easily missed by explaining how to conduct an inventory of digital resources and then assess the level of risk for each part of the digital collection. Assessing risk is a key part of disaster planning, for no library can afford to protect all its resources at the highest level; some decisions must be made that rate the importance of every resource and thus how much investment is justified in its protection. In the third chapter, the reader is introduced to dPlan, an online template for collection disaster planning. It is still available at the time of writing (www.dplan.org/). The fourth chapter also covers a topic often overlooked, the primary importance of communication before, during and after a disaster has hit. How easy it is to forget that most electronic communication will be severely disrupted during a disaster, and that instead of relying on email (or even Facebook), the library should have multiple channels of communication in place. If the reader looks at no other chapter, this one is essential. The final chapter in Part 1 discusses future trends such as the use of cloud computing. The two case studies are, first, the seven lessons the University of Iowa took from the 2008 flood and, second, how cultural institutions in New York and New Jersey responded to Hurricane Sandy. The Iowa study is instructive because another flood in 2013 was contained very well due to the responses planned after the initial disaster.