Dear Storage folks,
Will you be in Philadelphia next summer at the ALA Annual meeting? Do you work at or with collections at high density facilities? Ever had an emergency there? Care to share your knowledge?? Please see blurb below from my LC colleague Carrie Beyer, a co-chair of the ALA CORE Books and Paper Interest group, who is making a call for panelists.
If you have any questions about the session, please email me at Cmartyniak@loc.gov anytime.
If you are interested in being a panelist, please email Carrie directly (Cabe@loc.gov) by September 6th.
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Emergency Preparedness and High-Density Storage
High-Density Storage not only provide libraries with enhanced storage and access capabilities, but they also provide unique and possibility daunting challenges during an emergency situation. How to recover wet materials from 30 feet up with limited power? How to maintain bibliographic control over thousands of items needing freeze drying? While safeguards are built into some high-density systems are there still challenges that still must be addressed?
If you have experienced an emergency, both large or small, at your high-density storage we would love to hear about it! Honestly how robust are your emergency plans and preparations? Have past events molded, (pun intended) your view of the need for preparations? Has the ability of your "boxes shedding water" lulled you into thinking that an emergency won't have much impact?
We want to assemble a panel of 3 or 4 high-density storage stake holders to serve on a panel to present about their experiences with emergencies or emergency preparedness to ALA next summer in Philadelphia at a joint session sponsored by the Storage Interest Group and the Book and Paper Interest Group of CORE/Preservation. You would be asked to speak for about 5 to 10 minutes, be able to answer questions and a slide deck is always encouraged.
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Thank you for considering.
Cathy Martyniak and Carrie Beyer