Disaster Preparedness

To all our librarians in the area threatened by Hurricane Laura, please know that our thoughts are with you. If you are needing any information about disaster preparedness, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission shared many good resources in their Hurricane/Tropical Storm Emergency Management page. In addition, the American Library Association lists many resources here and the Library of Congress has some excellent recommendations here.

Don’t forget that our TLA Disaster Relief Fund exists to help libraries impacted by natural disasters. Grants range from $2,500 to $5,000 and can be used for technology, facility repair, collections, furnishings, or other needs related to storm damage. Academic, public, school and special libraries are eligible to receive assistance.

The Heritage Emergency National Task Force (HENTF), a public-private partnership between FEMA and the Smithsonian Institution, is also a good resource.

Sharon Strover, Professor and Director of the Technology and Information Policy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, gave a virtual presentation called “Weathering the Storm: Preparing for Disaster,” as part of our 2020 Summer of Learning. We’d like to share her video with you today, as a resource for our library community. She discusses how to prepare for disasters and how to help your community in the recovery afterward.

As TSLAC says, libraries are never more needed than in times of crisis, and it is in times of crisis that we demonstrate why we libraries are so essential.