4.1. After the fact
Disasters come to an end.
All negative events, from the most minor accident to a major global catastrophe, reach a point where the circumstances become less threatening and more manageable. Floodwaters recede, fires are extinguished, high winds subside and the weather improves. Once a disaster scene is stable, that is, safe enough for personnel to work in and around it, then libraries can activate plans that facilitate a return to normal operations. These plans are subsumed under headings such as ‘resumption’, ‘continuity’ and ‘recovery’. It is worth noting that disaster planners use these terms loosely, and what might be considered more appropriate as a resumption plan might be referred to as a library’s recovery or continuity plan. In any case, these plans are intended to deal with matters that need attention after a disaster. What follows are sections that describe different kinds of ‘after-plans’ and demonstrate how libraries use them.
4.2. Resumption
Whether their planners know it or not, most library after-plans are developed for the purpose of operational resumption. These plans are often less expensive to develop and implement than continuity and recovery plans, and more capable of providing helpful direction after a multiplicity of events, including some not necessarily mentioned in the risk assessment and analysis.
The key components of a resumption plan can include:
• damage assessment procedures
• disaster declaration procedures
• crisis management plans
• clean-up arrangements
• post-disaster procedures for dealing with employees, volunteers and patrons
• staff allocation plans
• strategic alliances with associates, vendors and suppliers
• post-disaster communications procedures
• post-disaster transportation procedures
• post-disaster data management procedures
• normalization programmes
• testing, auditing and revision schedules
• orientation and training programmes
Depending on the aims of the library and the nature of its operations, these components should be designed for site-specific implementation. This means that a component such as a succession plan covers the replacement – temporary or permanent – of key personnel in a specific library. Some libraries may focus on the replacement of senior managers only; other libraries might cover emergency succession for more junior staff in key departments such as Technical Services and Reference. The components appropriate to one library are not necessarily appropriate to another.
‘We borrowed our damage assessment component from another university library’, says an academic library administrator in Texas.
That short cut did not serve us well after a fire broke out in one of the storage areas. The damage assessment procedures covered an entirely different building; they even included the layout for that building. Why didn’t anybody at our library have a look at the borrowed component before the fire? I guess we simply assumed that it was generic enough to get us out of trouble. That was a bad mistake, and parts of our building were closed for weeks. If we had a plan specific to our building, we would have been able to resume operations far more quickly. We would have had the relevant details at hand.
Resumption plan components from other libraries – even from altogether different kinds of organizations – can provide useful information, but their wholesale adoption by your library is inadvisable. Some planners succeed in adapting components for their libraries, but it is not unusual for planners to determine which components are most valuable to their respective libraries, and then develop plans that are specific to their needs. Numerous resumption plan components are available on the Internet, as is much medical and technical advice. You should be wary of taking such information at face value since it could be irrelevant or inaccurate.
‘Cookie-cutter solutions’, says the assistant director of a public library in California.
You can find lots of software packages that will do your resumption planning for you. All you have to do after you’ve paid the vendor is fill in the blanks, and bingo! You have a full resumption plan. But look a little closer, and you’ll find all sorts of things that aren’t covered. Those things could slow you down when you try to resume your operations. That’s why we in our library started almost from scratch. We looked at the resumption plans of a couple of neighbouring libraries, but in the end our components were ours alone, with attention to the specific facilities and activities at our library. I believe that we have a higher level of protection than those libraries that take their plans off the ‘Net’.
The documentation of a resumption plan is often voluminous. This is unfortunate, since in many cases more documentation leads to reduced effectiveness of the components. The last thing you want to do during a disaster is to find yourself leafing through a three-ring binder crammed with detailed procedures that distract you from essential activities – such as evacuating your building and dealing with frightened employees and patrons. As with response plans, less is frequently more. A concise resumption plan is easier to use and more helpful after an actual disaster.
Ideally, the best resumption plan is one which you need not consult after a disaster. You may have drafted your plan carefully, and included all of the necessary components. With time, orientation and training, you will make the components of the resumption plan part of your organizational culture. Various post-disaster tasks will become almost second nature. Library employees will know their roles, and will know how to work safely towards full operational resumption in a reasonable period of time. There will be little or no need to review the planning documentation.
‘I haven’t looked at our resumption plan in years’, said a public library branch manager in Florida.
There’s no need. After Hurricane Katrina, we rewrote all of our plans and tested them extensively. All of our employees received basic orientation, and then training in response and resumption procedures. Every new employee receives the orientation shortly after being hired, and we hold semi-annual retraining sessions. The resumption plan sits on a shelf in my office; all managers have copies. But nobody bothers to review the plan, since the training and retraining is the best way to learn what to do after a disaster.
This Floridian branch manager notes that the resumption plan has been activated after heavy rains caused flooding in two of the public library’s branches. Damage to their collections was serious, and a substantial clean-up was necessary: ‘We knew exactly what to do after the rains let up. We closed both branches and assessed the damage. This took us about two hours. We decided not to declare a disaster because the branch building had not sustained serious structural damage, and we assumed that we could resume normal operations within 48 hours.’
A construction firm that offers safety inspections and clean-up services dealt with the water damage. A furniture vendor replaced damp carpeting. A paper recycling company removed books that were beyond repair – most were paperbacks and trade non-fiction. Local booksellers replaced most of these books. Fortunately, few hardcovers were damaged. ‘We reopened those branches quickly’, said the branch manager. ‘We followed our resumption plan to the letter, but I’m sure that none of us consulted the plan in its binder.’
4.3. Continuity
Continuity plans facilitate the continuation of operations in all circumstances. When an organization is too important to its community or country to shut down, it must develop plans that allow it to function in most ways in extreme conditions including war, lengthy pandemics, serious civil unrest and the aftermath of terrorism. Military and paramilitary organizations, airlines, large banks, medical centres and laboratories, shipping firms, and certain manufacturers and product distributors have continuity plans, often highly detailed and confidential. These plans include most or all of the components of resumption plans, although there will be additional and more sophisticated planning with regard to IT maintenance, communications, transportation and post-disaster site management. Other components that appear in continuity plans include:
• Advanced alternative site plans for the accommodation of business operations and employees, in some cases for extended periods; hot sites for data recovery.
• Multi-layered data management and recovery plans for accessing vital data at different sites at all times (or ’24x7 long term’); frequent comprehensive testing of these plans.
• Strategic alliances with allied operations on different continents.
• Advanced site security plans, with special provisions for the safety of employees.
• Frequent updating of plans to take advantage of the latest portable communications technology.
• Advanced orientation and training for all employees.
• Development and training of specialized teams that will perform essential tasks following a disaster; regular testing drills for these teams.
• Development of a ‘clean’ team or teams that will perform tasks in isolated locations in the event of a severe pandemic.
• Strict auditing of plans, and revisions as required.
‘Not many libraries need military-style continuity plans’, says a government librarian in Ottawa, Ontario.
Even most military libraries in North America don’t have anything approaching the kind of plans you might find in large airlines, big banks and pharmaceutical distribution firms. But librarians should consider the advantages of a continuity component for vital data. The cost of backing up data for fast recovery is becoming more feasible, especially with the advent of cloud technology.
If librarians are concerned about the security of the cloud, they can develop agreements with other libraries to hold their back-up data in case of a disaster. For example, a university library in California could exchange data with a university library in Massachusetts. With adequate security at both libraries, the distance between them could decrease the risk of data loss for both. Such agreements are common in special libraries in different regions serving the same organization. And there are a growing number of external vendors who offer secure data storage and collocation services for libraries and other information organizations such as archives and records centres.
4.4. Recovery
While ‘recovery’ is used more loosely than any other term in the disaster planning lexicon, it has a more specific usage in certain libraries that are more likely to sustain large losses. A true recovery plan addresses questions such as:
• How much damage – and what kinds of damage – to a particular library building will justify the permanent closure, demolition and rebuilding of that building?
• If a library building is written off, should the library rebuild on the same site, or a different site? Should the library write off certain buildings altogether if they are damaged, and not rebuild them anywhere?
• At what point will library IT – including software – no longer be worth replacing after a disaster? When should a library buy a new and possibly different software package?
• How much insurance should a library buy to cover the worst losses? What are the current terms of the library’s insurance policy, and are they appropriate to cover losses sustained in a particularly destructive disaster?
• How will the library deploy employees from library sites that are closed for extended periods? Should those employees be redeployed at other library sites? Should they be offered part-time or full-time employment? Or must they be laid off temporarily or permanently?
• What are the long-term effects of a catastrophe on employee morale? How should managers improve morale, and over what time period? How can normalization procedures be enhanced to support better morale?
‘Our recovery plan is a series of resumption components with those kinds of questions added on’, said a Californian library administrator. ‘We are keenly aware of the losses that we might experience in a large earthquake. The Northridge and Loma Prieta quakes proved that libraries could be very vulnerable. So we started asking questions about our recovery measures, and we included a section in our disaster plan that covers those questions.’
The administrator notes that questions arising from recovery issues can make senior administrators uncomfortable:
Fact is, when you talk about recovery, you are forced to deal with questions that involve large expenditures and system-wide changes. You could be obliged to rebuild your library and re-establish operations in entirely different forms. And people are unsure about taking the responsibility for big tasks like those. That’s why senior administrators in all organizations shy away from recovery questions. There could be concerns about internal politics, and about accusations of alarmism. But we couldn’t avoid recovery questions, not in a seismic zone like ours.
4.5. Management roles
Library managers are responsible for deciding what kind of after-plan is best for their operations. Sometimes a management committee makes the decision. Occasionally the director or head librarian determines what sort of plan his or her library needs. In some jurisdictions, external bodies such as City Hall or a University Senate recommends the scope and contents of the plans for the libraries they control. Special libraries take direction from their organization’s senior management; and some corporate libraries – for example, bank libraries – are offered planning guidance by the organization’s risk management department.
Inevitably, however, library managers must adapt whatever directions and advice they receive from superiors. City Hall asks the public library to write a plan to deal with the aftermath of a flood that damages three branches in the downtown core; the library’s director and senior managers develop a plan to cover all aspects of water ingress and damage to facilities and collections. It is the managers’ responsibility to include the ‘library element’ in any such plan.
Library managers must also champion their libraries’ plans, and make sure that employees ‘buy in’ to the different components. This is achieved through measures such as:
• orientation and training sessions
• tabletop exercises
• drills, especially for evacuation in the event of fire, earthquake or toxic spill
• internal promotion through websites, posters and information sheets
• encouragement from management
• management’s willingness to explain planning decisions to all employees, and to listen to employees’ comments on various aspects of the plan
• management’s good example in attending training sessions and participating in drills.
One tool for the promotion of an after-plan is the emergency response brochure described in the previous chapter (see
Figure 3.1 on p. 23). Library managers can tell employees that there will be an after-plan to deal with any effects of a negative event, and that they are welcome to contribute ideas and observations to the planning process. ‘All comments are welcome’, says a technical services manager in Oregon.
I didn’t know so much about certain areas of my department, especially regarding the software we use. I made a record of every piece of advice that I received, and I saved every email message. I also made a point of thanking my staff for their input. They got the idea that they were definitely part of the process, and our library had full buy-in from the start. I’d say that our resumption plan is all the more effective for that reason.
4.6. Operational resumption teams
There is more practical justification for establishing resumption teams in a library than response teams, although many libraries insist on maintaining their standard management hierarchies to deal with the effects of disasters. ‘I don’t see the wisdom in forming a special team to get our servers and other IT running again when we already have a department that looks after that’, said a college librarian in North Carolina. ‘In fact, I wouldn’t trust people from outside that department to work on our IT. I wouldn’t ask the reference and information desk staff to get involved in the resumption of cataloguing and item processing in our technical services department. I think people should work on what they’re good at, both before a disaster and after.’
She adds that employees might feel high levels of stress after a disaster, and might not perform as well as they would do in normal circumstances. Disaster-related stress could lead to carelessness and errors, especially during activities with which an employee is unfamiliar. Hence, her library adheres to its standard organization chart in all circumstances, including disasters.
Nevertheless, some libraries can benefit from establishing certain kinds of resumption teams. For example, at an Australian college library with valuable collections of manuscripts and a number of artworks, the following resumption teams are in place:
• manuscript damage assessment team
• artwork damage assessment team
• damage recording team (photographs and written documentation)
• emergency conservation team
• damaged item security team.
Each team comprises a maximum of four library employees, all of whom have taken at least the basic level of specialized training in the tasks performed by their respective teams carry, and who meet annually to review plans and procedures. For this library, these specialized teams could prove to be extremely useful after a disaster. Moreover, team members have increased awareness of the library’s response and resumption plans, and have acted indirectly to promote preparedness in all library departments.
Thus, in developing an after-plan library managers should not dismiss altogether the idea of establishing resumption teams. Rather, managers should consider how a team might serve resumption purposes better than the standard hierarchy. Justification for the establishment of resumption teams might be apparent in cases such as the Australian college library.
4.7. Perfection not possible
No plan, and certainly no after-plan, is perfect. No plan can cover all contingencies, nor meet all post-disaster needs. Again, this is why planners say that planning is a process and not a product, and why they refer to plans as living documents.
‘You’re always trying to do better’, said a library technician in charge of her San Francisco special library’s disaster plan.
You want your resumption plan to cover every possibility, but experience proves that to be impossible. The most any plan can do is to cover most contingencies. There will be weaknesses – gaps and omissions – in every plan, and the only way to reduce them is to test it often and revise it when weaknesses become apparent. Remember that a plan with weaknesses is better than no plan at all.
Some systems librarians claim that resumption plans for a library’s IT department can approach perfection. An IT manager at a university library in Connecticut says:
If you back up your data properly, and make sure that your back-ups are stable and accessible in all possible circumstances, you have reduced the chances of a data loss disaster to almost zero. If you form alliances with vendors so that your hardware and software can be replaced without delay, you have cut potential downtime substantially. If you make sure that you have a succession plan for your IT staff, so that all key employees have replacements and can delegate tasks after a disaster, you have cut your potential downtime even more. In fact, good resumption planning in an IT department can deliver something very close to perfection. But the IT world is an exception. You couldn’t expect the same resumption capability from a circulation department, or the reference division.
You may not be able to achieve perfection in your after-plan, but you can make regular improvements that will allow your library to return to normal all the sooner.
4.8. References
4.8.1. Interviews
In this chapter I have quoted an academic library administrator in Texas, an assistant director at a public library and an administrator in California, a library technician at a San Francisco special library, a technical services manager in Oregon, a college librarian in North Carolina, a public library branch manager in Florida, an IT manager at a university library in Connecticut and a government librarian in Ottawa, Canada.
