Many people believe that once they have taken delivery of a binder of planning material, they are protected against all prevailing risks. This is an example of magical thinking at its worst, and possibly its most dangerous. A paper plan is nothing but paper, an online plan is nothing more than another website that most people skim once and forget. What drives home the essential aspects of any disaster plan is the orientation and training programme. Unfortunately, many clients are not sure what it will involve. They automatically assume that it will be outrageously expensive, or too time-consuming, or not really necessary. Planners have to be clear from the start what effective orientation and training are.

For example, everyone in my library takes basic orientation – mostly concerned with personal safety – regarding response to fires, floods and hurricanes. But the training for the rare book librarians in charge of a collection of incunabula will focus on the emergency conservation of our oldest printed materials, with attention to different kinds of damage to texts and bindings. Such training will be different from that which a librarian receives if he or she is in charge of a collection of first editions of modern literary works. In many ways the latter are more fragile than the former. The training for each specialist will vary according to the conservational demands that will arise in his or her department during and after a disaster.

We might not want to admit it but a lot of orientation and training is really promoting disaster plans and ‘selling’ them to employees. We want people to understand how useful plans can be when a disaster occurs. We want to stimulate enthusiasm and interest. The more effectively we can promote plans through orientation and training, the better the chances are that the plans will work when something bad happens. So there’s more to training sessions than employee education. There has to be a certain amount of sales management for any disaster plan, to make sure that employees take it seriously.

In fact, the situation was embarrassing. But the training we received gave us the justification and required path to better and more secure records management. By converting paper to digital records, we have a much greater level of records security and [operational] continuity. Even after a catastrophe, we’ll have access to the records necessary for serving our campus patrons. And we’re saving money on space, which has always been at a premium in our facilities.

However, it’s good to ask yourself if they’re reasonable and realistic. A series of assumptions will give you an idea of how practicable your planning really is. If any of your assumptions is unreasonable, then you should revisit your planning process. There could be a disconnect between the library, its administration and people in positions of power outside the library. It’s worthwhile to examine assumptions carefully, even though most of them will be no-brainers.

When I ran the sessions, I’d focus on personal safety during and after fires, floods and tornadoes. I avoided getting into details about how our technical services department should assess damage, and similar matters. I emphasized life safety over everything else, and asked my colleagues to think about themselves and their families first and foremost. In the end, that’s what people care about. Most library disaster plans don’t mention this, but people will worry about their children a lot sooner than they’ll consider activating back-up cataloguing data. The point is that you have to plan for what people will do, not for what they should do. I covered that in the orientation session, and I believe that my colleagues were a lot more comfortable about what I had to say after that.

Even a very brief orientation session can get you considering alternative approaches to post-disaster problems. Frankly, I found the sessions put on by associates from our New York office to be useful not only for disaster preparedness and planning, but also for fresh ways of dealing with various more common issues. For example, strategic alliances with other libraries can support faster post-disaster resumption of operations, but those alliances can facilitate other initiatives unrelated to disasters. After our management orientation sessions, we decided for the first time to share resources and research data with the other libraries in our corporation. So even if a disaster never happens, we reap the benefits from our orientation sessions.

I’d say that in some jurisdictions, such as big urban areas, public library managers should be reviewing their security every quarter. A library’s security coordinator should update managers on recent security breaches, and then an external expert can address the managers on anti-theft techniques or ways to discourage vandalism. In our area, we relied on the local school board, which employed a security specialist who had a lot of experience in dealing with threats to public facilities such as libraries. She gave us invaluable advice. The local police were helpful, too. We found that the police were skillful seminar leaders.

Some people are natural teachers, and can quickly adapt information related to disaster planning for a library’s in-house orientation and training purposes. Other people need more time to develop the skills they need to stand up in front of an audience and present material clearly. In your library – in any organization – you should look for employees who are good public speakers and who command respect when they deliver the facts. You do not want somebody on the podium who mumbles and cannot stay on topic. That could discourage employees from getting involved in emergency management and disaster response activities.