Flirting with Disaster

Disaster planning has got to be one of the most uninspiring aspects of library and archives work. I suppose its for the same reason many people have trouble making a will: nothing bad will happen and we'll all live forever. And yet, as most recently Hurricane Katrina or the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has shown us, disasters come in the form of natural and man-made, and they affect lives and cultural assets. Unfortunately, it often takes an emergency to push organizations toward creating plans that keep those emergencies from turning into a disaster. I was glad to hear about a long-overdue announcement from Boston Public Library regarding the updating of their disaster plan. It is of utmost important for institutions to make this kind of planning a priority and to publicize it when they do, in order to lead other institutions to do the same.

So what does this have to do with pictures of windmills? earlier this summer, I attended a disaster planning workshop on Cape Cod, which I was not looking forward to. But I was so surprised and learned to much that I thought I ought to share it.