Below is a number of useful links to help increase your preparedness for the threat of a natural or man-made disaster and advice to assist in the case of disaster recovery.
General
Heritage Collections Council
The Heritage Collections Council’s “BE PREPARED – Guidelines for small museums for writing a disaster preparedness plan” guide assists small collecting agencies that have few trained or paid staff in writing their own disaster preparedness plan.
Museum of New Zealand – Te Papa Tongarewa
Disaster planning and recovery – Guidance and information on minimising disaster, emergency procedures, preventive conservation and public safety and security.
State Records of South Australia
The Records Management Disaster Planning – Guideline and Records Management Disaster Planning – Toolkit are two guidelines for disaster planning offering instructions on how to develop a disaster plan for records and recordkeeping systems and a toolkit which includes a series of templates, checklists and sample sheets relevant to the development of a records management disaster plan.
UNESCO
Prepared under the “Memory of the World” programme, Mitigating Disaster: A Strategic Guide to Risk Management in Heritage Collections outlines the key actions required to help preserve library, archival and other document collections from disasters
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
NARA’s web edition of Vital Records and Records Disaster Mitigation and Recovery: An Instructional Guide recommends policies and procedures that allow institutions to assess the damage to and implement the recovery of their records that may be affected by an emergency or disaster. It includes an example of a draft disaster plan.
International Council of Museums
Guidelines for Disaster Preparedness in Museums, put together by ICOM explains various methods for developing security and protection programs and various methods for adapting them to your individual needs and resources.
National Archives of Australia
Planning for disaster and managing risk is the National Archives of Australia’s own strategy to help their staff prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters.
National Library of Australia
Disaster Planning for libraries and Archives: Understanding the Essential Issues, written and presented by Dr Jan Lyall during the Pan-African Conference on Preservation and Conservation of Library and Archival Materials, Nairobi (Kenya), June 21–25, 1993.
Recovery
Northeast Document Conservation Center
The Northeast Document Conservation Center provides free preservation advice to institutions and individuals worldwide. Below are leaflets relevant to emergency management;
- Protection from Loss: Water and Fire Damage, Biological Agents, Theft, and Vandalism
- An Introduction to Fire Detection, Alarm, and Automatic Fire Sprinklers
- Disaster Planning
- Worksheet for Outlining a Disaster Plan
- Emergency Management Bibliography
- Emergency Salvage of Wet Books and Records
- Emergency Salvage of Wet Photographs
- Emergency Salvage of Moldy Books and Paper
- Protecting Collections During Renovation
- Integrated Pest Management
- Collections Security: Planning and Prevention for Libraries and Archives
- Freezing and Drying Wet Books and Records
UNESCO
A RAMP study with guidelines on vacuum freeze-drying, a method used to salvage water-damaged archival and library materials.
The Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material (AICCM)
Disaster prepardness and risk management contains links to online resources about emergency preparedness for heritage collections, risk management and salvaging collections damaged in disaster situations.