Are You Ready for a Hurricane?

Many thanks to Kara McClurken, Preservation Services Librarian at Solinet, for this guest post.

What are you going to do for National Hurricane Preparedness Week? How about signing up to be a disaster volunteer?

After the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, SOLINET realized that we needed a better way to communicate and assist our members affected by major disasters. So, we came up with two new services that I’d like to share with you this week, since May 25-31st is National Hurricane Preparedness Week.

1. Our disaster volunteer database: In many ways, all disasters are local. When a major disaster strikes a region, one of the difficulties is that those who want to help don’t always have a place to stay while assisting. SOLINET has created a disaster volunteer database that will help match institutions needing help with volunteers who live far enough away from the site of the disaster that their institutions were protected, but close enough that they don’t have to find a place to sleep at the end of night.

But in order for our database to be effective, we need volunteers like YOU to sign up so that we know who to contact when a disaster strikes. You don’t need any experience to volunteer. You just need to be willing to help a peer institution and have the ability to take direction. The more people we have in the database, the more quickly we can help those affected by disasters. So, sign up to be a disaster volunteer today. Stephanie at NEFLIN signed up. So can you!

SOLINET also wanted to find a way for institutions affected by a region-wide disaster to be able to contact each other and concerned colleagues in the event of an evacuation. So we created a “Disaster wiki.” Individuals and institutions can turn to SOLINET’s disaster wiki to post information about themselves, their institution, and contact information if they are forced to leave the area.

This blog posting is the first in a series that SOLINET staff will do for NEFLIN during the hurricane season. If you have ideas/questions for future postings, please let me know.