Who's Your Emergency Management Contact?

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

"It's all about the relationships"

That’s a quote from the Intergovernmental Preparedness for Essential Records (IPER) conference I attended this week in Atlanta. The conference brought together emergency management, information technology, and archives and records management staff together to discuss ways to secure the nation’s essential records. One of the things I hear over and over when going to conferences like these is the fact that the time to be introducing yourself to emergency management personnel is not during an actual emergency.

Do you know who your county emergency manager is? Does he or she know who YOU are? If you don’t already know them, my task for you during the month of August is to make their acquaintance. Bake some cookies and invite them over—show them all the fantastic collections you have and ask them what you can do to better help them help you. Ask them where your institution fits into the county emergency management plan. Exchange those business cards now, BEFORE the next hurricane comes through.

For more information about how your library can prepare for a hurricane, register for Hurricane Preparedness, a live online workshop in September.

This blog posting is the third 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.