Skip to Content

Class 12 Lesson Plan
Disaster Planning

SOME LISTS UNDONE. UNKNOWN BULLETS

Taking It Further — Beyond the Primary Lesson

Additional Topics for Discussion

The additional topics described below could be the subject of classroom discussion and activities if more time is available, or they could be incorporated into the primary lesson, depending on the instructor’s interests and background. Topics and activities are divided according to the parts of the primary lesson.

Parts II and III: Prevention/Preparedness

  • Insurance issues. Discuss insurance in more detail, including valuation of general and special collections, self-insurance, planning, and filing claims.

Activity: Have the class devise a sample insurance management policy for an imaginary library.

  • COOP plans. Discuss the purpose and content of continuity of operations plans.

Activity: Have students take FEMA’s IS-546 Continuity of Operations (COOP) Awareness Course and discuss its application to cultural resource institutions.

  • Challenges of preparing for a regional/area-wide disaster. Discuss additional actions that might be taken to prepare, such as distributing supply caches throughout a region, prearranging vendor services, centralized storage of institutions’ disaster and/or COOP plans, use of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), implementing an early warning system to notify institutions of unexpected hazardous events, and the like.

Activity: Have students break into groups and choose one aspect of area-wide preparedness to consider in detail in terms of logistics and challenges/difficulties. Groups then share their thoughts with the class.

Parts IV and V: Response/Recovery

  • Salvaging wet books. Hands-on experience in handling wet materials takes the class a step further for students.

Activity: Salvage exercise, to be conducted at the end of class. For this exercise, students are instructed to “salvage” a wet book (or archival folder with items inside) from boxes placed at the front of the room. In some instances, the books have been placed inside a box or plastic milk crate lined with a plastic garbage bag. A significant amount of water is added to the bag and as the items absorb the water, they grow larger, and the first several items removed from the water are easy to damage if students are not careful. This exercise has been useful, but not always instructive in large classes. It may be more instructive to place individual items in gallon-sized Ziploc storage bags, then add varying amounts of water and have them absorb the water throughout class until they are unveiled for the exercise. The advantage of the latter method is the portability for students who have to carry wet books home after class. It also presents students with varying levels of damage that must be addressed, and it often causes students to consult each other onsite to solve the varying problems.

Supplies needed:

  1. Books or archival folders (one per student)
  2. Gallon-sized Ziploc bags (one per student) or boxes lined with plastic bags
  3. Absorbent paper towels, blank newsprint, etc.

Just add water . . .

Questions to ask students to stimulate discussion include these:

o Describe the water-damaged item you “salvaged.”

– Be specific (size, title, date, format).

o What is the extent of the water damage?

o What methods did you try to dry the book?

– What other methods might have worked better had they been available to you?

o What were the results of your efforts?

– What is the current condition?

– What is the size now?

– Could the item be returned to the “collection”?

o What conclusions can you draw about salvaging wet books based on this experience?

  • Challenges of responding to a regional/area-wide disaster. Discussion might include one or more of the following issues. How do cultural institutions deal with their own staff situations and the immediate needs of the population? How do they obtain resources to begin recovery when the priority is sustaining human life? What do they need to know to interact with emergency responders? How are funding agencies influencing recovery? What is the impact of population loss in a region after a natural disaster in terms of reestablishing the user base of a library or archives? What public relations steps would help reestablish the institution within the community?

Activity: Have students review the Heritage Emergency National Task Force conference calls relating to Hurricane Katrina response (at ), and summarize/discuss the difficulties encountered in response.

Activity: Have students take FEMA’s IC S-100 Introduction to Incident Command System and discuss its application to cultural resource institutions.

Suggested Further Readings for Students

Salvage Techniques and Procedures

Downey, Anne, and Mary Schobert. “Disaster Recovery: Salvaging Art on Paper.” Philadelphia: Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, 2000.

Norris, Debra Hess. “Disaster Recovery: Salvaging Photograph Collections.” Philadelphia: Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, 1998.

Ruzicka, Glen. “Disaster Recovery: Salvaging Books.” Philadelphia: Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, 2002.

“Wet Books: The Air-Dry Method.” In A Simple Book Repair Manual. Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College, 2005.