[Web4lib] Katrina's lessons

[K.G. Schneider]

It's still way to early to come up with definitive statements, but Katrina
raises some interesting issues. Here's what's rattling in my brain. What are
you thinking? 

One, the Web is amazing. Two, I see several library/archival organizations
reporting that their mailservers were wiped out, with the ensuing problems
that staff scattered widely across the U.S. from the evacuation efforts have
trouble reestablishing contact with one another, given how much we all rely
on email these days. Three, I see the need for disaster response to include
mobile community technology centers that can be stationed at libraries or
similar logical locales. Four, with the Web ubiquitous and necessary, a
disaster recovery plan needs to figure out what it will use to provide
networked access as soon as possible--satellite, cellular, etc.--on the
assumption that local networks will be wiped out. 

I am updating my organization's emergency contact list with alternate emails
and cell phones, encouraging everyone to print it out and put it with their
earthquake stuff, and am also thinking about a second, offsite backup for
our data. This came up in September 11 and it's true again: locally-stored
electronic content is as vulnerable as paper to natural disasters. 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com