Disaster: Prevention, Preparedness and Action.

Abstract

CONSERVATION OF LIBRARY AND ARCHIVAL materials embraces a broad spectrum of problems and concerns. As librarians try to grapple with poor paper, brittle collections, mutilation, insects, hostile environment, air pollution, and lack of funds, there is the ever-present danger that disaster may affect the collections they have been trying to build and maintain. Thus, disaster prevention and preparedness become part of conservation concern. But the field of disaster prevention and action is not one in which much experimentation has happened. Nor is it one where difficult problems can be tested in practice often enough to devise sound methods of operation. In the aftermath of the Florence flood in 1966, in the frantic need to dry massive numbers of valuable items, several experimental drying methods were tried-most proved to be unsuccessful. But one conclusion seemed clear. An organized approach to disaster prevention and action would save more material than a haphazard one. In the intervening years there have been enough library disasters with enough losses to emphasize this point. This paper will reiterate what has been learned (to the extent that it seems appropriate to state anything). These points seem applicable to large or small collections, in libraries and archives, with a concern to be prepared for any eventuality. A disaster is described by Webster as a “sudden calamitous event bringing great damage, loss, or destruction. ” For libraries and archives the disaster can be devastating and irreversible to the fragile contents of their collections. The results of the Florence flood emphasize again the