This could easily go in the “Disruption in Libraries” category of DLTJ, but it is a disruption of a different sort. Are you making contingency plans to continue library services in the event a Bird Flu pandemic (or an event of similar sort) happens? A recent posting on the Sakai developer’s mailing list prompted the thought. Sakai is an open source collaboration and learning environment that is typically used for electronic courses. John Leasia of the University of Michigan wrote:
We here at UMich are doing some contingency planning in the event we are hit with a Bird Flu epidemic. We have heard some institutions are planning on just shutting down. Some like UM intend to stay open and move from our predominately in class instruction to all online. We are currently planning what needs to be done now (tutorials, tool enhancements, new tools, adoption of existing tools not yet in production here, infrastructure scaling, etc.) [to enhance the local Sakai installation] in order to be ready should an epidemic strike.
Are there others out there in the same situation? How about some of us holding a joint Discussion session at Amsterdam [the location of the next Sakai users conference]? We could each provide a brief overview of our planning thus far and then open it up to see what everyone is doing, raise issues/questions we haven’t thought of, perhaps start coordination of development/training/doc that might be necessary?
Are there other institutions out there thinking about the same thing? Has the library been asked to participate in the contingency planning? Are you undergoing your own planning?
3 Comments
At Pacific the Library was asked to provide a plan for what services (if any) we could provide in the event of pandemic flu. The underlying premise at our institution is that some sort of social distancing (quarantine) would be in place, which meant for the library that we would plan for how to provide services remotely, and not concentrate on figuring out how to make the resources in the building available.
So, we think we can provide access to the ILS; all of our licensed (and free) networked resources; electronic reserve; ask a librarian chat reference and research assistance.
Any and all decisions are, of course, mitigated by the health of library staff; the availability of campus servers; and no upstream interruptions to internet (or other communication) services.
That seems reasonable, Fred. I’m gathering from your reply that library staff would still be expected to report to work. Presumably if the library building was closed to the public and, as UMich is planning, the electronic course environment would substitute for classroom instruction, then activities like electronic course reserves would be expected to skyrocket as well. True, no?
We would expect the usage of electronic reserve, etc. to go up. The challenge, of course, is to prepare as if there were about to be a pandemic (or earthquake, flood, fire, etc.) so that the eres materials (and any other instructional, research, reference resources) are already available online, and that the library staff have the appropriate equipment and training so that they can report to work from off-site or can navigate the challenges of coming into the building. I can tell you that we are NOT that prepared!
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