Service Role

Public library may serve as a liaison between emergency management and the community’s cultural organizations.

Impetus:

Cultural organizations may need to:

• Identify, prioritize and protect their key assets through coordination with others;
• Assist each other to respond to a hurricane;
• Coordinate their efforts when aiding community hurricane response;
• Establish a single point of emergency communication contact with emergency management.
• Model efforts include: Alliance for Response, COSTEP; HERA & 1000 Friends of Florida.
  • Alliance for Response: Heritage Preservation. National Institute for Conservation. Alliance for Response. Forum planning toolkit
  • COSTEP: Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, Massachusetts State Archives, Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) and others. (2007). COSTEP: Coordinated Statewide Emergency Preparedness. Wiki.
  • HERA: Atlanta. Heritage Emergency Response Alliance (HERA) Brochure Further information: Heritage Emergency Response Alliance c/o Georgia Archives 5800 Jonesboro Road Morrow, GA 30260 Email: HERA.Atlanta@gmail.com
  • 1000 Friends of Florida: Florida. Department of State, Division of Historical Resources (DHR) and Department of Community Affairs, Division of Emergency Management (DEM). 1000 Friends of Florida. Disaster planning for historic resources.

Best practices may bring culture, government and emergency leaders together to discuss utility of joint disaster planning and recovery efforts. Topics:

• What assets need protection, how prepared are we? See COSTEP;
  • Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, Massachusetts cultural resources disaster information form
    This basic form, or one like it, may be used to communicate basic information about your cultural resources and state of disaster preparation to emergency management and others.
• Mutual aid;
  • CARD
    • Collaborating Agencies Responding to Disasters (CARD). (n.d.). Partnering for strength: MOUs getting your relationships in print. Retrieved February 13, 2009, from http://www.kingcounty.gov
    • This is a widely admired, King County, WA approach to solidifying disaster response partnerships using memoranda of understanding (MOU). It explains what a MOU and its key elements are.
  • Stier
    • Stier, Dan. (n.d). Mutual aid [Electronic resource]. Atlanta, GA: Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved February 27, 2009, from http://www2a.cdc.gov/phlp/mutualaid/index.asp
    • This website explains what mutual aid agreements are and why they are valuable. It also provides a menu of suggested provisions for public health mutual aid agreements and an inventory of mutual aid agreements and related resources.
• How to better serve the community? Include programs in Evacuee  and Resident  booklets;
• Improve Emergency Management–Cultural Institutions communication;
• Establish storm monitoring & reporting mechanism.
• Cultural Organizations Liaisons Best Resources