Health Sciences Librarians' Reference Services During a Disaster

Abstract

Reliable and timely professional information services are always important, but even more so during a community-wide disaster, like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. There are classes and literature on planning for library collection protection in local emergencies, but little about planning for reference and information services. Four accounts from South Louisiana in September of 2005 demonstrate the value of proactive and innovative services based on professional information needs analysis skills. More study of such cases could lead to the development of best practice guidelines for the planning and provision of disaster information services.

The Disaster Information Specialist: An Emerging Role for Health Librarians

“…Librarians wrote extensively about providing community-level assistance during the response and recovery periods following Hurricane Katrina (Braquet, 2010;Dickerson, 2007;Featherstone, Lyon, & Ruffin, 2008;Fletcher, 2006;Hamilton, 2011;Long, 2006;McKnight, 2006;Welsh & Higgins, 2009). The post-Katrina resurgence of interest in libraries and disasters inspired the oral history project I conducted for NLM, but the scope of my project was to record librarians' accounts of responding to all disasters, not just Hurricane Katrina.…”

“…In addition, the anthrax attacks led to the New York Academy of Medicine starting the (then-called) Resources Guide for Public Health Preparedness with funding from NLM. Concerns about pandemic influenza also resulted in medical librarians being recruited for an institutional planning task force (Tekeli-Yeşil, 2006), and four case studies from South Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina contributed to the development of planning recommendations for health sciences librarians' reference services during a disaster (McKnight, 2006). An H1N1 information service provision case series yielded accounts of successful projects as a result of medical librarian involvement in institutional preparedness activities and librarian inclusion in organizational disaster plans (Featherstone, Boldt, Torabi, & Konrad, 2012).…”

Disaster Information Specialist Pilot Project: NLM/DIMRC

“…1,2 McKnight provides case studies of libraries' roles post Katrina. 3 The Emergency and Disaster Medicine in association with the Acute Care Foundation). Many specialty journals have whole issues and articles devoted to this topic, and these can be found by searching the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database.…”

Provision of pandemic disease information by health sciences librarians: a multisite comparative case series

“…Ample literature focuses on disaster and emergency planning for library operations, collection protection, technical services, and financial management [3,4]. In addition, during emergency and disaster situations such as Hurricane Katrina, cases in which librarians provided services during the response and recovery phases have been analyzed [5].…”