2014 Charleston Library Conference

The Howard-Tilton Memorial Library (HTML) at Tulane University, despite our best efforts, continues to suffer from minor disasters (Hurricane Isaac flooding/2012 and FEMA Katrina build-back construction flooding/2014). Many valuable lessons have been learned along the way, most notably after a major disaster, Hurricane Katrina in 2005. HTML, having suffered through many recovery efforts, offered assistance to libraries affected by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The most recent HTML disaster where collections were damaged and loss occurred was in February, 2014, when flooding occurred on the 4th floor of the library. Immediate response included moving books out of harm’s way. Recovery included re-shelving some 15,000 undamaged books, remediation of 2,200 damaged books, and replacement of 300 unsalvageable titles. We will share photos and discuss what happened, look at collection efforts to get a handle on what was affected and the impact on students, and technical processing (both in-house and outsourced) throughout the entire episode. This discussion will focus on what libraries can learn from one another about different levels of recovery efforts, including guidance from our experience and from national standards-making bodies about how libraries can share expertise internally, across divisions and classifications, to optimize the response to future incidents. Handouts will be provided with information from HTML’s most recent recovery efforts (see http://tults.pbworks.com/w/page/76901795/Recovery_and_Remediation_2014). Attendees will leave with a sense of how recovery and remediation works.