Tag: emergency

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Libraries: Community Information Centers during an Emergency

In an emergency, whether the emergency is a tornado or a pandemic, in most communities everyone knows who takes care of what:

      • Order and traffic, rule enforcement: The local police department.
      • Safety and rescue: The local fire department.
      • First aid and medical attention: The local first aid squad, clinics and hospitals.
      • Shelter: Schools and community centers.
      • Coordinating it all: Town Hall.
      • Keeping the public informed: ????? (Hint: Why not the local library?)

With the demise of local newspapers, most communities, whether the population is 3,000 or 300,000, have no place to turn for reliable information accumulation and dissemination. During the COVID pandemic, initially Americans experienced an information vacuum at the state and national level. National leaders declined to provide direction and released confusing, contradictory, and sometimes downright false information. A few state leaders, such as Governor Cuomo, became particularly famous for filling the information vacuum. However, who fills the information vacuum at the local level, especially for emergencies, such as flooding, fires, earthquakes, or tornados? Why not the local library?

Emergency action is usually well planned and coordinated. The police and fire departments as well as other first responders  work with local government to prepare for emergencies. They know what to do, they practice doing it, and they’re good at it. Thanks to that preparation, people get rescued, order is maintained, and emergency facilities are set up where and when they are needed. In addition, volunteers step forward to clear debris, fill sand bags, and help distribute food, water, and blankets.

But who informs the public? How do local residents know which roads are closed or where to go for those emergency supplies of food, water, and blankets? Who tells volunteers where they are most needed? As rules and policies change, who makes sure that average citizen knows what’s going on? Police and fire crews are all busy being first responders and there is nothing in their training or experience that familiarizes them with platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Nixle/NextDoor, or even email to effectively communicate with the entire community on an ongoing basis. Someone needs to fill the information gap, regardless of information platform. Why not libraries?

The little town of Cranbury, NJ where I live was hit by tropical storm Henri on August 22, 2021. We didn’t suffer any wind damage, but we got pounded by 9 inches of rain in an hour. The rain was so intense little Cranbury (population about 3,000) was mentioned on the PBS NewsHour and CNN coverage of Henri the following day. In addition, many towns upstream from Cranbury’s beautiful lake got almost as much rain as we did, which of course, meant we not only suffered from flooding due to the rain that fell in our own town but also from the rain that fell in other towns when it flowed down to us through the watershed. The mayor, local volunteers, and Cranbury’s Office of Emergency Management did a great job of handling the flooding, rescuing stranded motorists, and helping our neighbors and businesses near the lake. But communication was a problem. And still is.

No one knew which roads were closed and, once we found out which ones were closed, we didn’t know when they were reopened. For those of us who had to go to work, there was no way to find alternate routes with any certainty. No one really knew where to go for help, and since it was Sunday the town hall was closed. If you were personal friends with the mayor or someone on the township committee or if you knew a volunteer in the fire department, you could call them, but few of them knew the whole picture – or even many details beyond what they personally were working on. Unfortunately, if you didn’t know someone, other than for a 911 life-threatening emergency, you were out of luck. We have great first responders and an excellent library. We should put them together.

Just as the police department, the fire department, the mayor, and others spring into action in an emergency, why can’t the local library staff spring into action to provide information services? Information is what libraries are for, isn’t it, the accumulation and dissemination of information? And librarians can do most of this kind of work from home – no need to go out into the pandemic, the rain, or the wind like other first responders.

Most towns have an Office of Emergency Management (OEM) that prepares for emergencies and lays out which township organization will take responsibility for which services. Libraries should join in the planning and, whether the emergency is a storm hitting at 4:00am on a Sunday morning (like Henri) or a pandemic rolling out over many months, the library staff can quickly set up information accumulation and dissemination services, both for the first responders and the public. If library staff are part of the OEM, it would be expected of them, and first responders would coordinate with them. It would be the library’s job to figure out how to collect the information and disseminate it effectively to the entire community.

Turning the library into the community’s emergency information center benefits the police, the fire department, the medical workers, and the town hall staff as well as the community members because the first responders can focus on their jobs and the community has a place to turn for reliable, curated information.

I have no data on this but I am willing to guess that if you ask most Americans where they turn for information in an emergency, they do not think of the library. They should. Information is the heart and soul of what libraries offer their communities. Libraries should be so plugged into their communities that whenever the community needs information, especially in an emergency, the first place everyone in the community thinks of is the library.

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What is the Role of a Library in a Pandemic?

The fundamental mission around which everything a library does is the accumulation and dissemination of information for its community.

A secondary objective of a library is to provide a certain amount of entertainment. 

We can debate the details of these assertions at another time, but if you grant me that “accumulation and dissemination of information” is at least a fundamental mission of all libraries, we can continue.

We can also assume that people need information and entertainment to survive an emergency, especially a pandemic. They need information so they know what to do – how to respond to the pandemic – and they need to have confidence in that information so they do not panic. In addition, community members need entertainment so they can survive emotionally as well as physically.

Finally, let us take as a given that in a pandemic, library buildings will close. In the current pandemic, many states have ordered libraries to close their doors. Many libraries in other states have voluntarily curtailed in-building operations.

Does closing the building mean that libraries have to cease operations? Of course not. That’s absurd. Libraries can still offer much of what makes libraries libraries through online services. It takes some adaptation, to be sure, but it can be done. 

I have listed below some ideas of what a library can do while it is still “open for business” even while the library building is closed.

1. Communicate library activities to the community. This can and should be done aggressively by all means available. 

    • The cheapest and easiest way to let the community know what a library is doing is to post it on the library’s web site! Use basic marketing principles around placement and messaging (do not, for example, have a message that says “the library is closed until further notice” right next to a message that says “come to these online meetings.” From the patron’s point of view, that’s very confusing. The building may be closed, but the library is open. It’s that simple.
    • Facebook is a great way to get word out to much of the community. For a few dollars (literally about $10), it is possible to put announcements that “The Building is Closed, But the Library is Still Open” in front of thousands of community members who are stuck at home browsing Facebook. Direct them to your Facebook page and your web site where they can find out all the other details.
    • The visual nature of Instagram makes it a tool good for generating interest in and excitement about library activities.
    • Email is also cheap. Send a note to members about changes to policy (due dates have been extended, blocked cards have been unblocked, etc) and in the same email, tell them about all the things going on at the library. Get patrons to sign up for a monthly newsletter that provides updates on past and upcoming activities. Send out a vibrant, low text, high-imagery newsletter sharing past and upcoming events.
    • Newspapers are still being published, online and in print. Make the library a story and get the newspaper to cover it (both online and in print!).
    • Have the mayor and other public officials mention in their announcements that the library is still functioning online and encourage community members to visit the library’s home page for information about resources and activities that are available.

2. Move book clubs and other groups online. Don’t cancel anything! GoToMeeting, WebEx, and Zoom are just three of multiple online meeting services available to libraries that make virtual meetings possible. I belong to a literary group at my neighborhood library. We don’t read specific books each month, we talk about different genres and aspects of literature. The average age of members may well be around 60, but everyone quickly learned how to participate using a virtual meeting tool and everyone has been grateful to have the human contact during the stay-at-home period. It’s possible to chat while knitting in a virtual meeting. ESL sessions can be conducted online. Even chess is possible. D&D would be easy. Perhaps board games would be a challenge.

3. Add (online) events. Take advantage of online resources to add events, especially for kids. Pandemics – any emergency requiring people to stay home – are especially hard on kids and parents with small children. The more events you have that can keep kids entertained, the happier the kids will be – and the happier the parents will be that they have an active and supportive library. I know a librarian who organized an art group for teens that produced spectacular imagery. Another library added reader’s advisory services via FB in which a librarian would interact with multiple patrons looking for books to read.

4. Expand existing online services. When people are stuck at home, unable to go to theaters or the gym, they look to the internet for services. Some need more variety than what is available through paid services. Others simply can’t afford them. Most libraries have access to magazines, ebooks, and streaming video. These can all be expanded. Team up with other libraries through the county or state or the ALA to negotiate for greater availability of titles and less restrictive limits on the number and length of time digital assets can be accessed.

5. Expand internet access services. Libraries are often the primary source for internet access for students and adults who do not have high speed internet access at home. They made need access to broadband internet access through the library just to access the library’s online services, but they are also likely to need it for school or work, not to mention entertainment. Even when the library is closed, the library can facilitate internet access by

    • Extending WiFi services deep into the parking lot. If patrons have access to a car, they can sit in the parking lot and use the internet.
    • Lending WiFi hot spots. Obviously, anything that is being lent by the library requires the object be moved from the library to the patron, which can be an infection transmission mechanism. However, if the sterilization procedures can be worked out, libraries that can lend WiFi hot spots to patrons will do a great favor to high school students preparing for college (or college students trying to wrap up courses for graduation).

6. Provide community updates. People want and need to know what’s going on. Cable news and even regional newspapers are pretty good at covering state and national news. But what about local news and information that provide actionable knowledge to residents? Often it comes from many sources. Often community members only get part of the news they need. The library should consolidate it on their web site. No commentary. No editing. Just post it.

    • Updates from the mayor’s office.
    • Notices and updates from the police department.
    • Updates from the county health department.
    • Anything else that applies directly to the decisions being made by community members such as:
      • Testing locations.
      • Lists of businesses providing curbside pickup.
      • News about non-library community activities.
      • Stories about good-deeds in the community.
      • Stories about scams or people abusing the crisis.

7. Post information on the disease (or other emergency). Find basic, factual, non-Wikipedia sources of information about the disease, how it spreads, where it came from, what it does inside our bodies, etc. Libraries should NOT attempt to digest this information and write their own material about it. Instead, create a reading list of magazine and journal articles, books, videos (lots of videos), and webinars, all of which should be available through the library, with links for ready access. Librarians should use all of their information literacy skills to sift through the available information to find the most current, reliable information. Be sure that the information is in a form the library’s community can readily digest – the latest peer reviewed journal article in Lancet on the way the virus affects protein replication in lung cells may be useful to a practicing physician, but it will not help an accountant or a mom understand what they are facing. The library may want to break out the information according to age group so parents can share (and learn) with their children.

Remember, it’s all about the patrons. Don’t forget who your patrons are. If you have a large Spanish or Mandarin speaking community, be sure to offer these services in Spanish or Chinese as well. In many ways, these communities are the most shut off from reliable information and will depend upon the services of the library more than majority language communities.

Stay in touch with the community. While the building is closed, direct person-to-person contact with the community may be curtailed. The library staff, especially the executive director and the department heads, need to stay in touch with members of the community to identify needs the library can fill and or things that it could do better.

In a pandemic, as in any emergency, access to current, reliable information is essential for productive debate and coordinated, unified public response. Make the library what it is supposed to be: A center for reliable information for the community it serves.

Author’s note: This blog post is dated in mid-May 2020. However, it draws extensively on conversations held over the last five years in which I asked, “What is the role of a library in an emergency (such as a blizzard)?” Beginning a year ago, influenced by years of exposure to Bill Gates’ warnings about the likelihood of a global pandemic, I refined that question to “What would the role of a library be in a pandemic?” In early February of 2020, as reports of the Chinese COVID-19 outbreak spreading to other countries began appearing in the news, I proposed to the library where I worked that we begin a basic information campaign around flu avoidance (washing hands, coughing into sleeves, etc). Then in early March of 2020, as reports of the virus in Washington State and New York City appeared in the news, I asked my pandemic question of a group of library leadership graduate students at Rutgers University. In the Rutgers discussion and in the conversations last year about the role of libraries in a pandemic, I proposed many of the ideas presented here. Of course, I got lots of thoughtful feedback then and I welcome more thoughtful comments here now.