Disaster Planning for Systems Librarians

This text offers librarians a detailed and practical guide to disaster planning for automated systems. It offers an overview of risk situations in libraries and information centres and an analysis of the potential risks to automated systems. The book aims to equip systems managers with the skills to produce a basic disaster plan for their own libraries. It also aims to supply strong arguments to convince trustees, boards and senior administrators that protecting data is a vital task. The book includes illustrative case studies describing examples of data loss and electronic disasters in libraries and other institutions across North America, Europe and the UK and is designed to be applicable across a variety of library and information services. Contents include: what is disaster planning?; emergency plans; the resumption plan; the history of systems disasters; the response plan; and a blueprint for a disaster plan.