Technology Disaster Response and Recovery Planning
| Pages | 210-211 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2016-0181 |
| Published date | 06 February 2017 |
| Date | 06 February 2017 |
| Author | Philip Calvert |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
survey revealed a wide range of proprietary databases used to catalogue local
collections, regrettably often not integrated into the general catalogue. Any newer
alternatives to MARC 21 cataloguing are beyond the scope of the book.
It may be that Marquis and Waggener are addressing problems unique to the USA;
certainly, best practice local studies work is as likely to occur in Canada, Australia or
England, where the distinction between archives and local studies collections is crisper.
They have been allowed to use an encouraging, breezy style, which may appeal to
nervous newbies, but tougher editing could have halved the word-count without
removing any of its essential advice.
John MacRitchie
Manly Library, Sydney, Australia
Technology Disaster Response and Recovery Planning
Edited by Mary Mallery
Facet
London
2015
114 pp.
£49.95 soft cover
ISBN 978-1-78330-054-9
Review DOI 10.1108/EL-09-2016-0181
Every library needs a technology disaster response plan. That ought to be obvious,
yet there are very few that actually have a thoroughly developed and tested plan in
place. Disasters can occur in different ways, from natural causes such as oods and
res, through to manmade disasters caused by error or even malicious action. In
libraries, disasters will affect the collections, the buildings and the people, though
here the focus is on the technology; fragile yet essential. This book in in two parts;
the rst has ve chapters on the need for and the procedures for writing a
technology disaster response plan, and the second part has two case studies. This is
not precisely a guidebook to technology disaster response planning, but it is a very
useful read for anyone who ought to be thinking about how a library can respond to
a disaster.
The rst chapter sets the scene. It denes the terms used throughout the book and
gives the initial steps in technology disaster response and planning recovery. The
second chapter covers a point easily missed by explaining how to conduct an
inventory of digital resources and then assess the level of risk for each part of the
digital collection. Assessing risk is a key part of disaster planning, for no library can
afford to protect all its resources at the highest level; some decisions must be made
that rate the importance of every resource and thus how much investment is
justied in its protection. In the third chapter, the reader is introduced to dPlan, an
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