Disaster Preparedness Manual Updated

Alloway Library's Disaster Preparedness Manual (2008) is updated and accessible via the TWU Intranet. It is listed in the Private Documents section of the library's intranet page. The update includes the most recent contact numbers for all members of the Disaster response team as well as items identified in this summer's review of "non-collection priorities" for salvage.

The link to access the manual is https://intranet.twu.ca/library/Private%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx
Try the link from work and at home today to make sure you can connect to it if an emergency occurs.

Have you reviewed your workspace for potential hazards lately? Is your emergency preparedness kit ready for a cold, dark day?

A Disaster Preparedness Blog at Work

Earlier this month Union University in Tennessee was hit by a devastating tornado. Alloway Library's Disaster Preparedness Committee was interested to note that Union used a blog to as a means to communicate with their community.

Photo by Morris Abernathy

You can see how they used their blog, and how they are progressing in their recovery by visiting http://www.uurecovery.com/ or http://www.uuemergency.com/ On these blogs you will see that they cover the big items as well as important messages to volunteers, or specific groups of students. The content is different from what they post on their main University webpage at https://www.uu.edu/ which is geared to a more general, external audience.

ALERTnews is Alloway Library's emergency response team blog, standing at the ready, just in case. If you are reading this in an email post from Feedblitz, or in an RSS reader, you are in good preparedness mode for communications. While you are thinking about your role as an member of the library's emergency response team, are there other things you could do to improve your preparedness? Why not take time this week to review your emergency plans?

Are you in the loop?

The Emergency Preparedness Committee wants to make sure you are in the loop before an emergency occurs.

Committee members are updating contact lists and will be revising the contents of your "black folder" at the Library staff day on August 28.

University of Hawaii at Manoa Nov 2004

If you are receiving this email via Feedblitz that's another sign that you are prepared. Remember that you should receive ALERTnew posts at whatever email accounts you regularly use. That way, if the TWU servers were down following an emergency you could receive ALERTnews posts at your Telus, Hotmail or other accounts.

You can subscribe to ALERTnews at the blog site http://alertnews.blogspot.com or email Shawn and let him know the address you want included in the Feedblitz distribution.

Be sure to bookmark the ALERTnews blog site so you can find it when you need it. The blog includes links to important disaster information sites. (If you somehow forget to bookmark it, a Google search for ALERTnews should be useful.)

New Delivery service for ALERTnews

All new posts on the ALERTnews blog such as this one, will now be sent to subscribers' email via Feedblitz instead of Bloglet. I know that sounds like techno-gibberish, and you probably won't notice much of a difference but you should watch for the change and make sure posts send via Feedblitz are not being filtered as junk mail.

Why the change? To ensure greater reliability; Bloglet hasn't been working for the last few weeks and it's on its way out. I'll let the creator of Bloglet explain more:

Bloglet began as a hobby of mine to help manage the random blogs I'd read on a
daily basis. This was back when words like "blog" and "rss" had yet to enter most people's vocabulary. Now "blogs" are being mentioned on the Daily Show, but
Bloglet still remains a hobby. It's obvious that I don't have the time to turn
this hobby into something that offers a fair level of service to users. On the
other hand, Phil and the team over at Feedblitz has been doing a great job
building their blog-to-email product into a viable service. They've even built a Bloglet-to-Feedblitz converter. I recommend that any current users of Bloglet give them a try. In the meantime, I will leave Bloglet up and working as is, without any support. I'd like to phase it out slowly over the next few weeks.

If you are not a subscriber and you'd like to stay up-to-date with ALERTnews using Feedblitz, simply enter your name in the subscription box in the right margin of this page. Current subscribers can also manage subscriptions here.

You are ALERT!

During reading break, I'll be contacting all library staff to review the ALERTnews blog and Bloglet subscription tool. If you are reading this in your email you have covered at least one of the things I wanted to check! Here is the complete list:

Find ALERTnews online at http://alertnews.blogspot.com/
Subscribe to ALERT news via bloglet (home and twu account)
Know how to
use comments (Please add a comment to this post.)
Would it be helpful for
you in your ERT position to be able to post articles? (I can set you up as a
contributor.)
Review the links; in the event of a disaster they would carry pertinent local information.

I look forward to touching base with you briefly in the next few days.

Bloglet keeps ERT up to date with ALERTnews

Members of Alloway Library's Emergency Response Team can now stay up-to-date with news and information related to disaster recovery efforts using a neat little application called Bloglet.

A subscription service, Bloglet keeps track of the ALERTnews blog and then sends an email to a subscriber's email accounts if anything new has been posted to ALERTnews in the past 24 hours.

Combining Bloglet, ALERTnews and a personal email account means that even if a disaster affected TWU's computer servers, Library staff can still stay up-to-date with recovery efforts by reading ALERTnews on Blogger and watching for updates sent to a non-twu account, such as Hotmail, Shaw or Telus email.

Blog or email? part 2

I think the blog is useful for providing information to the public as well. But would the public just want important info via the library homepage? In a disaster situation, would it be best to have current info in the most easily accessible spot? I do think the blog would be great for ongoing, quick updates of progress, and the whole recovery process. Because you can access past blogs, the public could get a complete picture of what has been going on. I do think that one great benefit is how easy it is for staff to access and add comments to.