Don’t Panic When the Tech Goes Down: A Strategy Guide for IT Emergencies at Libraries – Paperback

Why is digital disaster planning so often an afterthought at academic and public libraries? Perhaps it’s partially because it can be daunting to even decide where to begin, and equally nerve-wracking to contemplate being responsible for missing something that turns out to be critical. Offering a very human treatment of what can sometimes feel like a distant, sterile, and abstract type of threat, this book is an invitation not to panic. Panic springs most readily from the unknown; this guide, concise and relentlessly practical, is designed to remove that barrier. Inside you will find information about the kinds of IT emergencies your organization may face, clearly laid out and described, alongside implications, remediations, and recommendations for planning. You will learn about

• the technological aspects of planning for, surviving, and recovering from an IT disaster from physical damage caused by fire and water to handling power outages, hacking attempts, equipment failure, cloud or software outages, data loss, and other possible occurrences;
• disaster recovery basics in academic libraries, with specific and actionable steps that any library can perform;
• proactive measures you can take to ensure your academic library is more resilient when future disruptions occur;
• the unique technological realities of public libraries, which often lack a larger parent institution to rely on and are directly accountable to a myriad of stakeholders;
• common technology disasters at public libraries, with actionable advice on how library staff can plan for them, respond to them, and learn from them afterward; and
• important issues such as creating documentation, testing, training, safeguarding patron privacy, retaining the trust of your library’s users, and prioritizing the safety of library staff.