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One of the largest floods in Iran happened in Nowruz in 2019, during which torrents of rain, flooding of rivers, landslides and the destruction of dams caused floods and led to financial losses and loss of life in 25 provinces of Iran. During and after the flood, 39 public libraries were closed, three libraries were evacuated and one was completely destroyed.

Despite the damage that occurred in the libraries, the preventive measures had been taken by many of them to reduce the whole damage. In addition, after the flood, responsible organizations including Iran Public Libraries Institution, the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults and the Cultural and Art Organization of Municipality and the Mosques and Cultural Center, as well as other relief and social teams, and even people performed activities to reduce the negative impacts caused by the flood.

This article reviews these activities and their effectiveness. In the end, “the development of a plan for public libraries in natural and social crises” is proposed and the reasons for its necessity are discussed.

This article reviews these activities and their effectiveness. In the end, “the development of a plan for public libraries in natural and social crises” is proposed and the reasons for its necessity are discussed.

This paper aims to highlight the damage suffered by the prominent libraries of Kashmir during September 2014 floods. The work provide an insight about the response and recovery measures being taken during and after the floods respectively in ten prominent libraries of Jammu & Kashmir [six Academic libraries (S.P. College Library, Women’s College Library, Govt. Degree College Library – Bemina, Amar Singh College Library, Gandhi Memorial College Library and College of Education Library); three Special libraries (J&K Academy of Art, Culture & Languages Library – Srinagar, Govt. Medical College Library – Srinagar and J&K High Court Library) and one Public library (Sri Pratap Singh library)].

A variety of data collection tools and techniques such as interview, questionnaire, observation, etc., were used to collect the data. The collected data have been tabulated and analyzed to derive meaningful conclusions and findings as per the set objectives of the study.

The results reveal that although libraries in Kashmir are prone to disasters like floods; yet, none of the library seems to be prepared to bear or cope such a disaster. The findings provide a gloomy picture of libraries when it comes to the measures being taken by these libraries during and after the floods to protect their resources. The paper highlights the inefficiency and incapability of libraries (in terms of disaster management) by finding that most of the libraries are without a disaster response and recovery plan as well as a disaster response and recovery team. The study recommends that some tangible measures if taken can save precious resources hosted in libraries.

The current study can help the stakeholders to chalk out scientific and systematic policy and plans for library and information centers that can be executed with minimum of fuss and anarchy.

The study offers working knowledge to library professional on ground for effective management of assets and resources in pre- and post-disaster scenario.

This paper aims to describe the experience of the largest among many academic libraries in New Orleans severely impacted by Hurricane Katrina. In this case, at Tulane University, a remarkable early effort was undertaken to save collections and stabilize flooded library buildings. Other daunting challenges followed.

The paper reports observations on critical aspects of the library's recovery, which was still ongoing at the time of this writing more than two years after the hurricane.

The paper draws preliminary conclusions about disaster planning and response to actual disasters.

The event covered maybe unprecedented in many ways even apart from its scale, since its location was a major city that was almost entirely evacuated apart from military personnel. Effective disaster response is a context sensitive and complex undertaking. In this case special problems arose initially in just responding to the scene and later in ways connected to the staggering scope of the damage to the region surrounding. Nonetheless, tapping the expertise and resources of a skilled disaster mitigation company, Tulane and its library were able to stage a broad recovery effort.

In November 2001, Scott Carlson, in the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote an article on library use titled “The deserted library: As students work online, reading rooms empty out—leading some campuses to add Starbucks” (Carlson, 2001). The essence of this chapter is that many librarians, facing dramatic declines in library gate counts resulting from the wealth of electronic resources accessible remotely, were beginning to move away from traditional conceptions of the library as primarily a repository for print collections. Carlson describes the “tough sell” that the Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville had experienced when planning a $19.5 million library addition in the mid-1990s. In response librarians had begun “fighting back” with “plush chairs, double-mocha lattes, book groups, author readings.” Still, no one knew whether these stratagems would enhance learning or bring its readers back.

Presents interim findings of a year‐long project examining disaster management policy and practices in British libraries and suggests areas which should be covered in a disaster training programme, having drawn on the experience of librarians, archivists, museum officers, heritage organizations, disaster salvage and recovery companies, commercial binders, fire service officers, loss adjusters and local authority insurers. Refers to the possibility of inter‐library co‐operation. Concludes that all libraries and information centres need to take practical measures to minimize the risk of disaster and be prepared to react quickly and effectively should a disaster occur. Disaster training is therefore an essential requirement of any disaster management programme.

IN this and subsequent numbers we are issuing an art supplement devoted to the subject of Library Architecture. Sheffield's new library system is the first to be dealt with, followed by Exeter, Dagenham, Croydon, Burnley, Hornsey, Bolton, Halifax, and others. The importance of library planning for the modern librarian cannot be overestimated, seeing the great need for remodelling old buildings and for providing new ones for new areas of population. The spread of population over the country is the most remarkable phenomenon of the age in which we live; there are now flourishing towns in places where ten years ago corn was growing. The old idea of one library in a town has given place to library provision which in some places approximates in its numbers of “agencies” to that which is frequent in America. So we get the need for many types of building, and hope to describe a number of them in this series.

The goal of this column is not to argue the pros and cons of digital archiving, or to propose solutions to its problems, but to describe it as a research subject and a social phenomenon.

This column relies on cultural anthropology, in particular the approach that Clifford Geertz championed, and for cultural anthropology, language and its social context matter.

Archiving systems abound with competing claims about effectiveness. Transparency and evidence of public testing is rare, with a few exceptions. The lack of public testing does not mean that systems do less than they claim, but it does mean that libraries, archives and museums need to press for proof if they want to have confidence in the product.

When betting on the future, these cannot be certainty, but bets placed should be based on knowledge.

The article examines reasons why libraries do not provide information relevant to the satisfaction of material needs. Issues examined in the context of global poverty include: what is relevant information? the relation between social poverty and information poverty; users and their information needs; the class struggle and its influence on information provision; content and language of information. It concludes that the question of relevance of information is related to the question of equality in the distribution of information between different classes. There cannot be information equality unless there is equality in ownership of economic resources and political power. The information struggle for equality and relevance is directly related to the struggle for economic and political equality. The challenge is to make all working people librarians, and to make all librarians workers. Only then will real power in the information field return where it belongs ‐ to the people. Only then will questions of relevance and equality be resolved.

This morning Mr. Broad gave a clear picture of the scope and organization of a technical library service, and Lord Verulam and Dr. Topping have shown the part played by a library in the field of education. We shall now examine the prospects of co‐operation between technical colleges and local industry on library services.