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The purpose of this paper is to describe risk and protective factors for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) experienced over a 1.5-year period among both frontline and “non-traditional” responders to the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand.

A longitudinal survey administered to Christchurch workers with referents from the city of Hamilton at 6, 12 and 18 months after the 2011 earthquake. Potential risk and protective determinants were assessed by questionnaire items at baseline and over time, the outcome being PTSD as assessed by the PTSD Checklist-Civilian version. A longitudinal latent class analysis identified groups with similar trajectories of PTSD.

A total of 226 individuals, 140 (26 per cent) from Christchurch and 86 (16 per cent) from Hamilton, participated at baseline, 180 at 12 and 123 at 18 months, non-traditional responders forming the largest single group. Two latent classes emerged, with PTSD (21 per cent) and without PTSD (79 per cent), with little change over the 18-month period. Class membership was predicted by high scores in the Social Support and Impact of Events scale items, Health-related Quality of Life scores being protective. PTSD scores indicative of distress were found in females, and predicted by burnout risk, behavioural disengagement and venting.

Non-traditional responders should be screened for PTSD. Social support should be considered with the promotion of adaptive coping mechanisms.

The strength was longitudinal follow-up over an 18-month period, with demonstration of how the potential determinants influenced the course of PTSD over time.

The role of first responders in mitigating the effects of earthquakes is vital. Unlike other disasters, earthquakes are not single events, and exposure to dangerous and trauma-inducing events may be ongoing. Understanding how first responders cope in the face of such conditions is important, for both their own well-being as well as the general public whom they serve. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using questionnaires, this study measured posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), psychological resilience, and reactive coping styles in a sample of first responders active during the 2011 Canterbury earthquake in New Zealand.

The prevalence of PTSD was similar to that reported in the literature. Psychological resilience, but not disaster exposure, was found to be associated with PTSD. Maladaptive coping strategies best predicted resiliency, but there were significant gender differences.

These findings can inform those managing first responder disaster workers through the consideration of preventive and treatment interventions.

OUR fifty‐ninth volume is opened by this issue of the Library World, which has survived longer than any other independent library periodical. Some reflections, which may indeed seem repetitive, seem to be natural in the circumstances. We have a sense of gratitude to the number of readers, who as writers and subscribers have sustained us so long and will we trust continue to do so. From the first we have adhered closely to the thesis that our business was with the conduct of libraries and the activities, even personal ones, of librarians but not with their private affairs. We have endeavoured to initiate and to describe methods many of which are now commonplace in their acceptance. Thus J. D. Brown our founder and first Editor published in this his series on charging systems; Louis Stanley Jast his serial on his own cataloguing methods; Dr. E. A. Baker made known his views on the annotation of books; J. D. Stewart and Berwick Sayers wrote for those pages their study, afterwards published as the book The Card Catalogue—these are a few examples. The lighter forms of librarianship writing may be said to have been initiated in this country in our pages, for example the reports of the Pseudonyms' meetings which, it must be confessed, have a vague relation only to what actually took place at them; and the over‐thirty years' serial, Letters on Our Affairs, initiated in 1913 by one who became a world famous librarian, established, especially in its first decade, this style of critical writing which has had so many imitators.