Fall 2003 Update

Lawrence Reger, President of Heritage Preservation, spoke at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions 2003 Preconference "Preparing for the Worst, Planning for the Best: Protecting our Cultural Heritage from Disaster" this summer in Berlin, Germany. The meeting featured distinguished speakers from all over the world.

The program was designed to inform and enable library and archives administrators effectively to prepare for, react and respond to, and recover from all types of disasters. Reger's speech, "A Cooperative Approach to Emergency Preparedness and Response," featured the history and activities of the Heritage Emergency National Task Force. After an earthquake in California and major flooding in several states, National Heritage Emergency Task Force was established to help institutions prepare for and respond to emergencies and to ensure that they qualified for financial support from the federal government to help them recover from a disaster.

He noted that while the first response to any crisis is local, some emergencies affect more than just one community or are of such magnitude that federal and state governments have developed agencies to provide both personnel and financial assistance to help citizens recover from a disaster. Also important are mitigation efforts, such as:

• to offer and sometimes require efforts to eliminate conditions that are likely to lead to a disaster—for example, moving an entire community to above a flood plain zone
• to provide information, training, and financial assistance to help communities prepare for an emergency. An example is the proper way to board up building openings before a hurricane strikes.

Both, Reger said, are seen as an investment that in the long run will save lives and reduce the cost of repairs and reconstruction.

"If we are not prepared to prevent damage from emergencies, future generations will be the poorer for it," Reger said. "Emergency preparedness does not require significant amounts of personnel resources or money—mostly it requires persistence and perseverance."

Other speakers from the U.S. included Hilary Kaplan, Senior Conservator and Kathleen Ludwig, Senior Conservator, National Archives and Records Administration. For a complete list of speakers and the program, visit www.kb.nl/iflapreconf/.