Case Study: Academic libraries operate under increasingly conflicting pressures for staff, storage and resources for materials and users. In this case a unique, mainly historical, archive had been built up from the early period when the theory of fibre optics was developed before wider commercial applications were recognized. The collection was initially housed in the main library but was moved to the fifth floor of a little-used building on the edge of the campus, on the working assumption that ‘the collection was hardly used’.

During building works, an electrical fire caused extensive damage to the basement of the building where the archive was housed and many documents suffered water and smoke damage. Immediately after the fire, messages of sympathy and support arrived from universities and colleagues around the world. But later, on reflection, questions were asked about the lack of a disaster recovery plan. The University Librarian expressed regret but blamed the Estates and Buildings department for not having warned the external contractors. The collection’s librarian and curator, whose hours had been cut and worked only part-time, was devastated by the fire, and the almost total destruction of a quarter of a century of cataloguing and library work. She suffered a nervous breakdown and was granted six months’ extended sick leave. A firm with specialist skills in preservation and conservation was called in to attempt to recover some of the least damaged material. A part-time periodicals librarian was seconded to the archive to liaise with academic libraries worldwide who had offered to co-operate in building up the collection. A leading telecoms company (which had made profits from fibre optics) offered to sponsor the re-siting of the collection within the science park, under new and secure conditions.

The editors comment...

The curator of this special collection had a duty as a professional librarian not only to catalogue the collection but also to be mindful of the overall preservation requirements of the collection {9} {B11}, which she knew to be unique. For its part, the library’s senior management team, which drew up the original disaster management and recovery plan, was negligent when it included only those parts of the library housed in the main academic library. Remorse and regret expressed ‘after the event’, whilst well meaning, reflect badly on the professionalism of the disaster planning working party who failed to carry out a full risk assessment of all the collections in the library’s care. It is not the role of the Estates and Buildings team.

This case study demonstrated that it is not only short-sighted, and unprofessional, to limit the thinking of the librarian’s remit to ‘cataloguing in her corner’ {12} {C2}; it is also a failure to exercise one’s professional skills and make best use of limited resources. In this, case the university would have been better advised to take preventative measures, including: scanning or digitising some of the rarer or more fragile material; seeking earlier sponsorship for a ‘fibre optics centre’; making sure all material in the library’s care was included in the disaster recovery plan. In the event large amounts of staff time and physical resources were used in the ‘damage limitation’ after the fire; the parent institution (the university) received bad press publicity (with some negative comment aimed at ‘library staff’ {2}), and the curator’s union is taking up her case under the Health and Safety Act for failure to ensure a safe environment and for the mental scars resulting from the trauma of the fire.

Created: v0.9 09-Jun-07 : SS

Revised: v1.0 02-Sep-07 : JG-T