engleski

Disaster and after. What have Croatian libraries learned about preservation and disaster management after the war experience?

Library collections today are facing many threats. Some of them have a slow but certain impact on library materials, others come suddenly and unexpectedly. No matter how the threats appear, or how they influence libraries, ability to safeguard and preserve their collections should always be sustainable. Regardless of what measures are taken to preserve collections, good organisation is the prerequisite for their efficiency. The key to achieving this goal lies in preservation management, policies that enable long-term planning and argumentative decision-making. One of the aspects of preservation planning is disaster management. Disaster management encompasses all management issues necessary to deal with incidents that threaten library buildings, collection, services and human lives. Disasters include natural catastrophes, floods, fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes, but also those caused by human effect such as war, armed conflict and terrorism. Technology dependent times bring new possible disasters. Changes in energy systems and lack of electricity supply endanger traditional library material but even more digital material that is useless without energy supply. It is evident that the future could bring many changes and the resources (mainly financial) necessary to preserve collections will become limited, so the prerequisite for sustainability of cultural heritage preservation is good organisation of available resources. The key question that motivated this work is how libraries that already faced consequences of disaster altered their preservation management practice. The 1991-1995 war in Croatia destroyed many libraries and their collections. The conclusions given in the Croatian professional literature of the 1990s showed unpreparedness and lack of disaster management. Are Croatian libraries today, twenty years later, better prepared? The aim of this work is to investigate the state of preservation management and disaster management policies and practice of Croatian libraries.

preservation; preservation management; disaster management; libraries; Croatia

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