Disaster Management in Libraries: a Study based on the Museum Library of Sri Lanka

Abstract

As far as human history is concerned, disasters have been occurred simultaneously and the libraries evolved in the society faced the same disaster issues that have been damaged to intellectual resources owing to the fact. Although disaster management plans have been prepared in collaboration with disaster management experts in many countries around the world to prevent and respond to such incidents, libraries in Sri Lanka are still not satisfied with disaster management's interest, contribution and the workload. The main objective of this study is to identify the physical resources and human resources which are vulnerable for disasters of the Museum Library of Sri Lanka and disaster management activities and to present a suitable disaster management plan. Other objectives of this study are to investigate why the management of the institute was not interested in developing a disaster management plan and to educate the library professionals on disaster management. The Museum Library of Sri Lanka is used as the sample. Techniques like the observation and interviews are used to gather primary data for the research. Data analysis is carried out using the Excel software. A disaster management plan can be proposed for the libraries to face any challenge and to prevent disasters. In that plan, preventing the disasters, main preparedness, responding, and reconciling are the components of such a plan. These factors are taken into account in the Disaster Management Planning Proposal for the Sri Lanka Museum Library.