The US Public Library Response to Natural Disasters: A Whole Community Approach

Authors

  • Christine Hagar Dominican University

Abstract

This paper highlights how public libraries in the US increasingly play a central role in communities during natural disasters. It argues that as part of community-wide planning for disaster preparedness and response, public libraries are well situated to partner with emergency management and other agencies to meet community needs pre and post disasters, thereby strengthening community resilience.

Author Biography

Christine Hagar, Dominican University

Chris Hagar is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Library & Information Science, Dominican University River Forest, USA where she teaches courses in community informatics, crisis informatics and research methods. She holds a PhD. in Library & Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), USA. Chris’s research explores how communities manage, organize and disseminate information in crisis and emergency situations. Prior to working at Dominican University, Chris was Director of Library Development for an international NGO, INASP where she managed a UNESCO information literacy project in the South.Caucasus and facilitated a library and  information science curriculum review project at the University of Dar-es-Salam,Tanzania.Chris worked as a lecturer at:  the School of Library & Information Science, San Jose State University, Ca.,USA; the International Centre for Information Management Systems and Services, University of Nicholas Copernicus, Torun, Poland, and at the Department of Information Studies, Northumbria University UK. Chris has worked in the USA and UK as an academic librarian and as a consultant with the British Council and the UK Department for International Development. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs, UIUC.

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Published

2014-12-19

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 1 (2014): Volume 21, Number 1

Section

Articles

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