Webinar: Disaster Recovery for Electronic Records

Jobi: When I heard that SAA (Society of American Archivists) was presenting a webinar about disaster planning for electronic records I thought it would be an excellent learning opportunity for the collections staff and collections interns. What I discovered in the end is that there is yet another hole in our EPP (Emergency Preparedness Plan) and I need to develop a clearly written and fully executable plan in the event of an emergency. While the EPP includes the steps to take to recover the objects, archives, photographs and the buildings for water, fire or smoke damage (and steps to mitigate the potential for these types of damage in the first place), computer files and electronic records are not addressed in the plan. At all. Ugh! More work for me. But, I guess it is always good to discover flaws in the plan before you need to use it in a true emergency. Fortunately, William W LeFevre, the Reference Archivist at Wayne State University who did the presentation, provided a good blue print to follow.

Passersby wonder what everyone is doing in Jobi's office

Julie: The disaster recovery seminar produced useful information that I didn't know before on how to preserve data in the event of flooding--did you know that dvds, cds and even flash drives should be kept wet and rinsed in distilled water? After it air dries, the data may not be lost after all.

Interns watch the webinar

Brittney: I participated in a webinar about disaster planning, specifically about electronic records. I think it was an important webinar because even though the museum has an extensive disaster plan, salvaging electronic records is not currently included. The webinar discussed developing a disaster plan as well as disaster recovery, all very important topics, especially because the museums records and collections are going to increasingly be electronic.

Jobi talks about the flaws in our existing Emergency Plan

Kristin: I attended the "Electronic Records and Disaster Planning" webinar with Intern Wrangler Jobi, and two fellow interns. It was very informative and reminded me of some of the issues covered in a Digital Preservation class I took this past Spring semester. I learned that it is important to have a Disaster Recover Plan for electronic records because many types of storage media are not very stable.

Everyone is excited to learn about disaster recovery for electronic records!