When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Beth Patin was a school librarian. Over the next five years, as she helped rebuild her library, she started thinking critically about the role libraries could play in their communities during emergencies and disasters.
"Where are the instruction manuals about how libraries can immediately respond to their communities," Patin wondered. "There really wasn't anybody doing this kind of work."
She decided to pursue a doctorate at the iSchool, in part to answer this question. There she met Maria Garrido, Research Assistant Professor in the Technology & Social Change Group, who had studied telecenters and their role in providing access to information and communications technology, but had not considered their potential role in a crisis situation.
The two teamed up for a research project funded by Microsoft and the Global Impact Study, a project co-funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Patin and Garrido spent a year researching the role of libraries and telecenters in the aftermath of the 2009 earthquake and tsunami in Chile.
Their initial findings were published on February 27, 2012, two years to the day when the massive earthquake struck.
Disaster response in Chile: The critical role of libraries and telecenters documents how these organizations, using local initiative and improvised infrastructure, provided communication and information access that fulfilled crucial emergency functions; offered space for people needing refuge; and often relocated their equipment to other locations if their own building was damaged.
Patin found similarities between New Orleans and Chile. The libraries and telecenters recognized and responded to their community needs, in spite of not having emergency training.
"If your complete infrastructure is destroyed, where do you go? FEMA forms must be filled out online, as do most insurance forms. Where do you go to get your resources" explained Patin.
"In Chile, it wasn't people in the communities accessing the information, as there was no time for that. The entire mobile phone network was down," added Garrido. "It was the librarians and telecenter staff who located and aggregated all the information from the government websites, made sense of it, and distributed the information through hanging posters in churches to knocking on doors."
The pair highlighted one particular finding: Libraries and telelcenters are important not just because they respond to emergencies as non-first responders, but because they serve as social spaces.
The physical structures of libraries and telecenters in Chile were destroyed, but they were re-established in tents or pubs or in staffer's homes where the vital services could continue. As people gathered to access these services, they shared experiences with each other and were able to start the healing process.
"These spaces are social technical spaces and that is what makes them unique. Librarians used Facebook and Twitter to help families locate people, but it was the ability for people to gather together in a social space that made the difference," noted Garrido.
Patin, now a third year doctoral candidate, would like this work and her future work to illustrate that libraries are critical infrastructure. "I would love it if libraries would align themselves with local government agencies as powerful critical infrastructure that can play an important role in emergencies."
She pointed to FEMA's 2011 designation of libraries as critical infrastructure as a step in the right direction. The FEMA designation allows libraries the ability to apply for funds for emergency planning.
Garrido and Patin's paper, "Dynamic Library Services during Extreme Events: the case of the 2010 Earthquake and Tsunami in Chile" has been selected for presentation at the American Library Association 2012 Annual Conference in Anaheim, California.
To read the publications, visit the TASCHA website.