Tag Archives: Collections

Putting IFLA’s Risk Register to Work

IFLA’s Risk Register works to help prevent the loss of documentary heritage collections of all kinds. It is a record of collections, combined with a suite of tools to help collection owners recognise risks and take steps towards risk reduction.

By recording information regarding irreplaceable documentary heritage collections, we are better prepared help secure their safety in the event of a human-caused or natural disaster. While information sharing is critical to allow for rapid response to disaster, the Risk Register itself is strictly confidential. Only when necessary would IFLA share this information with our official partners in cultural property protection, such as Blue Shield International and UNESCO.

Who is the Risk Register for?

The Risk Register is for institutions holding documentary heritage collections – big and small. These collections can be of value to a local community or on a national, regional, or international scale.

If you are holding a collection that you feel might be facing risk from natural disaster, conflict, or simply feel that you don’t know enough about risk reduction planning, this can help you find solutions.

Why use the Risk Register?

Complex threats can be better faced with the support of a network.

By registering a collection, you help ensure that it is known about in the face of disaster or conflict, and relevant actors can do what they can to help. If national infrastructures are weak – or indeed if the risk of harm to collections comes from governments themselves – using the register may be helpful.

Meanwhile, connecting documentary heritage collection owners to resources wherever they may be helps manage risks in advance. The Risk Register also compiles tools, guidelines, and advice from international experts to help inspire and inform action to safeguard your collection.

What if my collection is already registered?

The Risk Register does not aim to be an exhaustive list of all documentary heritage collections, and is strictly optional for collection owners and managers. If your collection is adequately covered on a national or other register, you are certainly not obliged to register it here as well.

Perhaps instead, you might want to share this information with collection holders in your network who are not eligible to be included on an alternative register.

How it Works

The IFLA Risk Register is comprised of three stages: Recognise, Register, and React.

Recognise: Do you recognise the risks that might be present for your collection? This step will provide tools and resources to get started assessing risk and creating a risk management plan.

Register: Having a properly catalogued collection is vital for risk reduction. Here you can begin the application process for inclusion on the IFLA Risk Register.

React: No matter your capacity level, there are most likely some steps you can take now to help reduce risk. This step provides tools, resources, and guidance to help.

 

A Guide to Taking Action

We need your help to safeguard the world’s documentary heritage. By registering as many collections as possible, we can more effectively identify when collections may be in danger and inform rapid-response and recovery efforts.

Step 1: Consider Collections within Your Institution

Are there risks present that could put your institution’s irreplaceable collections in danger? Be sure to consider the risk factors in your region for the following:

  • Natural disaster (hurricanes, tsunamis, flooding)
  • Civil unrest, armed conflict
  • Fire and accidents
  • Theft and trafficking of cultural property

For resources on assessing risk, see The Risk Register: Recognise.

Take Action:

 

Step 2: Raise Awareness in your Network

Your network in your country and region is an invaluable resource for connecting collection-owners with the Risk Register.

Take action:

Help promote the Risk Register as a resource for documentary heritage collection holders. Share resources in your network to assist in risk assessment and disaster planning. See The Risk Register: Recognise for tools.

  • Post the link to the Risk Register on your website (see sample text below!)
  • Share information on the Register on your social media and other communication channels

Step 3: Proactively connect Collection-Holders

Your knowledge of local and regional documentary heritage collections and stakeholders can help the Risk Register be its most effective.

Take action: 

Are you aware of collections within your country or region that could benefit from inclusion on the Risk Register? Reach out to the collection holders directly or put them in touch with IFLA HQ (claire.mcguire@ifla.org) for more information and support during the registration process.

Consider:

  • Think about collections that are not listed on the Memory of the World list, or otherwise registered on national-level registries. Are they at risk of being forgotten? Consider them as a priority.
  • Does your region have documentary heritage collections, such as manuscript libraries, that are held in private or family collections? Could sharing information about the IFLA Risk Register be a way to expand your relationship with these collection-owners?

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Sample Messaging – News or Website

Title: Discover IFLA’s Risk Register

During natural or human-caused disasters, information sharing is vital in order to prevent unnecessary losses, but also challenging. The International Federation of Library Associations and institutions (IFLA) Risk Register helps identify irreplaceable documentary heritage collections. In the event of a disaster, this means that the information necessary to help secure their safety is immediately available to those who can help.

Registering your documentary heritage collection can be used to inform rapid-response and recovery efforts. IFLA does not make this information public, but, when necessary, will share with official cultural property protection partners such as UNESCO and Blue Shield International.

How it works

The IFLA Risk Register is comprised of three stages: Recognise, Register, and React.

  1. Recognise: Do you recognise the risks that might be present for your collection? This step will provide tools and resources to get started assessing risk and creating a risk management plan.
  2. Register: Having a properly catalogued collection is vital for risk reduction. Here you can begin the application process for inclusion on the IFLA Risk Register.
  3. React: No matter your capacity level, there are most likely some steps you can take now to help reduce risk. This step provides tools, resources, and guidance to help.

Who is the Risk Register For?

The Risk Register is for institutions holding documentary heritage collections – big and small. These collections can be of value to a local community or on a national, regional, or international scale. If you are holding a collection that you feel might be facing risk from natural disaster or conflict, or simply feel that you need to know more about risk reduction planning, this can help you find solutions.

Find out more online here: The IFLA Risk Register

 

The 10-Minute International Librarian #6: Celebrate an item in your collection

Libraries have a strong history of cooperation and partnerships.

With no single institution able to acquire and preserve everything, we have worked together for centuries to preserve and share materials, for the benefit of users.

Long before the internet, libraries were enabling information to flow around the world in support of education, research and access to culture.

This role is as vital as ever, especially given that so many items in library collections being rare or unique.

Through ensuring their preservation and accessibility, each library contributes to achieving the missions of the field globally.

By highlighting these, you not only underline the importance of your work, but also that of the library field as a whole.

So for our 6th 10-Minute International Librarian exercise, celebrate an item from your collection.

Ideally, if copyright and ethical concerns permit, share a photo on social media and a description, or even a full digitised copy.

Let others know about the treasures you are safeguarding for the future!

 

This idea relates to the IFLA Strategy! Strategic Direction 3, Key Initiative 2: Support Virtual Networking and Collections.

As we publish more ideas, you will be able to view these using the #10MinuteInternationalLibrarian tag on this blog, and of course on IFLA’s Ideas Store (especially Opportunity 7)! Do also share your ideas in the comments box.

4 Days to Human Rights Day: Libraries as Champions of Free Expression

Libraries, Free Expression and Free Access to Information

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Freedom of access to information and freedom of expression is guaranteed under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR). It provides a powerful basis for efforts to ensure the free flow of information.

As IFLA has argued, access to information is at the foundation of successful development policies, by ensuring not only that everyone can make better choices themselves, but can also take part in collective decision-making.

As with all human rights, constant work is needed to support their realisation, and ensure that people are not missing out. It is perhaps not by accident that within a year of the agreement of the Universal Declaration, the UNESCO Public Library Manifesto was also signed, stressing the importance of everyone having access to a place where they could learn and grow, without discrimination. Libraries have, arguably, become symbols of a societal commitment to freedom of access to information.

But what about their role around free speech? The original Public Library Manifesto argues that libraries ‘should not tell people what to think about, but […] should help them decide what to think about’.

Yet this element of libraries’ work is perhaps less known, and indeed can get lost behind the stereotype of libraries as quiet places, more focused on consumption, not creation, of knowledge and ideas.

This blog will look at two ways in which libraries are involved in linking together the two elements of Article 19, and indeed can be as strong a force in promoting free expression as they are in promoting access to information.

 

Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Libraries have a strong vested interest in free expression. Without the production of varied new books, articles and other materials, librarians will find it harder to develop diverse collections responding to the needs and interest of their communities.

For example, in order to serve users who belong to marginalised groups or communities, libraries may well require books that talk about their experience, and their concerns. Yet if writers are not allowed to take these perspectives, or approach these subjects, the supply of books dries up, and libraries cannot fulfill their mission.

In turn, by giving access, libraries can ensure that these works are read, and so help their authors reach more people than otherwise would be possible.

Initiatives such as Banned Books Week bring these two elements of Article 19 together by highlighting the impact of  censorship both on the ability of library users to choose what they want to read, and the ability of writers to have their voices heard.

 

Towards Convergence

Seeing free expression and access to information as two sides of the same coin nonetheless implies a binary view of the world – that there are some people who produce, and some who consume knowledge.

While this may have been true when publishing a book or communicating views required expensive equipment and infrastructure, this is no longer the case. It has never been easier or cheaper to produce an article or book, or record a new work, and then share it with the world.

Indeed, there is a strong argument that the most effective form of access to information is when someone is able not only to find, understand and use information, but also create and share it.

Through the production of new information, not only do individuals fully realise the potential of the information they have, but others benefit from the results. The results of these new possibilities are already visible through the huge variety of content and ideas available on the internet.

Here too, libraries have a role.

Many have long encouraged activities such as creative writing, but now are branching into maker spaces and other means of promoting creativity. Supporting the application of tools such as text and data mining on library materials allows for new research. And through Wikipedia editathons and community archiving, they are helping under-represented groups become creators themselves.

 

The summary of the first phase of IFLA’s Global Vision sets out that libraries should be champions of intellectual freedom. This implies breaking away from stereotypes, from the idea that libraries are only really about access. But it is a necessary break, and an opportunity to realise fully the potential of our institutions as drivers of development.