Case Study of American Public Libraries' Response to Major Emergencies

Subjects: Library Science，Information Science >> Information Science submitted time 2023-04-01 Cooperative journals: 《图书情报工作》

Huang Guobin Huang Lian

Abstract： [Purpose/significance] This paper explored American public libraries' experience in dealing with different types of major emergencies in various service arrangements, so as to provide reference for public libraries in China if similar incidents would unfortunately happened.[Method/process] By comprehensively reviewing the response of public libraries to major social emergencies, work can be divided into two categories:inner continuous business and external social service. As for social service work, we classified the selected cases according to the source of emergencies, and discussed the pattern and content of which under the two environments of reality and network after different types of major emergencies occurrence.[Result/conclusion] From the perspective of the source of emergencies, social service under natural disasters or social problems can compensate for the losses, while social service under social problems can also contain the adverse consequences of disasters in the short-term emergency response. From the perspective of the environment of providing service, when facing emergencies, the public library gradually presents the trend of shifting the focus of work from the reality to the network. In addition, from the perspective of the types of public libraries, large public libraries have the characteristics of macro scheduling, while small and medium public libraries have the characteristics of serving local people. Based on the above analysis results, this paper puts forward corresponding suggestions for public libraries in China to deal with similar situations.

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