8 Planning Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery for Digital Assets
Figure 1.1 Likelihood vs. Severity Chart
your organization and why? One person may suggest a possible disaster, such
as a fi lter failure that causes a PR disaster that is unlikely to happen in your
library because you don’t use fi lters. Other disasters (and to be frank—this
will be most of them) will be possible, but range on a scale from “will defi -
nitely happen at some point” (such as getting a virus in the network) to “pos-
sible, but not terribly likely” (such as dealing with the aftermath of a comet
strike). One other criterion to consider in this ranking step is the severity of
the disaster. If a virus is very likely to happen, but is also very easy to manage,
it would have a high likelihood, but a low severity ranking. When you are
done, you should have a rough idea of what kind of disasters you should focus
on. In the chart shown in Figure 1.1, those would be the ones right at the top,
with high likelihood and high severity.
Finally, keeping up with what is going on around you in other libraries—
what kinds of disasters they are facing and what they are doing about them
is a great way to make sure you are prepared for just about anything. Read-
ing through articles that focus on how libraries came back from a disaster
can help you both determine likely disasters and provide some ideas for
planning for recovery from them. See the “Resources” section at the back
of this book for some articles that have excellent information on how vari-
ous communities recovered from diff erent kinds of disasters. Knowing your
community will help as well. If you are aware of the sentiments of your
particular community, you are less likely to end up on the wrong end of
a PR disaster than if you don’t keep track of the values and mores of your
community.
NO PLAN? YOU ARE NOT ALONE
In the Heritage Health Information 2005 report, “A Public Trust At Risk:
Th e Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America’s Collections,”
one of the statistics given for emergency and disaster plans of collecting
institutions (museums, libraries, archives) is that only 20 percent have a
plan in place and people trained to use it. Note that this report points out
that just having a plan isn’t enough. Having staff who know what the plan
