IT News reports: When flood waters threatened to breach the banks of the Brisbane River last Wednesday, the State Library of Queensland looked to be one of its first casualties. Fortunately for the library and Queensland’s bookworms, management had a well-developed disaster recovery plan that went beyond simple data backup and that included all the minutiae of surviving catastrophe so that librarians didn’t have to make it up as they went along.
As the water started flowing into the basement levels, the library’s client services director Rory McLeod and staff swung into action.
“It was about following basic disaster procedures,” McLeod said.
“Once we knew water encroached into the basements we knew there was a chance that we would lose power so it was about getting [backup power] checked and online and taking down essential systems as quickly as we could.”
The library systems were replicated and a library principle is “lots of copies keeps stuff safe – so it’s quite easy for us to point people at different servers at other state libraries”, he said. The collections were safe and systems were being brought back online as staff returned.
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