Category: Local Studies Toolkit

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It is important to build relationships with a wide circle of fellow professionals, so you can identify potential areas of joint working and refer enquiries to useful services. Local Studies staff also need an understanding and awareness of other heritage professionals’ practices, especially as the divisions between fellow heritage professionals are narrowing and users will not be aware that priorities, attitudes and training in these professions are quite different.

These can include visits, meetings and temporary exchanges in staff. Key groups include:

• Neighbouring collections, especially those with overlapping collections. These include collections both inside and outside your authority. Local networks of local studies librarians include:
  • LocScot
  • NE Heritage Group
• County Record Offices.
• Local Museums
• Family history societies
• Local history societies
• Archaeological services, especially the Site and Monuments Officers.

Other important relationships within your local authority network includes:

• Planning offices (Especially the Buildings Conservation Officer and the guys who produce all of the maps for the Council)
• Parks departments.
• IT
• Arts Development
• Conservators
• Communications & Social Media Officers.
• Tourist information officers
• Registrars and cemetery staff

You also need an understanding of roles of those organisations on the national stage. In England, Local Studies sits uneasily between the remits of the Arts Council and the National Archives, so an awareness of their priorities is important. The British Library also plays a key role and the Society of Antiquaries of London, the learned society for our area, also has some interesting resources.

There are a number of national heritage organisations you need to know about. These include:

• The Imperial War Museum, especially their Memorials Register:  War Memorials Register.
• Historic England, especially National Heritage List for England

Your local area history and traditions will also dictate which specialist regional and national heritage organisations you need to know about.

• Museum of English Rural Life (though they also have a lot of material on the growth of towns and cities, as they care for the archive of the Council for the Protection of Rural England)
• National Coalmining Museum

The Broader picture:

You also need a wider view of the library world, which is where CILIP Update and old friends from library school can help.

Further Reading

Martin Hayes, Sleeping wuth the enemy : co-operation between archivists and librarians in West Sussed, Local Studies Librarian, v.16(1) 1997, p.2-5

Local Studies Toolkit: Who uses a local studies collection

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A Service Business Continuity plan (BCP) provides a standardised business disruption plan for all services. The plan provides key service information to support the Head of Service (or nominated deputy) in returning the service to business as usual following a disruption. Larger collections may have a stand-alone policy, while smaller collections may find their plan is part of a service-wide policy. This can sometimes be deployed together with your emergency plan and there will be some overlap. But whereas the business continuity plan enables you to maintain your service during a period of disruption; an emergency is defined as any incident which cannot be contained, or which threatens any part of the Local Studies building / space or its holdings and therefore should be kept as a separate document (see Toolkit chapter on Emergency Planning).

The need for BCP has never been more apparent than during the Covid-19 pandemic, where Local Studies Libraries found themselves unable to provide direct access to their unique resources, but still managed to employ creative ways to continue engaging audiences and providing essential information. Other likely scenarios include loss of power supply, loss of IT and telephony networks, and adverse weather conditions.

Definition of Business Continuity

The definition of Business Continuity is the capability of the organisation to continue the delivery of products and services at acceptable predefined levels following a disruptive incident. It is a set of documented procedures that guide services to respond, recover, resume and restore to a predefined level of operation following a disruption.

Objectives of a BCP

A plan should:

• Establish key service information
• Detail the activation process for the plan
• Identify priority functions undertaken by the service and the resources and timescales associated with their recovery
• Outline the incident management procedures and key staff
• Show how a local studies service should coordinate its response with other library and organisational services to reduce business disruption.

Quick steps to create a BCP:

A basic BCP should contain the following elements:

• Create a contents sheet for quick reference
• Establish within your organisation what is the priority level of your service, this will determine how many days you can be without essential operations such as ICT, desk space etc.
• Who is the owner/s of the plan
• Create a distribution list to relevant staff
• List key contacts for your service – include both internal and external suppliers, with the most important during an emergency at the top.
• Activation – what are the steps in your organisation to activate your plan e.g. who do you need to inform, what is the escalation process. It is also worth keeping this as a separate quick reference document or card
• Communications – what are the key ways of communicating to your customers?
• Key functions – List the key functions of your service, prioritise them and then decide how long you can be without them
• Staff – list the points of risk if you lose staff and what is the contingency for this
• ICT – what are your key ICT requirements / software, e.g. library catalogue, payment devices; decide how long you can be without each piece. What are the short-term and long-term workarounds? e.g., if part or the whole of telecommunications are disrupted can you use emergency mobile phones / mobile hotspots etc; are there alternative hardcopy catalogues?
• Facilities – what are your workplace requirements? Can your team work elsewhere? If so what office requirements do you need – list the number of computers, desks, chairs etc.; what about specialist equipment – printers, scanners, card payment machines etc.
• Work from home – work out how many staff could work from home if needed or if this is feasible. Do they have access to all the equipment they require?
• Transport – list any specific transport requirements.
• Fuel – are there any staff who require priority access to fuel if there are shortages to enable them to carry out essential roles e.g. do you have a duty manager who needs to access your site on a daily or weekly basis to check buildings and ensure they are maintained?
• Scenario planning – list different scenarios and consider creating a flow chart of what might be affected, how you will respond e.g. to extreme weather event, pandemic; loss of: ICT,  energy supply,  essential supplier or partner, key staff, workspace, fuel.
• What is your worst case scenario? 
• Reputation  – Consider the effect on your organisation’s service loss – this will help you prioritise services
• Flow charts and diagrams – where possible think about creating charts and diagrams for responses and communications
• Templates – create standard templates / forms for providing situation reports and incident logs so they are ready to use

What should a BCP contain?

Below is a more detailed checklist of some of the things you may wish to consider and include in your plan:

Scope: The plan should enable your Local Studies service to continue to deliver priority functions, at a minimum acceptable level of service,  throughout a business disruption, as far as is reasonably practicable.

Links:  Your BCP should link to your Corporate BCP, your service Emergency Plan, local and corporate communications plans.

Activation: Who activates your BCP? The Head of Service or nominated deputy is usually tasked with this.

Where is advice available? For example, this might include departments within your own organisation such as an emergency planning team or incident room; external support such as software providers, suppliers, other libraries; CILIP and other professional networks.

What is the impact of an interruption to your service? It is useful to quickly supply information to stakeholders on the likely impact on your service and how the reduced services might impact on others that might rely on you, such as planning officers, rights of way teams and schools.

Details of key activities, with minimum number of staff needed for each function and timescale of when services should be re-started:This would include:

• Access to Local Studies collections
  • Place for study & tutoring
  • Meetings – formal & informal
  • Room hire
  • Volunteer projects
  • Activities & events for all ages
• Access to computers:
• Public access to the Internet via PCs and Wi-Fi
• Support to get online, access digital services
• Respond to requests for information
• Printing & photocopying

Details of key social outcomes, with minimum number of staff needed for each function: These may include

• Local Studies as a trusted source of information
  • Informal reassurance – place of safety
  • Community space
  • Overcoming social isolation
  • Delivering other LA and service priorities – e.g. for delivering core organisational goals such as well-being, essential information for daily lives, education

Essential information: Details of key information and how it can be accessed, including

• What documents will you need to access e.g. Policy documents, Service/ Team plans, Emergency Plan, Risk register
• Which partners do you rely on? Which partners rely on you? What is the regularity of contact – e.g. daily / weekly / monthly?
• Who are your Key contacts? Within the organisation this might include key staff, ICT, HR, Facilities Management; external contacts might include suppliers, contractors and partners.

Communications: How will you notify service users of a disruption to the service?

Help on activating and using the BCP: Think about creating an activation card or flow chart.

Model procedures to respond to likely scenarios:

• Loss of workspace
  • Do you need to provide a public service – how will you do this from alternative spaces?
  • Are there alternative locations where your service can be delivered? If so, what additional resources do you need to use this space, for example, do you need desks and chairs, computers, photocopiers, key resources?
  • Can some staff work from home?
  • What constraints are there preventing staff from working at a different location?

• Loss of public access
  • Are there alternative collections, such as in other libraries or the county archive, that customers could use if your main collection is unavailable?
  • Can staff access collections and provide a remote enquiry service?
  • Are there any online resources e.g. photo collections, family history collections, that can be highlighted and accessed at home? If there is a pay wall are there mechanisms to provide any free access?
  • What are the alternative ways to continue to engage with local communities, e.g. social media, podcasts and videos, blogs etc.
  • Do you have volunteers, if so, can they undertake work from home or alternative venues? How will you communicate with them?

• Loss of ICT  – computer technology and telephony.
  • What impact would a lack of access to the phone network have on your service?
  • Do you have phone lines that are essential in an emergency such as from strong rooms?
  • Do you have systems in place to maintain business without access to phones?
  • What alternative methods of communication, do you have access to, mobile phones etc
  • What systems are there in place to update messages to your website, can this be done remotely using a different network?
  • What services can you operate without access to the computer network?
  • Do you have systems in place to maintain business without access to the network?
  • What duties can staff and volunteers undertake without access to the network? If they are undertaking computerised tasks, how will you ensure that material is added to the normal systems once you regain access to them?

• Staff shortage / skills:
  • How many / which staff are needed to complete essential functions?
  • Are you dependent on staff with specialist knowledge? Can these skills be shared / what contingency / training is in place?
  • Do you have duty managers or staff with specific skills that can enable BCP to come into force?

What needs to happen when you activate your business continuity plan?

• Start a log of the incident and record the information on the options available, decisions on actions to take and justification of those decisions.
• Report details of activation, additional staff and resources to your organisational leads in emergency planning etc.
• Determine services to be provided / recovered in priority order e.g. do you need to prioritise access to physical collections, is browsing essential or can you create other ways to access material? Are online resources and access to digital a greater priority than physical access?
• Allocate staff to priority roles and notify all service staff of the disruption, identify additional staff e.g. can staff provide Local Studies service from other libraries, answer enquiries from home or via other mechanisms? What access do they need to Local Studies material?
• Consider whether the disruption will lead to local, regional or national media interest.
• Contact contractors / partner organisations / your own organisation’s services and inform them that you are activating your business continuity procedures.
• Identify gaps in critical service provision by checking with other Council services including other libraries, archives, museums etc., and partner organisations to ensure they are still able to deliver services.
• Provide mutual aid to other service areas, as required/requested.
• Consider messages that are required for the public e.g. opening times (if relevant) and where to send their enquiries.

Got something to add?

Do you have any comments, suggestions or updates for this page? Add a comment below or contact us. This toolkit is only as good as you make it.

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