Emergency Management and Service Support: Practices at the Illinois Fire Service Institute Library

Ruan, Lian; Ehrenhart, David S.; Richardson, Diane; Liu, Shuyi

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/108921 Copy

Description

Title

Emergency Management and Service Support: Practices at the Illinois Fire Service Institute Library

Author(s)

• Ruan, Lian
• Ehrenhart, David S.
• Richardson, Diane
• Liu, Shuyi

Issue Date

2020-10

Keyword(s)

• Emergency management
• Firefighters
• First responders
• Archives
• Knowledge management
• Metadata
• Digital libraries
• Databases
• Library services
• Special libraries
• Special collections

Abstract

The Illinois Fire Service Institute (IFSI) Library provides fire and emergency library and information assistance and services to the Institute's instructional staff, students, Illinois fire departments and firefighters, and other fire/ emergency-related users in the successful and effective performance of their jobs. It is a member of a worldwide consortium of fire and emergency libraries­-inFIRE (international network for Fire Information and Reference Exchange), and a member of Illinois Heartland Library System. The paper introduces the IFSI Library's practices in supporting emergency management and services in the fields of fire service, reference service, and training programs. As a statewide leader, the IFSI Library preserves and shares fire history resources, including the archives of significant fires and emergencies in Illinois history, which summarizes disasters in Illinois history and is intended to educate both fire service professionals and the general public about these events and the lessons learned from them, IFLODD (the Illinois Firefighter Line of Duty Deaths Digital Image Collection Database) which includes three deaths related to COVID-19), and the Illinois Fire Medal of Honor and Medal of Valor Database. In addition, the library provides digital subject guides on various first responder-related topics, such as Wildland Urban Interface Firefighting and Ethanol and the Fire Service, and offers the biennial Library Disaster Recovery Workshop for librarians. The IFSI Library also provides resources to the School of Information Sciences (The iSchool at Illinois) about fire safety for the library buildings course. As a world-recognized library, the IFSI Library has created a librarian position for international outreach services to support IFSI's services globally. The library supports visiting scholars from other countries to study in the field of emergency management. It also supports IFSI' s training programs delivered to China by providing translation assistance for Chinese first responders.

Publisher

Shanghai Scientific and Technological Literature Press

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/108921

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