A disaster plan for your place of work is something you absolutely must have...but hope you never have to use. Alas, since 9/11 and certainly because of all the natural disasters we've faced in the ensuing years, there is no shortage of information out there for whoever gets stuck with...uh, is tasked with the responsibility of preparing a disaster plan. And we found a site we particularly like.
The search process leads you through several steps. First you select, via a dropdown menu, a state or multiple states. (Canada and Delhi are also options.) You can ignore the dropdown manual and simply check the box at the bottom of the page if you want to do a national search. When you click "Next Page," you are taken to a page where you can choose the types of resources you're looking for -- experts, supplies and/or services -- via checkboxes. Click "Next Page" again and you'll see a two dropdown menus. The one at the top, for services and supplies, allows you to specify what types of services and/or supplies you're looking for -- e.g., bags and boxes, air drying, computer data recovery, fumigation, odor removal, etc. ("All" is also an option.) If you're looking for an expert, use the menu at the bottom to specify the area or areas of expertise -- e.g., appraising, furniture restoration, mold, photographs, etc. Then click "Submit."
Your search results are presented in CSV format, which can be imported into a spreadsheet "for easy updating of your institution's disaster plan."
The site also includes a short, annotated list of links to WWW Disaster Planning Resources, including the two mentioned above as well as the Library of Congress Preservation Directorate's Emergency Preparedness site and SOLINET (Southeastern Library Network), whose Preservation Department has put together an awesome collection of Preservation & Access resources. There's also a vendor database here, with fewer -- albeit some different -- search options available from a long dropdown menu.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
