University Libraries And Community Preparedness For Natural Disasters: A Participatory Based Action Plan

Abstract

In this study, authors aimed to investigate that how far university libraries in India can contribute for building disaster preparedness. Primarily, the authors have identified three major components of disaster preparedness which are social, economic and environmental capital, and further tried to explore how these capitals can be achieved in pre, during and post disaster situation through the services of university libraries in India. Based on the theoretical conceptualization the study forwarded a model named as participatory approach based thematic model for the university library, encouraging more involvements, engagements and active participation from the users and local community. Further, the authors have made critical analysis and logical understanding to propose 16 action plan son the basis of the model that can be implemented through the services of university library in three different disaster situations, facilitating adaptive governance in the community for achieving disaster preparedness.