The Silver Lining: Recovering from the Shambles of a Disaster

In July 1997, half the collections at Morgan Library at Colorado State University were damaged by flood waters. Staff members found themselves overwhelmed in emergency disaster recovery, in designing innovative systems to recover damaged materials, and in creating emergency programs to serve library users during the disaster recovery period. In rebuilding its collections to developing new systems, in changing the institutional culture to bring greater collaboration and flexibility, in developing a handbook so that others could benefit from the libraryʹs experience-Morgan Library found the silver lining that grew out of what at first seemed a disaster of overwhelming proportions.