 Welcome, everybody. I'm Lori Bell, and on behalf of my partner, Dr. Bill Fisher, we'd like to welcome you to this fall colloquium. On November 2nd and 3rd, we're pleased to announce we'll be having a Library 2.0 conference, and it's free, and we have a great website set up for it. So check that out. We have presenters from all over the world that will be presenting at this event. So today, we're really pleased to have Jeff Frank, who is an alumni of San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science. He graduated last spring with the Master in Library and Information Science. He's currently a software support specialist with the CMS project team at San Jose State. Before he came to San Jose State, he completed a certificate program at Idaho State in Geotechnologies. He's a native of Pennsylvania, and he holds a BA in History and Geography from Penn State. And today, Jeff is going to talk about his thesis and the research he conducted while working on the thesis. With all the major weather patterns we've been having, the tsunami in Japan and Hurricane Irene, his study of the impact of Hurricane Katrina is more relevant than ever. So, Jeff, welcome. We're really glad to have you, and I'll turn it over to you. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for coming in today. It's wonderful to see all of you. I see some folks here that I've seen here at various points. This is good. So thanks for coming in. As Lori mentioned, yes, I'm here to talk a little bit to give some perspective about my thesis today. I have to say it was a long process, but it was very rewarding, and I think this will be of benefit to people who are just curious to know about the process and the inner workings of compiling a thesis versus, say, the ePortfolio, the other culminating experience here to graduate from this list program. Also, I think this will be of use to students who are maybe on the fence about whether to do the thesis or the ePortfolio is the culminating experience. Obviously, I'm here to advocate that the thesis is the way to go. I think for who I am, for my research interests and how I approached the research material in my program, this is the best avenue for me. So I guess we could move along here. So let me go to the next slide. Hi. Okay. So there we are. So about me, just a couple of minor points. I live here in California. I live in Morgan Hill, which is a little south, about 10 miles south of San Jose, California here. And I do work at SJSU as Lori said. I work one floor up, so very convenient for me. And I did attend the SLIS program from fall 2007 until spring 2011. And I did graduate this past May with the thesis option. Also, before I go on, I think if anybody has any questions, if we can hold them to the end, that would be wonderful. I just want to kind of keep the flow going here and then anybody has any questions and comments. They can certainly ask them at the end. So let's get going here a little more. Okay. So here we go. This is my thesis topic. I took a little tweaking here with my committee and I. But they basically ended up being the impact of Hurricane Katrina on Gulf Coast libraries and their disaster planning. My goal here was to examine, as you can see here, the impact that Hurricane Katrina did have on the Gulf Coast library community in the most affected parts of southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi. And I was also looking at the role that existing disaster plans played in preserving select libraries, collections before, during, and after the disaster. Okay. So let's go to the next slide here. Oh, there we go. And I just wanted to just give a quote, quote, shout out, hate that terminology, to my thesis committee. Or as I said here, I would not be giving this presentation without their guidance. Dr. Debbie Hansen, she was my thesis committee chair and my thesis committee members, Dr. Susie Abert and Dr. Pat Franks. No relation. But it was just a wonderful experience working with Debbie, Susie, and Pat. I'll be forever in their debt and it was just wonderful working with them. I really learned a lot. So if we can just move on to the next slide, that would be great. Okay. So why did I choose this as a thesis topic? I've always been interested in disasters ever since I was a kid. I've always just been fascinated by them. Not that I look forward to them, nothing like that, but I've just been fascinated by them, as well as their impact on human society and throughout history. I've spent most of my life in northeastern Pennsylvania in the Wilkesbury area, Wilkesbury-Scranton area. And that part of the country tends to see some pretty extreme weather. I've encountered many blizzards. Severe thunderstorms, accompanying tornado scares, hurricanes, floods. You name it, really. Even drought. I remember in 1988, big drought that summer. It was pretty bad. And as a result, I did pick up an appreciation and a respect for this natural phenomenon. And another reason is that I was really appalled after watching the coverage of the media coverage of the recovery of the Gulf Coast as a result of Hurricane Katrina, how it overwhelmed the Gulf Coast and how the recovery just went just sluggish. And it was really inexcusable. And I think a lot of people, rightly so, were outraged at that. And I think I wanted to kind of be a voice for them in any way, in the small way that I could here. And honestly, I just knew that before starting as a SLIS student, as a result of that, since that was really the most talked about disaster in recent years at that point, I knew that that was what I wanted to focus on and its impact on the Gulf Coast libraries because I knew that part of the country is very vulnerable to flooding and natural disaster and hurricanes. So if we can move on to the next slide. Thank you. Okay, so I guess it comes down to why did I choose doing this over ePortfolio? It really was not a decision for me at all. I knew that these were the two options that I had to choose from and I did read through what would be required with ePortfolio and obviously what would be required with a thesis. And the ePortfolio just didn't really appeal to me. I kind of take a traditionalist view of graduate work and I just wanted to do a thesis, really, on what it comes down to. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this that was so really research intensive. And I can guarantee you my wife can definitely verify that this is all that I would be doing whenever I would be home, either that or discussing about it at any event. And I also wanted to contribute in the original body of research to the library and information scientist, excuse me, field. And finally, really, I just thought of such a lofty goal. I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and see if I could do it. And very fortunate for me, I did it. And I'm still kind of pinching myself every now and again thinking, did I actually do this? So, very happy with the result. Okay, we can go on to the next slide. All right, well, the research strategy, it wasn't something that, okay, I came up with a research strategy and by gum we're going to do it. It was something that certainly took some evolution. Most of it was there. And I really started writing about this topic even vaguely starting in my first semester in the fall of 2007 for Dr. Bill Fisher for Library 204. And it was just something as simple as, I'm just curious to see the impact of Hurricane Katrina on Gulf Coast Libraries. It wasn't particularly for the term paper for that class. And it wasn't particularly focused, I'm the first to admit that as Debbie, Susie, and Pat will certainly admit as well as time went on. But we certainly got it down to that point, but that's a little later. So my initial research strategy, it began in fall 2008 as a result of taking Library 285 with Dr. Debbie Hansen. And that was to incorporate several items. I was to look at the existing literature on Hurricane Katrina's impact on libraries as well as library disasters throughout history. Another component I wanted to include was the utilization of geographic information systems or GIS so that I could produce maps to visually demonstrate or actually visually illustrate, I should say, the impact of Hurricane Katrina on southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi libraries. And third, this is the thing that did have to end up changing, was I initially wanted to obtain firsthand oral histories from library professionals in the Gulf Coast region as a result of a research trip that was going to be planned for the fall of 2009. Sounds simple, right? Well, not so much. We can go to the next slide. So as time did go on over the course of the next several months, I realized that the part of the strategy dealing with me taking the physical trip down to New Orleans and the plan was to go to visit Hattiesburg and along the Gulf Coast there in Mississippi. That was just going to become increasingly impractical. And it was to be amended to the next step was to be performing interviews of library professionals remotely via phone and online surveys. And that sounded easy enough. But however, due to time constraints, this had to be further defined to eliminate the phone interviews and getting the local perspectives via the survey questions. And I thought that would be a pretty logical way to go. And after some massively a lot of consultation with Debbie, Susie, and Pat, and rightly so, there's a lot of factors that go into it. Oh, let's go back to that previous slide. I was still in the middle of it. Please, thank you. I had to go through what's called the SJSU Human Subjects Institutional Review Board IRB. It had to be a sanctioned questionnaire from the university so that I can be approved to send this questionnaire to several library professionals who've been visible in the literature in order to get their feedback for inclusion into my thesis. Okay, if we can go to the next slide. Thank you. Okay, so finally, by September 2009, the major sections of my thesis were finalized into the following. And again, the first two didn't change. We're still looking at the existing literature on Hurricane Katrina's impact on the Gulf Coast libraries as well as library disasters throughout history. And the second piece, again, utilizing GIS to create maps to show some destruction, not necessarily destruction, but just to show some kind of visualization of the disaster's impact on the libraries in the region. And then, again, the IRB questionnaire that was going to be sent to the library professionals electronically. We can go. Okay, so just a little word on the IRB. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a thorn in my side, but there was a lot of back and forth with my thesis committee and myself and the Office of Graduate Studies and Research. I had first obtained approval to get this questionnaire out to the professionals. And we had to just really, really nail down all the why are we doing this, what's going to be sent to them, what can the respondents expect, that kind of thing. And then we did have to wait four to six weeks for IRB approval. And from what I remember, it took closer to four weeks, which was just wonderful because that certainly expedited everything. And then once I got that approval, I was free to send it out to the anonymous Gulf Coast library professionals. And then here on this slide, I just wanted to show you what the questions of the questionnaire. There were only eight, but these questions, as you could see, they were pretty, they're certainly getting a lot of information here that for my purposes, for my research was certainly something that I could use. So anyway, so as you could see, I was talking about what kind of damages, basically kind of broke it down into several parts. Just seeing what the damage was that the library has experienced. Also, disaster plan preparedness. What was their status at the time of Hurricane Katrina? Was it adequate? Were there gaps in coverage, that kind of thing? And finally, what were the lessons learned for future disasters? And I'll just give you a moment just to look at that. Okay, so with something like this, sorry, there are some folks out in the hallway. We just had to get that door closed, so sorry about that. So there were a few bumps in the road here on the way to getting my thesis to fruition here. And there were several options, not several options, but several issues. One of them was, as I kind of mentioned earlier, I really had a general research interest in, okay, Hurricane Katrina's impact on Gulf Coast libraries. Okay, well, what about it? And I really did have to refine this with my thesis committee just to make sure it was a workable topic. We eventually got there. And I think I'm very happy with it. Not I think, but I am very happy with the results. And once I was able to nail that down, it was very easy to move forward. Another problem was obviously, as I definitely mentioned earlier, was trying to get this. I was really married to this idea of going to the Gulf Coast to do this research trip. I really wanted to do it. But obviously, for reasons, it just didn't happen. And what are you going to do? It happened this life. So as you can see, it evolved from a physical research trip to phone interviews to get the oral histories from the library professionals to the questionnaire that was sent electronically. And another issue, and I found this out once I discovered, once we not discovered anything, but once I got to the part of writing this chapter about the questionnaire respondents, how to preserve their confidentiality and to protect their identity. The whole point was that, and when we explained it to them, that they would not be identified by name and by other factors. But what we did decide, just so that, of course, we had to refer to them somehow in the thesis in that particular chapter, that was Chapter 5, basically we decided to just refer to them by what library they represented, academic, public, or government depository library. And what's geographic location? Louisiana or Mississippi? And that seemed to work just fine. And some of the GIS data that I wanted to show in the maps, and I'll be showing them to you here momentarily, was I was really, really eager. I was really kind of going above and beyond what I was expecting to find. But you know, you got to shoot for the stars, right? So I was hoping to find some rainfall intensity and some flood depth data sets. So I could just really visualize to the reader what the, what New Orleans, what a southeastern Louisiana and what Southern Mississippi was looking at in terms of water depth, that would really, really put a fine point on it. But they weren't available at the time of the map creation. So, okay, so, okay. So this is far and away my most, this was the next point here. Was far and away the biggest issue that I dealt with here. Basically, I had to find the library damage statistics in Southern Mississippi and Southeastern Louisiana, right? Obviously, it's kind of important for my thesis to come to fruition. Guess what? It wasn't in one place. I can tell you that right now. It was, I didn't panic. It was nothing like that, but it was just a realization thing. You're in the middle of this and you have to research it and you have to find some way to, you know, make it work like Tim Gunn on Project Runway says. But basically, at the time, most of the information up until that point came from library journals. You know, like Southeast, I think Southern Mississippi libraries is one and others, for example, that regularly was running articles on status reports for their libraries. But it was more of a general kind of format rather than a detailed accounting of the damage these libraries received. And as a result of that, I had to do some kind of hunt and pecking internet searching. And which was, it actually did yield some results. Not too many, as I'll get here momentarily. Actually, I can probably just jump ahead here just a bit that the bulk of the data did come from my contacting Louisiana and Mississippi State library associations and individual libraries representatives via email correspondence, excuse me. And they were sent in a very eager, very quick turnaround. They were very eager to tell the story, help me tell the story. And it was just a fantastic amount of data. That was far and away the bulk of the library's data that I received. And it was just wonderful. I was honestly expecting to go to, you know, American Library Association or the Special Libraries Association website, go right to the page that has all the library damage statistics, and move on my merry way to the next part of my thesis didn't happen that way, as you can kind of tell. And one of the things that I found out that Debbie and I were kind of going back and forth on, excuse me, was that some of the web pages that I did find these library statistics on before contacting the Louisiana and Mississippi Library Association and the Mississippi Library Commission and the State Library of Louisiana are the ones that I'm referring to here. They were there, they were online at the time of my research, which is the fall of 2009. That was really the bulk of my research in the beginning of it anyway when I was doing this part of my thesis. And then when I came time for doing editing and so forth, you know, so I could submit to my People's Committee for review, I kept getting 404 errors and that this page is no longer available. Yeah, so that was quite a feeling, but we got it, we worked around it by indicating in the body of the thesis that that information was no longer available. What are you going to do? It's not there, it's not there, but the data did come from, for example, the State Library of Louisiana. So what are the findings? So basically the data that I got from these library associations in Louisiana and Mississippi, the professional library journals and what was available on the Internet, it did yield a total of 66 academic public and government depository libraries that suffered damage. It was from Hurricane Katrina obviously and it was a pretty healthy set, I thought. I broke it down to, there are 16 libraries for which I had data in New Orleans, 29 in South Eastern Louisiana excluding New Orleans and 21 in Southern Mississippi. And it's pretty obvious, the libraries that did sustain the heaviest damage in Mississippi, they were located in low-lying areas along the Gulf Coast and within close proximity to the Gulf Coast, south of Interstate 10. If you look on the map, Interstate 10 is only several miles away from the Gulf Coast itself, from the water of the Gulf of Mexico. And the reason why this was so big, you have to realize that when Hurricane Katrina did make a landfall on August 29, 2005, it was a category three storm. You see a lot of them, they tend to be, you see a lot of these storms come up the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf Coast. The thing is, though it's very important, is that this storm was a category five, a very strong category five about a day before. So you still had this residual water being pushed out that caused the storm surge that was around 30 feet in place along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. And for several miles inland on places, there was substantial flooding. And with all of these communities along the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, Gulfport, Biloxi, Ocean Springs, et cetera, they were just annihilated. And so in Louisiana, outside of New Orleans, it makes sense that Southeastern Louisiana is close to the Mississippi River Delta. You have low-lying areas that are at or even in some places under the mean sea level. And they are in flood-prone areas. And in New Orleans, New Orleans is located in a very flood-prone city that is below the Mississippi River in Lake Pontchartrain base levels. The ones that are not, basically, if it's located in a bowl. And the ones that are not located on higher ground within the city suffer the most damage. And it's pretty obvious that those libraries that did store their collections in the basement or on the first floors of their buildings, as in Mississippi, they were the ones that sustained the most damage, especially once the levees failed. Okay, so the next several slides here. These are the maps. You'll have the following maps for inclusion in my thesis that just showed you a little more information about what I'm talking about. This first slide here, this is just to kind of give you a little bit of information about where I got the data. I got these GIS data sets from the Mississippi Spatial Data Repository. It's called MARIS, excuse me, M-A-R-I-S. And for Louisiana, it was called ATLAS. I also received these spatial data sets from FEMA and the Louisiana State University GIS. All fantastic sources for this kind of spatial data. And at the time that I used, they still had pages of just pages and pages of these data sets related to it. And it was very helpful. And as you can see, and I initially thought when I created this one, I don't know many hurricanes that move in right angles like that, almost right angles. But apparently I did double check and that was the trajectory on August 29th when Hurricane Katrina did make a landfall. It moved straight north and then just did a little jog to the northeast there. And you can see the wind speed at landfall. It was still pretty substantial. And if you look just to the lower right of that larger blue body of water, that's Lake Pontchartrain. That yellowish, creamish color border on this lower right side, that's New Orleans. So you see how close that storm came to just really, really pounding New Orleans. And it already got destroyed basically the way it was. So if you can go for the next slide, that'd be great. Thank you. Okay, these next three slides I just wanted to show, excuse me. I'm sorry, my computer went in a power save mode. I was like, hey, everything's going black. This is a map that I created to show the damage caused to Louisiana libraries that does not include New Orleans Parish where New Orleans is. That's the next slide. And I have represented as the libraries these multi-colored icons. The green icon represents minor damage, yellow for moderate damage, and the red for severe damage. I can certainly go into detail, a little bit of detail about what compose, why I chose these classifications for this kind of damage classification. Sorry for repeating myself, but I can if you'd like. I can certainly kind of tell you that a little later on here. And as you can see, there's really kind of spaced out in terms of what kind of damage certain places received. And that lightish blue color, that is showing you the storage extent. Basically it's the areas that are flooding. So you can see a lot of these places are in flooded areas. And like I said earlier, this part of Louisiana is very close and in some places under sea level that are protected by levees and banks. A point of interest I wanted to make note here is toward the top of my map here you see those four blue icons. Those are libraries that did not receive extensive damage, but they were closed, nonetheless, after the storm because of all the financial difficulties as a result of just that area being completely devastated. It's unfortunate, but it happens, I guess. So if we can go to the next slide, that would be great. Okay. And this is another slide showing you the damage caused to New Orleans libraries by Hurricane Katrina. And I will admit, as time has gone on, I'm not the biggest fan of my choice for selection of the flood level shading. But in any event, it is what it is. Gotta make it work. So you can see there that I'm still using the same classification category of minor, moderate, and severe damage to these libraries. And a lot of these places, most of them, as you can see, they're in these flooded areas as represented by that light blue color selection that shows to indicate those flood levels. And this is two days after landfall, which was August 29, 2005. So if we can go fourth one more, if we can go to the next slide. There we go. Now this slide is arguably my favorite because I think this really does just give you a really good sense for the extent of the flooding here. Same idea, minor, moderate, severe damage library locations here. And just look at all of those library locations. They are located well within, in some places, well within the surge extent of how far I came inland. If you look a little to the north of where Pascagoula is, towards the right there, that's not, I thought that first, that was an exaggeration. There is a bay there. And that went in, I don't know how many miles, the number escapes me, but it was several miles. And that flooding is accurate. So I mean, you had basically the ocean coming up that far. That is astounding. And then you just have some other, a little farther north here in Hattiesburg, which is the location of, let's see, a University of Southern Mississippi. They received some minor damage. And the one in the right there. I believe that was caused by a weakened tree that fell plumb through the middle of library branch. And that was the end of that library. I would have to research that just to double check, but I remember that stood out quite a bit. So we can go to the next page. Okay, so what were my thesis findings on disaster plan effectiveness? As I've already went over, in order to get to the point of where I can get these findings out and convey them, I had to process this library literature related to Hurricane Katrina. How the small and large scale disasters throughout history impacted libraries and the input from these Gulf Coast Library professionals. There were four of them. As a result, it was revealed, and this is pretty obvious, that most of Gulf Coast Library's disaster plans, they were very ineffective at mitigating damage to their collections during the storm because simply of the magnitude of the storm, the flooding during and afterwards as a result of, in some places, the levee collapses and the ensuing disaster responses. So, and let's see here. Okay, so this one here, one of the questionnaire respondents said it perfectly, he just said it perfectly, that no disaster plan can anticipate a disaster, the magnitude of a hurricane Katrina. I mean, that was absolutely true. I couldn't get any more right than that. So their respondents, as a result of those eight questions that I posed earlier, their answers to the questionnaire illuminated several factors that impacted their library's effectiveness at preserving their collections. And there were three that I was able to determine there. Their library location, the scope of the disaster and what disaster's most plans address. So for the first one, these libraries were located in a pretty vulnerable area. But these places, these libraries that were located further from areas of flooding, however few, really few there may have been, or on higher ground, they did see less damage, they may be reduced to a broken window here, a little bit of a leaking roof there, a little bit of mold damage. In vice versa, the places that were located in southern Mississippi, for example, on the Gulf Coast, they were annihilated. Many of the places were annihilated. Some were rebuilt further inland very wisely if you ask me. And regarding the scope of the disaster, these typical disaster library plans, library disaster plans I should say, they are intended to mitigate small localized disasters, a small fire, leaking pipe, or even a power outage that might affect climate control of the library's collections. But not those that affect both large areas, like a hurricane or an earthquake. And it affects many of the libraries a response to support systems. And finally, what scope, what disasters most of these plans address. I mean, they're designed to address events happening singly, one at a time. It is, say, in a localized disaster. You know, it fires out, okay, fine, we'll deal with assessing the damage and replacing the damaged or destroyed items. But they're not really meant to assist with the succession of events that are a disaster besides if a hurricane Katrina would incur. So we can go to the next slide. So I do have some suggestions as a result of going through my thesis and my findings. I came up with three items. To anticipate, library administrators should certainly keep personnel up to date as possible regarding risks for future disasters that that particular library location may be susceptible to. Here in the Bay Area of California, what is it? The big issue are earthquakes. So, you know, it's just dependent on the part of the country that these places are located. Another suggestion here is to communicate, to have communication among library personnel, emergency management officials, local state and federal authorities. That's always good. You can never go wrong. You know, knowledge is power. And the implementation of a current communication tree so library personnel can be contacted after a disaster is advisable. One of the, on a quick aside here, one of the respondents on my library respondents indicated they had it. They had a communication tree. Not a problem. Problem was with hurricane Katrina that came through and it knocked over all of the cell towers. You couldn't, and if you're trying to use a cell phone, good luck, it wasn't going to work. So, for updating, people, the library administrators should periodically review and update library's disaster plans. That's just common sense, just as with anything. Make sure it's a well-oiled machine. Make sure that it's effective. And finally, to pre-meditate, this is more for future considerations of where libraries should be planned to be and to live, basically. But a lot of thoughts should certainly be given to where these future library locations are going to be in areas of vulnerability, such as the most susceptible areas of the Gulf Coast. And that just goes without saying. Let's go to the, okay. Final thoughts, everyone. Okay, is this, my efforts to compose this thesis to go through everything that went through the preparation effort, the rewrites, research, yes, frustration, absolutely. Again, excuse me, this is something that I really enjoyed doing. This is something that I wanted to do. And I don't think, no, I don't think, but nothing was going to deter me from getting this done. I really wanted to do it. And for you Swiss students who might be listening, or may be listening in the future, to this presentation. And if you're on the fence about doing this thesis option, should I do the e-portfolio, from my perspective, I can't recommend it enough. If any of what I've said throughout my presentation here has kind of struck a chord with you, I suspect that you'd probably enjoy doing the thesis. I found it very rewarding, and I still feel an enormous sense of accomplishment. Again, I still pinch myself every now and again. And it's a great research experience. It absolutely was. You know, I was very fortunate in that a lot of what came out in the end with my thesis, the real nebulous core of it was there since the beginning. Again, like I said, I've always wanted to do this, and it really seemed to work out just fine. And as I was going along, yeah, there's going to be changes, and it's not the kind of thing that you go, oh, no, there's going to be changes. What am I going to do? And you know, you suck your thumb, and you curl up into a ball on the floor. It's something that you just roll with the punches. And I felt that it was just a natural progression in the final stage. There are going to be changes needed to be made. But since you're already in that mindset, it's not that difficult. It really isn't. Okay, and I think I have one more slide here. If you do have any questions, this is kind of going forward here. I wanted to give you my email address. If anybody had any questions that you felt like contacting me, anything I could further flesh out after the question and answer period here momentarily, that's my email address, glengarry72atyahoo.com. And this is for anybody who might be interested in accessing this recording at a future date. You would simply come to this website, HTTPS, remember that, s-colon-double-back-slash-nexus.sjsu.edu. And then you'll just click on the recordings tab and select today's date and time. And that's October 4th, about 12 o'clock. And I believe that's it. I think that's what I got. I think my next slide is just indicating questions and comments. So there we go. So let's see here. All right, if anybody has any questions, I'm more than happy to. Okay, Angel, I'm seeing your typed-in thing here. Could you describe disaster recovery efforts of document recovery? Some of them seemed, from what I read, they were using a lot of... See, I'm kind of warming here. They were using a lot of disaster document control specialists. They would utilize freeze-drying methods. They did, from what I gleaned, they were able to recover a lot of those materials. I mean, obviously, there were some materials that were not able to be saved. But from what I read, they appeared to be pretty successful at, even to save a lot of these documents, these music recordings, for example, that may have been even underwater for days and weeks. They were pretty successful at getting them dried up and ready for use again. But that's about as much information as I probably have about that. Okay, Melissa, okay, yeah, apparently I guess this is going to be the way to go. Let's see. Oh, that's a good question. If any libraries completely lost their books, there were... they were primarily located in Mississippi. And for obvious reasons, as my one map showed, that how there were well... a lot of these libraries were just well within the storm surge. There were a lot of these Mississippi libraries that did lose just absolutely everything. Building, I mean, water completely covering the buildings. I mean, there were definitely instances of that. For sure, yes, there were. Stormy, hello. No, no. Yeah, it breaks my heart. Yeah, I really wish that I could have visited the Gulf area. I haven't yet. It is on my radar. I do want to get down there. And when I do go there, I certainly, more than just eat my weight in Cajun food, I definitely do plan on making some kind of post-research trip here, just to see for myself, you know, kind of how things are, and maybe even interview some folks, just, you know, just for my own personal edification. Yeah, for sure. It's definitely on the radar, but up to this point, no, I haven't just yet. Marissa, hello again. Anything... you know, isn't that funny? No, I haven't read anything where historical... anything really historical or important that was completely lost. I didn't read anything where there was any one thing or these handful of collections that just, that was so culturally significant, that lost, that was completely lost. I was very fortunate not to read that. My overall impression, again, was that most of the items that were damaged by the flooding, they were saved, which is great, but any of the things that were completely not saved, they didn't appear to be not insignificant, but not really historically significant, like copies of, like Louisiana's copies of the Declaration of Independence or anything like that. So, Loretta, hi, Loretta. Nice to see you again. Let's see here. Yeah, Loretta. You know, I've gotten a lot of positive feedback. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback about the restaffing of the libraries and the rebuilding of the libraries. Even with a lot of these libraries that were completely destroyed, what I got was I got a lot of positive feedback indicating that they had, if not rebuilt right on the same spot or they would rebuild it at a place further inland. They had a lot of community assistance with people just donating books, all sorts of drives similar to that to just restock any collections that were lost in the flooding. It was, and the restaffing, there were some issues, of course, with some people, you know, not only as a storm as something like Hurricane Katrina, a real physical issue, but it also plays a big psychological role in how some people, do they want to return into such a vulnerable area where they can reuse everything again that they've built up over the course of a lifetime just like that. There were certainly some issues that I did come across where folks left their positions because of that, but my impression, again, from what I've read and from what I've researched, most of the folks did come back, it was like they just completely mobilized and they really dig their heels to just get those libraries back up and running. That was a very positive side effect of Hurricane Katrina. Okay, hi, Martina. Okay, let's see. Did the libraries lose vital records? Isn't that interesting? I would have to assume that they did. I can almost say for certain, I did not come across any of the literature that specifically mentioned losing the vital records. I didn't really come across anything specifically mentioned that. What did they do? Oh, Martina, I can tell you that in order for them to recover from such losses, I should almost just send you an email with some of the information because there were certainly, for example, some of the folks who did respond to me for the questionnaire, part of my questionnaire just did indicate, you know, what have you done to recoup from this? How are you going to prepare for further disasters? And some of them, boy, they really went into some great detail about how they did recover from these losses. Let's see here. Some of the libraries did, from what I understand, some of them just were, what's a good word for it, were just kind of, they were accepting of their situation of where they are in such a vulnerable area. There was a particular respondent that honestly did not instill a lot of faith. It was almost like he was, that was the word I'm looking for. He was really resigned to what the, basically what the chips fall where they may. The rationale that was given to me being that because they're in such a vulnerable area, that it was almost expected to happen. But the other respondents, for example, they did indicate that they have changed their plans radically. For example, taking their collections out of the basement, which were on the first floor, especially if you're very close to levees and the Gulf Coast, that makes perfect sense. That's certainly what they did. And let's see. Let me get to your last question here. Did you come across the impact of larger state and private archives? Let me see here. There were certainly some archives that were lost. Of course, along with regular library collections, I think you'll see a lot of those that were not. I didn't read a lot. I didn't read anything that indicated how crippled the archives community is in the Gulf Coast area based on how much they lost as it had to stand still for those states. That's about as far as my research took me. I didn't recall reading or coming across much, indicating how impacted the status of the archives and the special collections were in those southern Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana. Okay. Let's see. Two microphones available. Hi, Angel. Okay, there you go. Did I come across any films or videos of destruction in libraries? No. Unfortunately, I didn't. I've certainly come across a lot of literature. I did purchase myself a few DVDs of just information about the Hurricane Katrina's damage. National Geographic had one called, I think it was called Inside Hurricane Katrina, just jaw-dropping. And of course, Spike Lee's When the Levies Broke. You want to cry, that's something to watch, but it's something that I think a lot of people need to see. That was just something to watch. Unfortunately, no, I really was looking for videos that dealt with how libraries responded to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it. Okay, Martina. Oh, you're welcome, Martina. I actually wanted to know if his thesis was available for reading or purchase or something, because I was in Houston, Texas at the time, I was around for Allison Ike, Katrina, Rita, and I have family in Louisiana as well, and I wouldn't mind reading what he wrote. And I was just wondering how I might be able to read what he wrote. Okay, hi, Stormy. Yes, it is available. And I was actually quite surprised at how fast my thesis did go to publication, and it is currently available. And the good news is that you could certainly, downloadable copy that is available through the MLK Library. And it's pretty straightforward. I can't remember specifically what the navigation is, but you could certainly look for just theses that have been published since, say, 2010. Mine will show up there, and then you could just follow the links there to get to where you could just click the PDF copy of it, and there you are, and it will all be there for you. Well, thank you very much for attending, everybody. I really appreciate it. Again, if you're on the fence as a SLIS student, wanting to do this, wanting to do a thesis as your culminating experience with the SLIS program can't recommend it enough. Absolutely can't recommend it enough. It was just wonderful. And I know that the resources SLIS has here in terms of their faculty, you will not be disappointed. I can guarantee you that. Thank you very much, and have a great day, everyone. Jeff, thank you very much. That was a wonderful presentation. Thank you for sharing your experience of doing the thesis, but also sharing some of the facts from your topic. You just did an excellent job, and we sure appreciate your sharing that today. So thank you very much. Be sure to look at the SLIS webpage. We have Career Colloquia coming up and Mara Colloquia, and more general. And we have most of these scheduled and publicized through the fall, so I hope you can join us.