WORKSHOP: Management of disaster information units
San José, Costa Rica, April, 2001

The Regional Disaster Information Center (CRID) organized in Costa Rica the workshop “Management of disaster information units”. This activity is part of the project CRID/NLM “Improving the Access to Health and Disaster Information in Honduras and Nicaragua”. In this five-day workshop, the participants were professionals in librarianship and in engineering on information systems from Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica..
 The instruction was on charge on CRID´s staff, with the participation of experts from the PAHO´s Disaster Preparedness Program (PED), the National Library of Medicine (NLM-USA), the National Library of Health and Social Security (BINASSS-Costa Rica), the Universidad Nacional Autónoma Honduras (UNAH), and the Universidad de Costa Rica.

The objective of this workshop was to train personnel from the participating libraries on the implementation of specialized disaster information units on disasters or in the incorporation of this topic in the existing units with the necessary components and requirements. In addition, the content included methodologies for data processing and analysis, and a session focused on accessing information sources on Internet.

This training was aimed to provide libraries or information units with a methodology for compiling, processing and spreading information on disasters or related topics. This will improve the interchange of information among these centers at a local, national and regional level. Participants agreed on the need of list of discussion as a space for interchanging experiences and suggestions that would improve the development of the project.