Disasters always bring trauma for the victim and the surrounding community who witnessed the events of nature. Various post-disaster victim recovery efforts are carried out by involving many parties through multiple approaches, namely the aspects of psychology, social, cultural, economic, education, infrastructure, and others.
Related to the efforts to restore the community to the normal conditions, the important thing is how to strengthen the awareness of the natural disasters risks that are very likely to occur in Indonesia. "Because a disaster can happen anytime and anywhere, pre-disaster handling needs to be done more aggressively so that people and the nation are always alert for natural disasters that might happen," said Head of UGM Library, Drs. Ida Fajar Priyanto, M.A, at Radyo Suyoso building, Yogyakarta Governor’s Office Complex on Thursday (28/7), related to the implementation of the National Seminar on Role of Librarians in Disaster Mitigation.
Various active roles of disaster mitigation during this time are mostly done by government agencies, foreign agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities, librarians, and humanitarian activist. Therefore, information dissemination related to disaster that involves various elements of society and government agencies are expected to reach the nuclear families in all areas of Indonesia. "Libraries, information centers, and librarians have a strategic position in taking the role of information dissemination through the library and disaster information, socialization programs to the community, and the active role of libraries in disaster prone areas," he said.
Present as the speaker in the seminar, R. Hutomo, Head of Data Affairs, Data Center, Information and Public Relations of National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), said the processing of disaster information is a series of work that was conducted since the publication is accepted by the library up until it is ready for the users. The expected benefits are that all disaster information can be found and used easily by the user.
As library in general, the management of information in the disaster library gives benefit to managers and library users. In addition to facilitate the management and the arrangement, it was able to locate a variety of informational materials for the library manager (librarian) and help facilitate searches by users. "However, in this way a mean for rapid tracking is provided and all collections can be identified neatly and well," he explained.
National Disaster Management Agency is currently applying DIBI (Disaster Data and Information of Indonesia) that displays the historical data of disaster events in Indonesia since 1815 for all types of disasters. With this kind of application, users can search on the desired event of a disaster, for example about the data of victims, location, time of a disaster.
In addition, BNPB has used GIS applications to monitor disasters, such as the data of temperature, wave height and surface, as well as awareness applications in the form of prone maps, risk, and vulnerability interactively up to the user. Meanwhile, applications for emergency response display information of the latest disaster event. "The role of librarians so far is to help users to get information by directing them so that information retrieval can be efficient, effective, well targeted and timely. With the development of information technology this is the role of the librarian as a volunteer in the dissemination of disaster information and disaster response information," he said.
The seminar and the launching of the book Librarians in Disaster Mitigation also presents speakers, namely Dr. Iwan Gunawan from the World Bank’s Senior Disaster Management Adviser in Indonesia, which investigated the topic of Risk Management as a Keyword in Disaster Mitigation-Based Development, Dr. Rachmat Hidayat (Center for Public Mental Health, Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Gadjah Mada), who discusses Healing Trauma in Disaster Mitigation: Pre-Disaster and Post Disasters Handling, and Drs. Tri Septiyantono, M.Si. (UGM Librarian), who discusses the Role of Librarians in Disaster Mitigation.
The seminar held by the cooperation of Regional Library and Archive Agency of Yogyakarta, The World Bank, UGM Library, UNY Library, and the ISI Library was also attended by members of the Indonesia High Library, Library and Archive Agency at Regional, District, and City level throughout Indonesia, School Library, related Government agencies and NGOs engaged in disaster mitigation.