Disaster Health Information Access and Public Libraries’ Situation-Specific Information Services: What Public Librarians and Library Users Said

Abstract

A 2017 situation-specific case study surveyed community members following the flooding in 2015 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 in South Carolina. The study examined how community members used libraries’ critical disaster information services, focusing also on how the participants used disaster information sources and evaluated their credibility. The findings show that the community members surveyed valued highly the critical information services provided by public libraries and librarians. Even though most of the community members indicated that it was easy or very easy to find information, some of them did not use credible information resources either during or after the disaster.