Hurricane Sandy – St. Thomas Libraries Blog
Database Highlights & Trials

Hurricane Sandy

Just because we’re landlocked and nearly as smack-dab in the middle of the country as you can get, don’t think for one minute you’ll be completely free of Hurricane Sandy’s wrath.  No matter how far the distances, we are living in a very small and connected world.  What happens on the eastern seaboard can most definitely impact us as we go about our daily lives. Power outages effecting the major grids on the east coast can impact our grids out here in the midwest.  Those outages will require server farms located out east to rely on backup generators – but how long can those last?   There’s an interesting infographic that shows what could happen should a major hurricane hit the cloud. We subscribe to thousands of eresources – databases, ebooks, ejournals.  Some of them may be housed on the east coast.  We may lose access to some of our subscriptions.  There’s no way to predict.  I guess I just want to make everyone aware that there may be Internet outages because of the storm and just to stay flexible and patient while those who are in the thick of it work things out.

We suspect that we were already hit with one such scenario this weekend.  EStatement Studies, a resource that has financial ratios, was down on Friday, Saturday and part of Sunday.  They are located in Philadelphia.  Their offices are closed today because of Sandy.  Chances are they were making preparations for the upcoming storm and moving or migrating content.  This is just speculation on our part, but it makes sense. EStatment Studies came back up yesterday afternoon and is working fine now. In fact, we’ve heard from several of our vendors that their offices are closed and to please be patient. They wanted to allow their “employees and their families to prepare for and remain safe in the severe weather.”*

On the flip side, while we brace ourselves for the possibility of losing content, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have opened their paywalls for unlimited free access during the storm.  The headline was catchy: Hurricane Sandy blows down paywalls at NY Times, WSJ.

Still report all access problems to any database, ebook or ejournal, but also just try to remember that it’s a small world and things may not be working for us here because they’re REALLY not going well somewhere else.

*Email correspondence from Johns Hopkins Project Muse rep.

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