Business Continuity

Shared resources

Thirteen separate documents are available to all Members of the Consortium, to assist with their planning for business continuity and disaster recovery. These include templates, with commentary, of an Incident Control & Recovery Plan; specimen Incident Flowcharts; specimen Incident Management and Recovery forms; an example Disaster Management Plan and an Risk Assessment example, among other resources. Please log in to the Members’ Area to view them. Please address any questions to the M25 Support Team

Mutual Support Agreement

In addition, all Members of the Consortium participate in the Mutual Support Agreement.  In the event of a disaster at a member library, other Consortium libraries will endeavour to provide study space for students from the affected library for one month, providing physical access in line with the arrangements normally offered under the SCONUL Access and/or Access25.

1. The purpose of the Agreement is to define how host Consortium member libraries will make services available to staff and students from a member library where a disaster has occurred.
2. The Agreement is invoked by a member library if a serious emergency situation occurs. Member libraries undertake to apply their best efforts to honouring the principles of the scheme. The scheme confers no rights on individual users, access to member libraries being ultimately at the discretion of the libraries concerned.
3. The responsibility for invoking the Agreement rests with the Director of the affected library and communications will be made via the M25 Directors’ email list.
4. If the Agreement is invoked, it is the responsibility of the affected library to identify other Consortium Members which could provide access to staff and students for particular subject needs and to make direct approaches as required.
5. Where the affected Library operates from several sites or buildings across a campus, the Director will be expected to make provision for basic study space and access to digital library resources in other unaffected buildings.
6. Physical access arrangements and the level of services provided by the host library to staff and students from the affected library will be in line with those offered under the SCONUL Access and/or Access25. Specialised services, such as Inter-Library Loans, may be provided following negotiation and agreement between the Directors of the host and affected libraries.
7. Digital library resources will be made accessible under the host library “walk in” user arrangements.  It is expected that students and staff from the affected library will be able to access their home library digital collections via the Eduroam WiFi service.
8. The Mutual Support Agreement is invoked for a time-limited period of a month in the first instance. Any extension to that period or variation in the level of service provided would be determined by negotiation between the affected library and the host library and agreed by exchange of written communications.

This Agreement and the associated disaster planning advice and support documents were reviewed and updated in 2018.