Backup For
Public Libraries

What this covers, and what it does not

Everyday Backups backs up files on Windows computers, plus phones and tablets, the scans, indexes, office documents, and financial files that a library keeps outside its catalog. It is not a catalog or circulation product, and this page makes no claim to integrate with any catalog or circulation system. This page also gives no library confidentiality, patron privacy, state library reporting, copyright, donor rights, or E-rate advice, and no legal, tax, or regulatory advice of any kind. What follows is about the files your staff and volunteers create and save, not about the systems someone else runs for you.

The one-of-a-kind material a small library holds

Most of what a library lends can be bought again. The local history room is different. Many small libraries have spent years scanning donated family photographs, church and cemetery records, old local newspapers, letters, and recorded interviews, often a few hours at a time by a volunteer, and often on a single scanning PC or an external drive. Once the original goes back to the family, or keeps deteriorating in a box, the scan can be the only usable copy a community has.

Anyone who has watched a volunteer spend two winters scanning a donated photo collection on one PC that nobody had backed up knows how that story can end. The drive fails, or the PC will not start, and the work cannot be repeated because the originals are gone, or the donor has passed, or nobody remembers which box was which. That is the situation this page is written around, and the fix is continuity rather than anything exotic: the digitization folders, the office record set, and the books get backed up automatically, off-site, with version history, and a restore is actually tested.

What a library actually keeps outside its catalog

A branch holds more files than its staffing would suggest, and the circulation desk PC, the office computer, and the scanning PC are often the only places some of them exist. The record set below is what many libraries across the rural South want to be able to put a hand on, for any board meeting, grant report, or genealogy patron, on short notice.

• Local history and genealogy digitization projects: scanned photographs, newspapers, letters, cemetery and church records, and oral history audio and transcripts
• The index, spreadsheet, or finding aid that says what each scan is and who donated it, because the scans are far less useful without it
• Program and summer reading records, sign-up sheets, and event photos
• Volunteer and Friends of the Library records, and book sale records
• Grant applications, reports, and supporting documents
• Board minutes, agendas, and policies, as documents kept on file
• Budget, payroll, and QuickBooks
• Exports and reports saved from your circulation system or catalog software

The finding aid deserves special mention. A folder of thousands of scans with names like a scanner's default numbering is hard to use if the spreadsheet that explains it is lost, and the donor information in that spreadsheet is often not written down anywhere else. It is worth protecting the index with the same care as the images.

Where library files actually go missing

• The scanning PC is the only copy. A flatbed or book scanner on one older Windows PC, with the output folders on its own drive, is a common setup. If that machine fails, is stolen, or will not boot, the collection it held can go with it.
• An external drive is treated as the backup. A drive on a shelf or plugged in permanently sits in the same room, and can fail, be dropped, or be reached by the same ransomware as the PC. See why an external drive is not a full backup for what it does and does not cover.
• The volunteer who did the scanning moves on. Digitization is often one person's long project. When that volunteer steps back, the folder structure, the naming habits, and the location of the files can leave with them. See what happens when the person who kept the files moves on.
• The finding aid lives on a personal laptop. The spreadsheet that identifies each scan and donor may sit on a home computer while the images sit at the branch, so neither half is useful alone.
• Grants and board documents sit on one office PC. Applications, award letters, minutes, and policies often live on the director's computer, with no second copy anywhere else.
• Ransomware reaches the branch network. The same office PC that holds grant files and the books may be attached to a shared folder or mapped drive that also holds the scans, and a single event can encrypt all of it in one pass.
• Event photos stay on a phone. Program and summer reading photos taken by staff and volunteers on their own phones may never reach a library computer at all.
• Sync gets mistaken for protection. A folder showing a green checkmark in OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive looks safe, but sync only mirrors what is currently on the device. Delete a folder of scans or have it encrypted by ransomware, and the synced copy follows right along. See cloud sync vs. backup for what each actually protects against.

The 3-2-1 backup rule applied to a library

CISA promotes the 3-2-1 rule as a simple standard for small-organization backup, and it maps directly onto how a library holds its files, the digitization folders and index that keep growing, and the office records and books behind them.

A backup standard for small libraries

The items below are specific to how a branch's files are actually scattered across a scanning PC, an office computer, and whatever catalog or circulation system the library uses. They are a starting point, not a complete checklist on their own.

• Map every device that touches library files, not just the office PC. That usually means the scanning PC in the local history room, the director's computer, the machine used for the books, and any laptop or phone where finding aids or event photos are kept. List each one and ask what leaves that device and goes nowhere else. That list is your backup scope, not a guess.
• Put the scan output folders and the finding aid in the same backup, by name. Confirm the folder the scanner saves to, the folder where edited or cropped versions go, and the spreadsheet that identifies each item are all included. Scans without the index are much harder to use, and the index without the scans is only a list.
• Find the export path of your catalog or circulation system, not just its screen. Whatever your circulation system or catalog software offers for exports and reports, save those files to a folder on a Windows machine and confirm your backup reaches that folder. Being able to log in is not the same as having a copy you control.
• Keep patron records in the circulation system, not in office files. Scattering patron information across spreadsheets and desktop folders makes it harder to know where it lives. Backup does not make any of it secure or private, and how it is handled is a question for your own board and advisors.
• Test a restore. Pick a folder of scans, restore it to a different location, and open a few files. See how to test your backup restore for a plain way to do it. A backup nobody has ever restored from is an assumption.
• Pick one person to watch for failures. Make it someone's regular job to look at alerts, so a failed job does not sit unseen on a PC that only gets attention a few days a week.

For a broader self-assessment of your current backup posture, see the small-business backup checklist.

When the volunteer who scanned the collection steps back

It helps to picture the actual afternoon rather than the abstract loss. A genealogy patron asks for a cemetery record the library scanned years ago, or the director is assembling a grant report that needs the digitization history. The building is still there, the local history room is set up exactly as it was left. What is sometimes gone, at many small libraries, is the file that answers the question, because the PC that held it failed, or the volunteer who made it moved away, and the files lived on one machine nobody else managed.

It is worth being precise about what a working backup does and does not do here. A recoverable copy of the scans, the finding aid, and the office records means those files still exist and can be pulled back up on a new machine, under whoever picks up the work next. It does not decide who may see a scanned item, how a donor's wishes apply, or what a funder will accept. Those remain your library's own judgment, guided by your own board and advisors.

Your circulation system, your catalog software, and QuickBooks: what backup covers

Two kinds of software sit behind most of a library's day, the catalog and circulation system that tracks the collection and loans, and the accounting software that handles payroll and the books. Knowing what each one covers, and where the gap is, matters because the digitization work and the office records often live partly outside both.

Ransomware, restore readiness, and what backup is not

CISA and the FTC both publish guidance noting that small organizations are targets of ransomware. For a library the loss can be specific, not just a week of inconvenience, it can be the only surviving copy of a local history collection, kept on whichever computer a busy volunteer happened to use. CISA's #StopRansomware guidance points to offline and encrypted backup copies as the main technical way to recover once ransomware has already encrypted production files. A backup drive that stays mapped to the network, or a sync folder that mirrors changes as they happen, can be swept up in the same attack as everything else. For a fuller walkthrough, see ransomware restore readiness.

Backup is a recovery tool, not a security, privacy, or compliance control, and it is worth saying plainly. Backing up the scans, the office files, and the books protects your library's ability to get them back if they are lost, corrupted, or ransomed, but it does not make them secure, it does not make them private, and it does not make them compliant with any rule. It gives no library confidentiality, patron privacy, state library reporting, copyright, donor rights, or E-rate advice, and no legal, tax, or regulatory advice of any kind. It makes no claim about any recordkeeping or retention obligation, and does not say whether any requirement applies to your library. A tested backup shortens a bad week, it does not replace your board's own practices or its own diligence.

Keeping event photos and scanned items that live on phones and tablets backed up, not just the PCs, is worth the same attention. See phone photo backup for the same pattern in other kinds of organizations.

How this differs from the adjacent pages we publish

A few other pages on this site cover organizations that sit near a public library but are not the same thing, and it is worth being explicit about the boundary so you land on the right one.

• Not backup for city halls and local government offices. That page covers the clerk and council record set. This page covers a public collection and its digitization work. Where a library is run as a city or county department, both pages apply.
• Not backup for schools and nonprofits. That page is written for a school or a charity. This page is about a public collection of documents and images, though a Friends of the Library group may find parts of both useful.
• Not backup for historic preservation and restoration contractors. That page is about a building trade and its per-building record. This page is about a collection of documents and images.

If your organization spans more than one of these descriptions, more than one page may apply, but the scans, finding aids, program records, grant files, and board documents described above are what this page is built around.