Author: Soo Jin Kim
After a long summer cataloguing, ordering books to be rebound and reordering books, the library has filled up most of its empty shelves in Tier 5 which emptied after the library flooded last semester (Spring 2008). The flood recovery project team, which oversaw the recovery of the library, included Library Preservation Assisant Eli Chartkoff, Interim College Librarian Emily Bergman, Head of Access Services Laura Serafini, Music Librarian Lisa Nitsch and Acquistions Librarian Lindsey Reno.
On Mar. 1, 2008, the coils of an air conditioner broke in Tier 5 of the Mary Norton Clapp library, causing a flood. In a campus-wide effort, the 18,000 damaged books were frozen, collected, boxed and shipped to a facility in Texas to be freeze-dried.
“It was a race against time,” Library Circulation and Reserves Manager and flood project manager Michael Kerwin said. “We had to get the books to a freezer within 46 hours – after that, the books would start to mold.”
With the assistance of the campus community, the damaged books were boxed and placed in freezers supplied by the Chemistry department and food services within 26 hours. “Even one staff [member] who lives across the road allowed us to use his fridge,” Kerwin said.
The members of the flood recovery project team also scanned barcodes in order to attain an accurate count of affected books. Ultimately, damaged books filled up nearly 900 boxes.
“Just the books [were damaged], fortunately,” Chartkoff said. “The flood was confined to the tiers in the old wing, so no periodicals, art books or special collections materials were involved.”
Chartkoff added that since many art books and periodicals have special shiny coating, the pages would have “stuck together like a brick, and even the freeze-drying would not have shelved them. Tapes and microfilm also would have been too difficult to recover.”
The books were transported to Texas in a freezer truck, and returned to campus in April, where they were stored in the third floor of the Old Building until the end of the semester finals.
For ten weeks of summer break, four student workers-Jordan Inabnit (sophomore), Mario Macias (sophomore), Kevin Hunter (junior) and David Wagner (sophomore)-worked in the library doing inventory on the damaged books. They checked the number of times the book had been checked out and the number of copies belonging to the library, among other things. This information helped the librarians to make a further assessment as to whether the books would need to be rebound, repurchased or withdrawn (thrown away).
Chartkoff was in charge of sending the books that were too damaged to go back on the shelves out to a commercial bindery to be rebound.
“About 80 percent of the 18,000 [books] were able to go right back on the shelves after the freeze-drying,” Bergman said.
Of the other 20 percent, “about 10 percent are being replaced or sent for rebinding. The other 10 percent were withdrawn because they were too badly damaged to be repaired,” Kerwin said. “Some of the books were not damaged and only some were lightly damaged.”
All of the texts with visible damage have been stamped ‘FLOOD DAMAGED 2008’ to protect the next borrower from paying fees for damaging the book.
The books withdrawn were recycled through Campus Facilities.
The first shipment of rebound books have been delivered to the library. “I’m amazed how good they look. I was ready to throw one of them out, but now it looks good,” Kerwin said. “Although 81 books have been received so far [out of the 232 replacement titles ordered], books generally take six to eight weeks to arrive,” Bergman said. “And because many of these are out-of-print, getting them through our book vendors will take even longer,” she added.
“All of the books that could be shelved immediately were on the shelves by the end of the summer,” Chartkoff said, adding, “The last shipment to the bindery will go out this month.”
All three air conditioning coils have been replaced, and they now have pans underneath them to capture any leaks that might occur in the future. Moisture detecting units have also been installed to detect any moisture change in the future.
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