Warm and dry: Damaged
books trickling back
BY LISA TREI
Catherine Tierney smiles
as she touches a few dozen books on a table in her Green
Library office. Survivors of the Flood of '98, the books
are water-stained but not warped or moldy. "They're
dry, it's wonderful," says Tierney, assistant
university librarian for technical services. She leafs
through pages of Euripides, Tragödien, volumes V
and VI, and a book titled Simeon Polotskii printed
in Cyrillic. The books, from the literature and reference
sections, are part of the university's general
collection. Although not rare, many would be difficult to
replace if lost.
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"It's not Border's
Books," Tierney says. "It's one of the single
most valuable assets of the university."
The books are from a test
batch dried by Document Reprocessors Inc., a company in
Burlingame that will salvage an estimated 70,000 books,
pamphlets and documents damaged when heavy rains on Feb.
3 overwhelmed the campus drainage system. The overflow
caused water to run down stairwells, flood ventilation
systems and burst through walls into several buildings
across campus. Worst hit were library collections in the
basements of Green and Meyer libraries and Braun Music
Center.
Total loss from the El
Nińo storm, which dumped a whopping 3.7 inches of water
on the main campus in 24 hours, is estimated at $5
million to $7 million, says Jeffrey Seilbach, director of
risk management. Since Stanford is in what was designated
a federal disaster area, the university has applied for
reimbursement from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, to cover its $1 million deductible and $750,000
in estimated uninsured claims, he says.
Ronald Roberts, left,
and Ramon Cajilig, technicians at Document Reprocessors
in Burlingame, interleave books with metal plates before
the drying process. The company is attempting to salvage
70,000 books, pamphlets and documents damaged in the
February flood.
Photo by Linda Cicero
Specific damage figures
for the libraries, which suffered the most damage, have
not been released, but Eric Lundquist, president of
Document Reprocessors, says it costs about $6 to dry and
clean one book.
The flash flood could have
hit the libraries a lot harder. Thanks to hundreds of
volunteers who worked through the night and a disaster
response plan that trucked the soggy books to a cold
storage facility in Union City within 36 hours -- 12
hours shy of the time before mildew sets in -- most of
the books can be saved, says Tierney.
"The most important
thing for us is that we have a standing staff of
conservation people," she says. "At 2 a.m., we
knew whom to call."
About 80 percent of the
books, which started returning to campus on April 9, will
be reshelved as they arrive. About 15 to 18 percent are
expected to require new call numbers, page repairs, page
cleaning, unsticking of pages, new bar codes or
commercial binding. Only about 2 to 5 percent, or about
3,500 titles, are expected to be a total loss. Library
staff will determine if extra copies of these books exist
on campus, or whether searches should be carried out to
replace them.
Lundquist from Document
Reprocessors praises Stanford for being prepared.
"They got it organized and they were under control
in two days," he says. Asked if that reaction was
unusual, Lundquist promptly replies, "That was
amazing."
Document Reprocessors was
selected after a bidding process to dry Stanford's books.
But before that happened, Lundquist was the person
university assistant conservator Walter Henry called at 2
a.m.
"My objective was to
get the materials frozen as fast as possible," says
Henry. "I was sure [Lundquist] could do it."
Lundquist quickly found space in Union City used for
storing food products like frozen chicken and organized
the transportation.
During the early hours of
Feb. 3, Henry worked from a copy of a disaster plan that
is kept in the homes and cars of key library staff.
"We think about disasters fairly often because they
[can] have such a large impact on a collection," he
says.
Henry first met Lundquist
during the 1978 Meyer flood, when a broken pipe soaked
50,743 books. In those days, Lundquist was an insurance
claims adjuster who watched as Stanford searched for a
way to save its books before the development of
commercial services. The university ended up putting its
books on shelves and placing them in a vacuum chamber
owned by Lockheed at Moffett Field that was used to test
space suits. The process worked but many of the
water-swollen books needed rebinding and reflattening.
Lundquist realized there
was a need for this type of service but wasn't sure how
to provide it. Experiments using electricity to dry the
books were rejected. "If you put a dry book in a
batch with a bunch of wet books, it's going to get hot,
hot, hot, then poof!" he says, gesturing with his
hands to indicate starting a fire. "We've tried
it."
In 1982, Lundquist bought
three round 45-foot-long steel chambers that had been
used to fumigate cotton and kill boll weevils. He put the
chambers on 18-wheel trucks to make them mobile. He tried
wrapping rubber hoses around boxes of documents to dry
them slowly at the freezing temperature of water. The
process worked.
As Document Reprocessors
responded to fire and flood disasters around the country
and in Canada, the company developed carts with shelves
heated by rubber hoses attached underneath. Later,
aluminum plates were placed in between books that were
tied together with bungee cords.
"That allowed us to
straighten the books as we dried them and it got heat to
the cover boards," Lundquist says. "Before, we
were getting heat only from the spines [laid on top of
the shelves]."
On a sunny Thursday in
late March, workers at Document Reprocessors took some of
Stanford's frozen books out of boxes, and prepared them
to be placed in a freeze-drying vacuum chamber. About
8,000 books can be dried at a time. For seven to 10 days,
atmospheric pressure is reduced and as the ice turns to
vapor, the books slowly dry. Very wet books remain in the
machine for extra cycles. Afterward, the books are sent
back to Burlingame, where the now dry but brittle paper
reabsorbs normal moisture from the air for a week. Then,
staff from Document Reprocessors clean the books' outside
and inside covers, and sort them into three categories --
"shelf-ready," "total loss" and
"books in need of repair."
Although water-staining
and some swelling may remain, the bungee cords and
aluminum plates help flatten the books and reduce the
number that need rebinding.
"They're beautiful,
they don't look bad," Lundquist says. "You
wouldn't hesitate to pick one up. That's the whole
purpose."
Last Thursday, the first
batch of dried books were placed on movers' rolling
bookshelves and returned to Stanford. Every week until
June, 8,000 books will arrive on campus. The estimated
6,400 shelf-ready books, each stamped with "DR
1998" to flag them as flood survivors, will go
directly to Green's loading dock where they will be
rolled to the lower level for sorting.
Books in the other two
categories will be sent to the newly created Recovery
Room in CERAS, the Center for Educational Research at
Stanford, to be assessed by Ella Harsin, a retired
Preservation Department member who has returned to run
this project.
"Everybody wants the
books back as quickly as possible," she says,
opening a warped box containing a Dutch book with a
damaged leather binding published in 1862. For the next
three months, Harsin will determine what repairs are
needed and whether they can be done in-house or
commercially. She will work alongside library specialist
Marleen Madou-De Cokere, in charge of determining how to
replace the "total loss" books.
Meanwhile, Henry says that
people working in Green will have to reshelve thousands
of books that were quickly packed by people more
concerned about saving them than checking their call
numbers.
"It's as if someone
checked out 8,000 books and brought them back the next
day," he says. "It's one of the most awful jobs
in the world."
But Tierney has worked to
impose order on potential chaos. In a memo to library
staff, she explains how the books will be treated and
returned to circulation.
"We would like
everything back on the shelves before the Fall
Quarter," she says.
As the shelf-ready books
are returned, staff will scan their barcodes to change
their status in the library computer system from
FLOOD-ITEM to STACKS. Rebinding books is expected to
continue through August. Finding replacements for
"total loss" books will be dealt with on a
case-by-case basis.
Last month, the
flood-affected areas of Green, Braun and Meyer reopened
to the public after soggy carpets were removed and wet
sheetrock was replaced. Henry says the library facilities
staff worked with subcontractors to reduce the humidity
in these areas quickly. "Had we not dealt with this,
the other stuff in the building would have been at risk
for mold," he says.
Since then, the recovery
process has continued with the help of extra temporary
staff and reassigned permanent employees. For many, it's
a chance to learn new skills.
"I know it sounds
callous, but I love this stuff," says Henry, looking
over a floor plan he designed for the Recovery Room.
"It's technically interesting. It's probably the
most satisfying work we do because it has such an impact
on a collection." SR
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