Boston Library Flood

[Richard Boyden <richard.boyden@sanbruno.nara.gov>]

** High Priority **

BPL Battles Ravages, Clock to Save Books:  Workers Gingerly
Sift Damage in Soggy Shelf-by-shelf Effort
By Beth Daley 
Boston Globe
August 18, 1998

Squatting in the mud at 11:53 a.m. yesterday, the triage team began
gingerly extracting one of the most valuable victims from the swollen
confines of a basement bookshelf at the Boston Public Library.

But the out-of-print and hand-annotated ``Census Catalog 1790-1972''
had ballooned so badly after Sunday's devastating water main rupture, it
remained wedged in the shelf with 17 other books.

The story was the same for hundreds of other books in the Copley
Square library's basement stacks yesterday, as rescue workers raced
against a 48-hour deadline to save as many as 100,000 waterlogged
books and documents from a creeping destructive mold.

Chilly air was pumped into the basement to slow growth of mold spores
and buy emergency workers time. Meanwhile, refrigerated trucks hauled
thousands of books to cold storage, where the volumes will be frozen
until officials can decide which should undergo a special ``freeze-dry''
process that can save
them.

The ruptured water main, one of the city's oldest and largest pipes,
dumped about 3 feet of water in the newly renovated BPL basement.
Boston Water and Sewer Commission officials said the pipe was
repaired by 2 p.m. yesterday.

Standing in a makeshift command center among the fiction stacks, library
officials said the building would be closed to the public again today. They
were unsure when it would reopen. The basement itself is not expected
to open even when the main library does, as damage is far more severe
than officials first thought.

A collection of US Patent Gazettes dating to 1872 was severely
damaged, as were several art books, bound government court
decisions, hard-to-find topographical maps, and microfiche. Library
officials said that while only a few of the books are considered rare,
many are considered irreplaceable because they are out of print.

``It's terrible, just terrible,'' said Marilyn McLean, curator of science
reference material, whose department lost about 30 percent of its
collection. ``We are a patent depository, which means people come from
all over the country to research patents here. We can't get this material
back.''

Yesterday, mud-encrusted tax documents were strewn across a
darkened, smelly tax form room. In the nearby science reference room, a
1981 ``Physics Abstract'' volume, giving synopses of science journal
articles, was so bloated it popped off the shelf. Almost every book on
the first two shelves of basement book stacks was soaked to more than
1 1/2 times its original size. Some became so heavy they broke shelves
and spilled onto the floor. Cleanup crews were eager to work, but
because few in the library had experienced water damage of this
magnitude, the start of the day was slow. Workers and volunteers had
to be trained how to take books off shelves - carefully and always with
the binder down.

All day long, library officials scrambled to find scarce commodities, such
as special plastic boxes for the wet books. Lights were needed because
power was off in much of the building. A carpet-and-furniture-cleaning
company had to be called in. Dozens of dehumidifiers had to be found so
that the basement humidity would not rise and affect other books in the
library.

``There is a lot to it,'' said Stuart Walker, the library's book conservator.
He helped organize department heads early in the morning to identify
their most valuable books.

``We really have to decide what to save,'' said Walker. ``You just can't
go into a devastated area like this and save everything.''

Almost all of the wet books will go to cold storage. Over the next few
months, officials will sort through them, seeing which can be thrown out
or replaced easily and inexpensively.

Most of the hard-to-find and valuable books and documents will then
undergo a process called sublimation. The items will sit in a sealed room
for up to 10 days while the ice that coats them is changed directly into a
gas so that the items don't get wet again and so that mold growth doesn't
restart, specialists and library officials said yesterday.

Officials yesterday had no estimates of the cost of sublimation or how
much the water damage will cost the library.

By far, the most difficult task yesterday for many workers was literally
getting the books off the shelves.

In the government documents room, reference librarian Betsey
Anderson's voice was despairing as she tried to pry ``Census Catalog
1790-1972'' from its spot.

``This is amazing,'' she said. ``It won't move.''

The index is important because it contains pencil notations of where
related material is found in the library: A lack of space has books and
documents in several locations.

Finally, Karen Brown and Deb Wender of the Northeast Document
Conservation Center in Andover directed relief: Remove the shelf above,
don latex gloves for good grip, and carefully - slowly - lift up the book.

But even then, it took several minutes to get it.

``This is all going to take time,'' said Walker.
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