Salvaging water damaged periodicals

Sue Dunlap wrote (DistList Feb.2, 1995 Instance 8:60) of her experience
with freeze dried books appearing more brittle, and not opening well. We
dealt with those problems here at Stanford. Stanford Libraries
experienced a flood in Oct. 1978, in which over 55,000 volumes were
thoroughly saturated.  The Books were frozen at a local ice storage
company and were freeze dried in the Sunnyvale Lockheed space chamber.
Sally Buchanan headed the restoration project.  She became aware of this
fragility as a result of the freeze drying.

We volunteers were cautioned to handle the volumes with extreme care
when removing them from the shelves in the space chamber. Volumes were
boxed and consequently re-shelved in a local vacant elementary school
library, which served as the site for the restoration work.  The volumes
were distributed upright (not too snuggly packed) on the shelves and
were left undisturbed for several weeks, while they re-humidified to
that which was consistent with our climate.  Humidifiers were used in
several parts of the library to speed the process.  I believe that only
after rehumidifying was treatment undertaken to clean off dried mud,
restore book cloth, etc.  You may wish to contact Sally Buchanan (SLIS,
University of Pittsburgh) for details.

Ella Harsin
Head, Replacement and Reformatting
Preservation Department
Stanford University Libraries
Meyer Library Rm. 360
Stanford CA 94305-6004
415-725-4914
Fax: 415-723-4775

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 8:61
                 Distributed: Friday, February 3, 1995
                        Message Id: cdl-8-61-005
                                  ***