Drying frozen books

This plea is posted by a non-conservator. During last winter's
flooding in the Northwest (USA), I responded to an archival client's
disaster and recovered most of his collection from a seriously
flooded basement. All is now well, except: 10 books, all 20th
century, were found completely under water and were wrapped tightly
in freezer paper (to preserve the shape), tied with cloth tape in
two directions, and placed in the family's home frost-free freezer
while we worked like crazy to salvage the large document collection.
When I later looked for disaster recovery advice on the books,
little was available referring to small personal collections of
great emotional but little intrinsic value. I have not found any
archivists locally who have actually dealt with the home-freezer
treatment, although all agreed it was an appropriate to the
circumstances.

So far all I have done is unwrap a sample once in a while to check
on ice, dryness, mold, etc. They actually look quite good, but have
not "dried themselves out" in that environment, as I had read they
would, but instead get rather dampish as they thaw. It seems like
placing blotting paper between pages will distort the spines, so I
haven't continued that (also they become too wet to handle when out
of the freezer any length of time). The local conservators I
contacted also understood the best thing was to leave them alone and
let them freeze-dry under the natural cycle of the home freezer. All
the commercial freeze-dryers I have talked to will deal only with
pallets full of books, not ten individual ones.  My plea is: what do
I do now, since they are not drying?  No one is complaining, so I
suppose they could stay in another year if that is the advice.  But,
is this supposed to happen? How long does it take?

Micki Ryan
Museum & Archival Services
Post Office Box 1309
Issaquah WA 98027

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 11:33
                 Distributed: Thursday, October 9, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-11-33-011
                                  ***