"Big Leaks Can Put Libraries in a Bind: book-saving network would help region deal with disaster"

by KATHRYN BALINT, Staff Writer

The article originally appeared in THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, February 11, 1996, p. B-3. (Reproduced with permission of the publisher; excepting  photographs).

They are banding together to create a regional plan to deal with disasters, mostly those that result in water damage to their collections. Vacuum freeze-drying is just one of the ways they'll try to save water-logged books in an emergency.

"It doesn't have to be a big disaster, like an earthquake," said Sue Swisher, system coordinator for the Serra Cooperative Library System, a consortium of 13 public libraries in Imperial and San Diego counties. "It could be something as simple as leaking plumbing."

In Southern California, it's not earthquakes, but construction, that perhaps poses the biggest threat to libraries, said Julie Page, preservation librarian for University of California San Diego. A high percentage of disasters occur during construction at a library or nearby, she said.

She got firsthand experience when a pipe burst last July during construction of a walkway, and water gushed into UCSD's Geisel Library.

"About 20 minutes of running water caused almost $1 million in damage," Page said. About 100 wet books were salvaged by air-drying, but sopping carpets and walls had to be replaced.

As those repairs were made, and as UCSD's undergraduate library battled a mold outbreak caused by an air conditioner shutdown, Page spearheaded a plan to create a "Disaster Response Network" among the region's libraries.

UCSD's libraries had prepared to deal with their crises by training employees to cover shelves with plastic and how to clean mold off book covers.

But Page estimates that only about half the public libraries in San Diego and Imperial counties have emergency response plans of their own.

There is no regionwide library plan for coping with catastrophe, Page said.

UCSD, on behalf of itself, California State University San Marcos, San Diego Public Library, San Diego State University, Serra Cooperative Library System and the University of San Diego, is applying for a $20,000 state grant to fund a regionwide disaster network.

The idea is that libraries would sign mutual-aid agreements, as fire departments do, to help one another in case of emergency.

Library workers would be trained to handle disasters and would receive help developing emergency plans for individual libraries.

The plans will largely address water damage because, unlike books that have been burned, wet books are often salvageable by freezing them within 48 to 72 hours, before mold sets in, Page said.

"By freezing them, you buy time," she said. Freezing prevents mold growth, which can destroy a book.

The books can then be carefully thawed, with the pages separated, in a room with fans and dehumidifiers, or vacuum freeze-dried by a book restoration company, Page said.

Freeze-drying costs less than 25 percent of what it could run to replace the books, not to mention the value of saving irreplaceable volumes, she said.

The grant proposal, due to the state library by the end of this month calls for the purchase of supplies, such as boxes to hold up to 50,000 books.

Barbara Will, of the state library development services, said the preliminary proposal was "deemed competitive."

But even before the state renders a decision on the grant later this year, local librarians will meet in May to begin making plans.

"We're hoping to get the seed money to begin this cooperative network so if there is a disaster, God forbid, like an earthquake, we'll have all of our plans in place and we'll have our supplies bought and stored," said Swisher of the Serra System.

A 1986 fire that destroyed 400,000 books and resulted in water damage to 700,000 others at the Los Angeles Central Library focused librarians' attention statewide on disaster planning.

"The fire in the L.A. Central Library was a real wake-up call for libraries in California," Swisher said.

It spurred an emergency plan for San Diego's municipal library system in 1988, said Joanne Anderson, the library's collection development supervisor.

Last year, Chula Vista's library system was about to embark on a disaster plan of its own until the opportunity arose to join the regional network now forming.

"Our litany of natural disasters in the last few years" prompted Chula Vista to begin planning for the worst and deciding what books would be saved first, said principal librarian Paula Brown.

In Chula Vista's case, past editions of the Chula Vista Star-News newspaper that are available nowhere else "we would definitely go for first" in a disaster, Brown said.

Swisher said a library's value is in its inventory. "We have thousands, hundreds of thousands, of books, computer equipment, CDs, magazines. That's what we give to the public, so we need to know how to take care of it. They're so vulnerable to water or fire, which are the two things that happen in most disasters."

Copyright Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

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