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Book Drying and Recovery Project March 31, 1998 Most simply stated, the book recovery project is: 8,000 books in per week; 8,000 out per week. For 9 weeks or so. We have based our plans on an initial estimate of 70,000 wet volumes. Stanford has contracted with the firm, Document Reprocessors (DR), to dry and clean the books affected by the flood. DR has its drying chamber in Hayward and its cleaning and quality control operation in Burlingame. Drying Working in a refrigerated truck, DR removes the frozen books from our cartons, puts them on special shelves in clusters with metal plates at either end; bungee-like cords compress the books to minimize the swelling of the text blocks. These shelves of books are rolled into a truck-sized vacuum chamber in which the atmospheric pressure is reduced and heat is applied for 7-10 days. Ice turns to vapor and the books become dry. Any books with a high moisture content after that amount of time remain in the drying chamber for another cycle. Most of our books will require only one cycle; some of the soggy ones might take three cycles. Cleaning The dried books are delivered to DR’s Burlingame operation where they are "rehydrated" for a week; that is, since the drying process makes them too dry and brittle to open safely, the books are allowed to reabsorb normal moisture from the air. The next step after the books are safe to open is cleaning the outside and inside covers with vacuums and specially treated sponges. If a few pages are stuck together, DR staff may unstick them; however, if more than a few pages, we’ll want to do those ourselves. At this point, DR staff will sort the completed books into three categories, based on our specifications, to facilitate speedy return to our shelves. Categories - Ready for the Shelf. We guess that 80% of the books are ready to go directly to the shelves. DR will put these on industrial-sized booktrucks (shrink wrapped for transit), wheel them onto their delivery truck, and wheel them off at the Loading Dock in the back of Green Library. - Total Loss. We also guess that 2-5% of the books will appear damaged beyond repair; they will be boxed and delivered to the Loading Dock at CERAS*, near Sweet Hall, where our recovery operation (The Recovery Room) will be housed. - Processing Required. The remaining 15-18% will need one or more of the following: new call number label, commercial binding, page repairs, phase boxing, page cleaning, unsticking of pages, new barcode. These books also will be delivered on large booktrucks to CERAS. This category is large; it is meant to include anything that DR staff is not certain is shelfready -- we want the deliveries to Green Loading Dock to have no materials of doubtful shelfreadiness. Direct Shipments to Green At Green Loading Dock, the booktrucks with shelfready books (27 trucks per week, about 6400 books) will be rolled to the Lower Level by Mail Room staff; Access Services or temporary staff will scan the barcodes for overnight processing to change the Current Location in Unicorn and Socrates from FLOOD-ITEM to STACKS. The books will be sorted and reshelved over the course of the week. "Total Loss" At CERAS, the Total Loss materials will be examined to confirm that they in fact cannot be adequately repaired. Temporary staff will search Socrates and indicate what other copies or editions we own. Selectors will come to the Recovery Room at CERAS to examine the books in their subject areas and make replacement or reformatting decisions. Project staff will follow through on those decisions. Our working estimate is that there will be about 3500 titles for the whole project. Triage and Processing For the catch-all category (the 15-18%, 1200-1600 books per week), the "triage" staff awaits at the entry to the Recovery Room at CERAS. The booktrucks roll in, staff examine each book to determine to which work station the book must be routed: Cleaning/Unsticking, or End Processing, or Commercial Bindery preparation, or Repair/Reboxing (to Conservation Lab where all the heavy equipment resides). The staff in the Recovery Room also will do Bindery Receiving for the duration of the project. Temporary staff will be trained for all of these functions. Problems with missing barcodes or Unicorn records will be set aside for our regular staff. After books have been processed, they’ll be delivered on large booktrucks to Green Loading Dock for reshelving in that week’s cycle. We arranged for two shipments per week from DR to minimize the space needed for staging an entire week’s worth of material. The requirement is to completely process one shipment before the next one arrives three days later.. The first shipment should be delivered the week of April 13; if we in fact keep up with incoming shipments, the last shipment will come the week of June 8. The cycle for the bindery will keep going for another 6 weeks, which takes us into August. Arrangements for ordering or reformatting of damaged materials should be complete shortly after the last shipment from DR; however, replacements likely will trickle in over time and will be "received" by regular staff. We will reduce temporary staffing as the projects at CERAS and Green wind down. Government Documents We included Government Documents materials in our volume estimates, but we have not yet planned the details of that recovery project. Our sense of degree of damage to these materials is much less certain than what we believe about Green materials. Once the Jonsson materials are dried, we will visit them at DR and determine how they should be sorted for delivery to CERAS and Jonsson. Staffing We have terrific people leading different aspects of the book recovery project. Ella Harsin, who retired from the Preservation Department a few years ago, has agreed to lead the book return and processing project. Marleen Madou-DeCokere, currently in Ordering Services, will lead the project to replace (upon advice of the Collections staff) flood-damaged books that are beyond repair. Bob Mortezai, who is supervising the Stack Division while Larry Dahl plans shelf arrangements for reopening of Green West, will supervise the barcode scanning and reshelving on Green Lower Level. All three are responsible to ensure that production schedules are met. Ella , Marleen, and Bob will work with temporary staffing agencies to staff their operations; however, if you know of anyone interested in this work for 3-4 months, send them DIRECTLY to one of these supervisors or to Carol Olsen’s office right away. We’ll have brief Job Descriptions on the HR web space. In conclusion, please remember that our estimates of wet and damaged books and of staffing, processing, and shelving requirements are based on our experiences in the Meyer Flood of 1978, on flood experiences of other libraries in recent years, and on the wet book assessments of the three vendors who bid on the drying contract. The plans will be adjusted as each shipment arrives and the reality of our situation becomes clearer. We are psyched to get this project underway and very motivated to fill up those shelves on the Lower Level as soon as we can! *CERAS is the Center for Educational Research at Stanford; it is between Sweet Hall and the Law School. The Recovery Room will be housed on the first floor in the former leland computer room. Catherine M. Tierney Assistant University Librarian for Technical Services Stanford University