My Disastrous New Job!

[Editor’s note: Read the full text of this very instructive article to learn more about the development and role of a disaster plan, initial responses for disaster recovery, and ongoing actions following a disaster. See http://llamonline.org/2012/03/30/my-disastrous-new-job/.]

In May of 2011, after seventeen years at the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, I moved to a new position as the Assistant Librarian for Technical Services and Special Collections at the Supreme Court of the United States. While I was sad to be leaving so many friends and talented colleagues at Maryland, it was not possible to pass up the opportunity to be a part of the Supreme Court. Little did I know that my first six months on the job would be such a disaster or, more accurately, a series of disasters. These incidents helped to focus my understanding of how a library disaster plays out in real time and just how very necessary a disaster response plan is. In this article, I hope to share some of this hard earned knowledge with the LLAM community while encouraging those who do not yet have a plan to prepare a disaster response plan.

http://llamonline.org/2012/03/30/my-disastrous-new-job/

Bill Sleeman Asst. Librarian for Technical Services and Special Collections Supreme Court of the United States

#disasterrecovery #PreservationWeek #SupremeCourtoftheUnitedStates #waterdamage

LSU Celebrates a Year of Preservation Progress

Preservation Week at the LSU Law Library this year focused on looking back at all we have accomplished in a year’s time. In June of 2013 the library hired its first full time archivist to oversee the rare books and archives collections. The archivist’s first priority was gaining physical control of the collections. Many of the manuscript collections had been put in filing cabinets for long term storage and were located in various sections of the building. These collections were brought together in one climate-controlled location and rehoused in archival boxes. Additional preservation efforts included the removal of rusty staples and paper clips, interfiling with acid free paper as needed, and placing documents in consistently sized acid free folders.

The archives had accumulated a large, unsorted collection of alumni photographs (mostly from the 1990s) and similar preservation methods were taken. In addition, the entire collection was digitized and placed online via a Flickr account. This was done in the hopes of gaining a level of intellectual control since it created the opportunity for crowd-sourced identification of the photos’ contents. The Flickr account is active (https://www.flickr.com/photos/101257831@N05/sets/) and the project had a soft launch earlier this year which has yielded promising results.

As a pilot project, items within a particular collection of speech files from the LSU Law Center’s longest-serving dean that were deemed of significant research value and/or historical interest were digitized and placed online with the library’s institutional repository (http://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/hebert_speeches/).  The project was a success and plans are underway to create more digital surrogates of items within the manuscript collections as an additional level of preservation.

Much of the work in the past year has been focused on bringing the library in line with the standard practices of the archival profession. In addition to the library’s considerable preservation work this year, policies were also put in place that allowed greater access to the materials. Finding aids are also being created for all of the archival collections. The Archival Collections have also increased their presence on the library’s website (http://www1.law.lsu.edu/library/general-information/collections/archives/). Moving forward, the library aims to identify preservation needs within its rare book collection and take preservation to the next level within the archives.

Travis H. Williams Metadata Librarian & Archivist LSU Law Library

#DigitalCommons #lawschoolarchives #LouisianaStateUniversity #PreservationWeek

The Graduation Day Leak

The Graduation Day Leak: Mitigation/Preservation/Conservation Efforts

We open Preservation Week with a disaster recovery success story from Stewart Plein at West Virginia University, where a severe storm on Graduation Day 2013 caused a leak in the WVU College of Law Library storage area.

Storm water entered through a section of the College of Law renovation construction destroying one of the clinics and damaging some of our earliest copies of the WV Law Review, from the first volume, printed in 1894, through the 1930s. The mitigation/preservation process took most of the summer.  Books were fanned open to dry, fans operated 24 hours a day to facilitate drying and pages were interwoven with paper towels, pressed with weights, with the process repeated on a weekly basis.

Furry, live mold growth appeared almost overnight.  Each book with mold growth was wiped clean, fanned out near air circulation and checked on a daily basis for regrowth.  When active mold growth halted, all books were hand vacuumed to ensure no spores remained.

Due to these efforts the library only had to send two books to the Wert bindery for conservation.  These books absorbed an excessive amount of water and required rebinding.  Any provenance information that was to be retained was discussed with Wert representatives.  The books had been rebound prior to the water damage, and they were rebound with similar bindings. All provenance information retained to ensure continued connection with previous students.

Stewart Plein Curator, Rare Books Collection Managing Director, West Virginia Digital Newspaper Project Assistant Curator, West Virginia and Regional History Center West Virginia University Libraries

#disasterrecovery #PreservationWeek #waterdamage #WestVirginiaUniversity