Debra,

In a flood or other disaster event very few objects and artifacts are truly
"lost".

The best thing to do is to either freeze archival paper based materials so
that they can be stabilized until treatmern and recovery can happen later,
or you immediately try to interleaf with blotter paper and run fans and
de-humdifiers to dry things out.

There is a special issue of the WAAC Newsletter devoted to disaster response
after Hurricane Katrina (September 2005, Vo. 27, No. 3) has been made
available for free download on the WAAC website until August 31, 2008. It
has great information on disaster response and recovery. Here is the URL

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/waac/ttl/wn27-3-special.pdf

I encourage everyone to download a copy BEFORE you have a flood!

I also will emphasize again that if you are anticipating planning a new
collections / Library building that you do not store valuable archives and
objects in the basement - this sort of event happens over and over and over
again and is entirely preventable with proper planning when these
collections buildings and libraries are being planned.

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Conservator
Los Angeles, CA


On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 8:30 AM, Debra Loguda-Summers <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

>  Hello,
>
> Our new library received about 14 inches of water this weekend when one of
> the underground windows broke and all of the ground water around it came
> rushing in.  At this point thousands of books are lost, but I was asked by
> the director of library what to do with their VHS, Beta and reel to reel
> tapes.  At the moment they are "drying out" on some shelves, but the
> question is what to do to try and save them so they can be moved to another
> format such as DVD.  They have been moving these sort of things over to DVD
> already but were not sure if it was worth trying to save the "wet ones."
> Any thoughts would be appreciated.
>
>
>  *[log in to unmask]
> www.atsu.edu/museum*
> **
> *Debra Loguda-Summers, Curator*
> Still National Osteopathic Museum and National Center for Osteopathic
> History
> 800 West Jefferson
> Kirksville, MO 63501
> Phone: 660 626 2359
> Fax: 660 626 2984
> Toll Free: 1 866 626 ATSU Ext. 2359
>
>
>
> *The Mission of the Still National Osteopathic Museum is to collect,
> preserve, and make available artifacts and related materials to communicate
> the history and philosophy about the osteopathic principles of mind, body
> and spirit to a global audience.*
>
>
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