Monday, June 23, 2008

It’s very weird to be at work. Twenty university buildings have been shut down due to flood waters. Three of buildings have library collections in them which means that we are busy shuffling staff around. The preservation department was assigned to work in the Business Library. Actually, this was just a spot for us to meet to decide how to proceed. Susan Hansen, Book Repair Supervisor, thought to pack our book repair equipment into her car before heading home on Friday the 13th. Brilliant!

Susan and I had discussed off and on over the years that we’d like to set up temporary book repair stations at some of the branch libraries. Here was our chance to test the idea out. After some discussion we decided to set up two temporary book repair stations, one at Hardin Library of Health Science and another at the GeoscienceLibrary. We also decided that staff could stay home part of the time, working on the online Preservation 101course. Kristin planned to work with Jane Meggers at the State Historical Society of Iowa conservation lab on some of the Czech/Slovak items.

We all agreed to keep everyone posted via email every day as to where we were for the day.