On the morning of July 9, 2002 the ISU Library Special Collections Department was reminded of just that fact. A cleaning crew working on the terrazzo floors
in the library foyer spent the night before using a water and abrasive
mixture to grind the
flooring for refinishing. They
were unaware that, for the full eight hours, the water was trickling
through unsealed bolt holes in the floor into the Rare Books room below.
At 8:00 a.m., Special Collections staff were greeted by the sight
of approximately 300 rare books soaked in water, ground terrazzo, and
soggy, crumbled ceiling tiles.
The staff went into immediate action. Books were carefully removed and fanned out on any flat surface we could find: tables, shelves, book trucks. Among the hardest hit sections were early government documents dealing with Idaho, and two sets of serials by Charles Dickens: Household Words and All The Year Round. The earliest volume involved was a 1705 edition of Remarks on Several Parts of Italy by Joseph Addison. Approximately 200 volumes were cleaned and dried by ISU staff members and student employees. The other 100 volumes (those most heavily damaged) were accepted by Randy Silverman at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library to be dried. The disintegrated tile adhering to some of the books made returning those items to a useable state very difficult, as it quickly set into a plaster-like consistency. Nevertheless, when the books were returned to us in under a month every single book was useable – not pretty, but useable. A year and a half later the rare books are all settled into their refurbished home. The insurance settlement is in hand, and we are attempting to locate replacement volumes for those books most heavily damaged. In time the collection will hopefully return to its prior state, and the staff of the ISU Library Special Collections Department will be smarter for the experience.
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