Responding to High-Volume Water Disasters in the Research Library Context

Background

The library disaster literature may be broadly divided into two categories: preparedness guides and response case studies. Although a few publications exist prior to the mid-1960s, the proliferation of literature began in earnest after the 1966 Florence Flood, when the banks of the Arno River in Florence, Italy, deposited water, mud, and fuel oil on priceless cultural heritage. As stated by librarians after the disaster, the Florence Flood “was an event so dramatic and so extensively reported throughout the world that it made the library profession vividly aware of the vulnerability of its collections” (Association of Research Libraries, 1980, p.1). As Ogden (1979) notes in an article that examined the disaster literature ten years before and after the Florence Flood, nothing was published before 1966 that dealt with large-scale recovery of library collections, in particular books. After the flood, the literature began to focus on mass treatment approaches for water-damaged library materials.

The experiences of the first responders to the Florence Flood also represent some early published case studies of library disasters. In 1967 Horton documented her experiences in Florence, noting that the books with coated paper stuck together and mold proliferated among collection materials (Horton, 1967). Clarkson (2009), reminiscing years later, recalled that low-technology salvage techniques, such as the use of human chains to efficiently remove damaged collection materials from compromised environments, were hallmarks of the Florence Flood recovery operations. Library professionals experimented with a wide variety of industrial drying techniques, with varying degrees of success, but en-masse drying clearly proved faster than traditional interleaving of book pages with absorbent paper (Horton, 1967).