Sender: Rare Books and Special Collections Forum <EXLIBRIS@RUTVM1.BITNET>
Steven Horwitz
Robbins Collection
Law Library
UC Berkeley
This morning a conservator, Bruce Levy, visited. In our conversation he
said that he had done considerable work for UC Santa Cruz on earthquake
damaged books (indeed, there was federal money for the project). We
suffered some damage, but carried insurance for the two incunables and
one manuscript that were damaged (that one of the books remains with the
restorer only reinforces the firm's motto: Sua fata habent libelli (Books
have their own detinies) I know that other northern c
California libraries also suffered during the quake. What have you done since
then to prevent the sorts of problems we had? I believe that the Japanese have
constructed lipped shelving to discourage or prevent books dancing off during
a quake? How did you deal with books damaged by the quake?
I know this may seem parochial to those of you elsewhere in the country, but
I think the New Madrid Fault got a lot of ink last year, and, as I recall, the
national center for earthquake study is located in Buffalo--I presume the
federal government is unclear on geography or perhaps you folks have something
to worry about.
In general, what have libraries done in the wake of large scale disasters which
have affected entire regions, and which, as opposed to library disasters (fire
in the stacks, flooding from sprinklers)? Is there usually federal or state
funding available?
Finally, though I'm bad enough at telling jokes live and recognize the
handicaps of e-mail for conveying nuances, let me take a stab at Phillip
Metzger's Rare book librarian/Light Bulb challenge:
How many rare book librarians does it take to change a light bulb?
Four: one to remove the old bulb and install the new one, and three to decide
how to catalogue and preserve the old one.