Issue date: 8/17/08 Section: News

Flood waters washed piles of reading material off the bottom shelf of AT Still University's library almost four weeks ago, but now the university has picked up the pages.

   One-seventh of the library's collection drowned in nearly 14 inches of standing water, library director Doug Blansit said. Water spread over 12,000 square feet after seeping through the windows, even with the emergency drains open.

"Our housekeeping folks did a great job of cleaning it up really quickly," he said. "Now we're waiting for the different parties involved to talk to each other."

Blansit said that in March, the library moved from the Centennial commons area to the O'Connell Information Technology Center to better accommodate changing education plans. Students now only have access to the top floor of the library, while the majority of the books and materials needed for classes are stored on the bottom floor.

"Their first week is an extremely intense library unit, and that's going to hit us," Blansit said. "That just puts another impediment on getting to the materials."

Students still can access books from the bottom floor through a closed stack system, in which library staff at the front desk take requests for the books needed and retrieve them for the student.

Maintenance workers who reported to the bottom floor during the middle of the night during the storm had a few options for book restoration, but because of the mass amount of floating reading material, they only hand dried a small number of books, Blansit said.

   Freeze drying books, a restoration alternative that requires high-quality paper to be effective, proved too expensive, he said.

"We had to work quickly, so we decided to not attempt that with any of them," Blansit said. "Basically from the time something like that happens, anything you do like that for restoration has to be done in a 48-hour period or the mold will grow too much."

   The lost books included titles from different sections of the entire collection. Blansit said the library's Mobius system will help make up for the books it's lacking.

   A.T. Still is working to make the bottom floor accessible to students and faculty, but Blansit predicts it will take awhile to pick up the pieces. The carpet, electrical and network wiring and the wooden paneling on the bottom shelves suffered significant damage, he said.

   The university has not received a statement from the insurance company as to how much it will cost to make repairs, said Adrian Anast, vice president of communications and marketing. President Magruder said he estimates the cost in damages to reach $1 million.

"It has a bad impact, but we got the library open and running again, which is good," he said. "But we're going to evaluate what's needed, and what's available, and we'll accommodate that for students and faculty."

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