Library salvage operation under way

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More than 50,000 flood-damaged books and documents from the Library's book store in Lewes have been deep frozen to prevent further deterioration while their future is decided.

The damaged stock was boxed, wrapped in cling film and transferred to cold-storage warehouses shortly after being rescued from the scene of devastation at Downs Business Park in October.

Now University staff are working out the best way to "restore the knowledge", as Librarian Deborah Shorley puts it. The cost of salvaging each flood-damaged book is estimated to be £50, whereas the price of the average academic book is around £35. Another option is to provide electronic access to a journal or out-of-print book.

Among the most distressing losses was the Chester music collection of 20,000 items of sheet music, which will be restored if at all possible. It has already been decided that some 14,000 newspapers and periodicals that were in the store cannot be salvaged.

Deborah said: "We are currently assessing, item by item, which material we will seek to restore and what we might replace. At the same time we are thinking laterally about access to knowledge. The opportunities now are particularly exciting with digitisation and other electronic options."

The damaged stock amounts to about only 10 per cent of the total Library collection, which is worth more than £40 million. The book store was used for storing volumes and documents that are not in frequent demand for undergraduate teaching or research.

Core Library services have not been affected, except that inter-library requests can now be made (free of charge) to obtain from alternative sources any material that was stored at Lewes.

A video-recording of the damage to the store will be shown in the large-screen viewing room in the Library, on Thursday (7 December) at 1 pm. Deborah Shorley will be present to answer questions during the 30-minute session, which all are welcome to attend.

All losses are listed on the Web at http://catalogue.sussex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/lewes.cgi.