Bracken Library has access to about 2.3 million books, periodicals, microforms, audiovisual materials, software, government publication maps, musical scores, archival records and other information sources, according to bsu.edu.
Two months after the flooding and the worst damage Bracken Library has ever seen, repairs and replacements to all the damages are still underway, and the final tally of damages is just under 13,000 items.
Suzanne Rice, interim dean of University Libraries until Matthew Shaw takes over as dean, said this accounts for less than 1 percent of the library's full collection.
The damage occurred just a couple weeks before finals last semester, when a water-chiller pipe on a large air handler broke in the library’s fifth floor, causing flooding and damages throughout the second, third and fourth floors in the west wing of the library.
Thousands of collection books and computers got wet. As a result, the clean-up effort involved multiple fans and de-humidifiers spread out across the floors, a disaster recovery contractor, scores of facilities planning/management staff, help from many library employees and volunteers.
The library is working on gathering reports of damaged items for insurance purposes and is starting the assessment and analysis for replacements, which Rice said is a complicated process that will take a couple of months.
While the process is slow, inspections are currently underway.
“All of the shelving and books on two, three and four west where the flood happened, all of that has been inspected and cleaned, and we are now in the process of sorting through literally a thousand items that were evacuated from the disaster area,” Rice said. “We are sorting through those and returning those to their proper location.”
Repairs have already been made to avoid any other damages in the future.
“That includes special sensors now to detect failures very quickly so that they can be identified and repaired before something becomes a problem,” Rice said. “So, hopefully, we will never see a flood of this magnitude again.”
There is not a definite date as to when all the repairs and replacements will be complete, but Rice predicts it will be several months before they are "back to where [they] were.”
While a few small areas on the fourth floor are still closed off, the vast majority of the floor is open.
Help from faculty and volunteers in the time following the water leak kept the damage from being any worse. Rice said many people were involved in quickly moving things around after the flood.
“I would like to thank the facility personnel and everyone who turned out to help us in our hour of need, both inside the library and out,” Rice said. “We have had great support from the Ball State community.”
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