LAC Newsletter |
Tulane University, A Live Case Study
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Summary: On Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the gulf coast of the United States, bringing death and destruction as one of the five deadliest hurricanes in United States history. Read more...
July 23, 2009:  Over the last six months, the Tulane Recovery Center Acquisitions team has made tremendous progress working towards replacing monograph and audiovisual materials lost from the Music Library after Katrina. The staff attempted to locate over 15,000 missing books, videos, and DVDs from multiple vendors and successfully placed over 5,000 orders. To date, 95% of these orders have been received, invoiced, cataloged, and returned to the shelves at Tulane Library. In addition to replacement orders, the team has placed orders for over 200 new DVDs for Tulane's expanding media collection.By Julia McGinnis, LAC Acquisitions Consultant May 8, 2009:  Congratulations to Amanda Ros for her recent successful election as Secretary of the New Members Round Table (NMRT) of ALA. Amanda is Assistant Cataloging Team Lead on the project and joined the LAC staff last fall. She oversees all of the cataloging technicians and is responsible for cataloging all formats of materials, but she primarily focuses on all non-print media. She previously served as a cataloger with the Pascagoula Public Library. I know she will do a great job in her position and is looking forward to serving the organization.March 30, 2009:  The Recovery Center was pleased to have Bob Tapella, The United States Public Printer visit on March 11,2009. Mr. Tapella was visiting local collections of Government Documents that were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Recovery Center is currently working through the initial sorting of about 77,000 government publications that were saved after Hurricane Katrina flooded the basement of Howard –Tilton. The majority of these documents sat in 8 feet of water for three weeks before being salvaged. Some were above the water line and only needed cleaning. Items that were under water have been cleaned and re-bound. In January, shelving was installed at the Recovery Center to hold the documents that will be processed and cataloged. Mr. Tapella was welcomed to the Recovery Center by Lance Query, Dean of Library Services, Andy Corrigan, Associate Dean, Eric Wedig, Government Documents Librarian, Deborah Schwarz, President of LAC and Del Hamilton, Recovery Center Project Manager. To read the official GPO press release click here.Feb. 23, 2009: Tulane Recovery Center Marks One Year Anniversary. To read the press release click here. Jan. 6, 2009: In mid-December, Library Associates Companies returned to the Louisiana Collection of Special Collections at Howard-Tilton Memorial Library four early-Spanish language newspapers that received remediation following Hurricane Katrina: El Misisipi, Avispa de Neuva Orleans, El Telegrafo, and El Moro de Paz. Read more... Dec. 11, 2008: The Tulane Recovery Center staff in New Orleans woke up to a rare treat this morning when we found the New Orleans area blanketed in an inch or so of snow. With the Saints impending victory over the Bears this evening and with all the glorious snow, everyone frolicked and enjoyed themselves. Check out some of the photos from this morning, including our tiny snowman… Oct. 28, 2008: Hi! I’m Amanda Ros, Cataloger for the Tulane Libraries Recovery Center. I started working in the library field in 1991 when I was a student aide as an undergraduate. Read more...  Sept. 15, 2008: Now that the Tulane Recovery Center is up and running after Hurricane Gustav, we have another story to share. The Archives team recently processed its 7800th item from the Angela Gregory Papers. Read more... Sept. 8, 2008: The Recovery Center went back into full operation today. Part of the staff spent Saturday uncovering equipment and getting computers back online so that today we could be set to get back down to business. Read more... Sept. 4, 2008: RECOVERY CENTER EMPLOYEES click here. August 29, 2008: Hi everyone, Today is the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a storm of epic proportions that left so much damage in its wake. We had thought this would be a quiet day with our being able to celebrate in a small way our great strides in bringing back the vast majority of Tulane's Music Collection for the start of the fall semester. Instead, at 4:30 August 28th we closed and locked the doors of the center... Read more... August 26, 2008: I’m Dolores Hooper one of the Cataloging Technicians at the Tulane Recovery Center. Traveling to New Orleans was quite an adventure for me. My two cats and I traveled down to Louisiana in my RV, Honey Bee. As we journeyed from snowy Pennsylvania I was able to see the coming of spring in just three days... Read more and view photos...  July 23, 2008: LAC recently removed the last of the manuscripts collections from Special Collections and started processing them here at the Recovery Center. Read more... July 11, 2008: The LAC powerpoint presentation that debuted at the ALA Conference in Anaheim is available here in .pdf form. July 9, 2008: Hello, my name is Chris Bridson. I am a cataloging technician for the Tulane Recovery Project. Read more...  June 24, 2008: Most bibliophiles only flirt with books…they handle them in the bookstore, picking one up from time to time to take home. If the book and owner get lucky, the relationship is consummated with a thorough reading, cover to cover. Then maybe the book goes back on a shelf, never to be picked up again. Maybe it gets passed on to a friend. Bibliophiles flirt with books, but they don’t know love of books. Read more here...  June 16, 2008: Greetings, June 9, 2008: Hello, my name is Julia McGinnis and I am serving as a cataloging consultant on the Tulane Recovery Project. I am currently the Technical Services Librarian at California University of Pennsylvania. Read more here... EContent Magazine has put their June '08 issue online; the issue features a story on the Recovery Project and project manager Del Hamilton and Tulane associate dean Andrew Corrigan are quoted. Access it here. June 2, 2008: Hi. I’m Carol Narcisse, born and bred in New Orleans. I recently came on board with LAC as the Shelving Supervisor after spending the last three years working at Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University. Read more... May 23, 2008: The Archives team has moved forward with the unloading of 80 pallets, totaling over 2,500 boxes that Belfor returned to the Recovery Center. The Archives crew along with other LAC staff, Chris Bridson, Ben Bryant, and Matthew Pierce, have worked tirelessly to unload these collections and prep them for the next stage of the project—the sorting and inventorying of these damaged collections. Read more and view photos... May 14, 2008: On Tuesday May 6th we made the first major move back to the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. A local moving company has been contracted to move the loaded carts of books across town to H-TML. The first load had about 3500 books in it. Once they arrived at the library, the LAC Shelving crew started re-shelving those items to make them available to Tulane patrons. Today, we made the second move of materials back and the crew is now hard at work shelving them. Read more and view photos... May 1, 2008: Hello all, Check out this nice writeup in today's issue of Library Journal. April 29, 2008: Hi everyone,  Tulane University Libraries and Library Associates Companies welcomed members of the University community and the New Orleans area to the Recovery Center Open House on April 16, 2008. Provost Michael Bernstein addressed the group and spoke to the challenges faced by Tulane immediately following Hurricane Katrina. Deb Schwarz, LAC President spoke regarding LAC’s role in the project and finally Andy Corrigan, Associate Dean recognized Tulane staff that have had an integral part in the project. Read more and view photos... April 8, 2008: Hi all, This week, we have surpassed our 1000-item mark for restored materials that are ready to return to the shelves at Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University. We look forward to seeing these back in circulation in the near future. This comes at a great time since next week we will host an open house here at the Recovery Center. Please feel free to stop in and see what we are doing! Del Oehms Hamilton April 7, 2008: The Chronicle of Higher Education news blog reports on LAC's restoration of the Tulane library. April 2, 2008 Press Release: Tulane Libraries Recovery Center Celebrates Integration of Restored Books to Howard Tilton Memorial Library Collection  March 1, 2008: Greetings and welcome to the Tulane Libraries Recovery Center online journal! We look forward to sharing our experiences with you as we move forward toward accomplishing our task of returning the damaged collections and materials back to Tulane University’s libraries. Many of us have direct connections to the devastation that Hurricane Katrina caused. Read more... Summary: *Information Provided by Andy Corrigan, Associate Dean for Library Collections, Tulane University and Brad Rogers of LAC.  On Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the gulf coast of the United States, bringing death and destruction as one of the five deadliest hurricanes in United States history. The most severe loss of life and property damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded as floodwalls collapsed at key interior points in the city’s drainage canals, inundating 80% of the city and many areas of neighboring parishes. Almost 2,000 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and the destruction has been estimated in the billions of dollars in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Among the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, the basement of Tulane University’s Howard-Tilton Memorial Library - an area about the size of a football field - was flooded with about eight feet of water. The basement housed a music library and a very large collection of government documents, newspapers, and microforms. In addition to the main library, Jones Hall, which houses the library’s Special Collections, received about four feet of water.  In those initial days after Katrina, both of Tulane’s damaged buildings became ticking time bombs for its collections. The accumulation of water in the basement produced incredible amounts of humidity while the loss of power shut off any circulating air. With it being summer in New Orleans at the time, the interior temperature in these closed-off structures quickly climbed to dangerous levels as toxic mold started to take over. As part of the university's campus-wide emergency plan, an international disaster management company, Belfor, responded to the scene almost immediately with a barrage of huge generators and specialized equipment. These first responders installed in both buildings an elaborate series of giant tubes to pump dry air throughout each floor in danger. Water was quickly removed and the battle against humidity and mold began. Throughout the recovery process, Tulane was able to salvage thousands of materials from the basement of the Howard-Tilton and Jones Hall. In summary, much was lost during Katrina, but the library has been able to restore more from these basement collections than it initially appeared in those dreadful first few days and weeks immediately after the hurricane. Today, the upper floors and the collections in both of Tulane’s library buildings are fine and functional, as mold was miraculously kept away from them. In February of 2008, Library Associates Companies (LAC) started a multi-year project to bring these restored materials back into Tulane’s general collection. LAC came to understand that in the wake of the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, the Tulane libraries had approximately 190,000 items that had been physically restored and required integration back into Tulane’s collection. LAC decided the best approach was to divide the work into two teams, headed by a single Project Manager, with one led by a librarian to work with the cataloged material and the other led by a librarian/archivist to primarily handle the archival materials: LAC Project Manager for the Tulane University Recovery Project: Del Hamilton Del Oehms Hamilton joined Library Associates in January, 2008 as an On Site Project Manager. She will be overseeing Tulane University’s Library Recovery Center and coordinating a three phased recovery project to facilitate dealing with the effects Hurricane Katrina had on the collections and materials.   Del has 23 years of library experience on all levels with over 20 of those in the academic setting. She most recently served as Library Systems Coordinator for Slippery Rock University. At SRU she also served as library Department Chairperson for 13 years and as an Instructional Materials Center Librarian first at Central Michigan University before joining the faculty at Slippery Rock in 1990. She has extensive experience in coordinating projects and operations of all sizes. She has participated in statewide initiatives with the Keystone Library Consortium since its beginning. In addition, at Central Michigan University she served as a professor for the Library Science program and taught courses on Cataloging, Children’s Literature, and Young Adult Literature. She received her BS in Library Science and Education from Mississippi University for Women and her MLS from University of Southern Mississippi. Professionally Del is a past president of the Endeavor Users Group and served as an elected member of the Executive Board for 7 years. She was very active in the Enhancement Committee for that organization which she chaired for many years. Most recently she served as Chairperson of the Voyager Product Group during its formation under the Ex Libris Users of North America organization. She served on the Keystone Library Network Council and chaired several statewide projects. She is a member of the American Library Association, LITA, and ACRL and has served those organizations in various capacities.  |
