Harvard Explained: Library Emergency Team

Let’s say you’re walking back from Lamont at 2 a.m. when your book falls into a huge puddle. And let’s say the book is a hundred years old, one of the few left from the original round of publishing, approved by Sartre or DuBois themselves. Feeling screwed yet? Try 617-240-2500, which directs you to one of the 17 members of the Library Collections Emergency Team, which exists for the sole purpose of swooping in to undo your carelessness. These specially-trained employees have day jobs in Widener Conservation Services or the Weissman Preservation Center, but when on-call, they have the emergency cell phone turned on and with them at all times.

“It’s in my pocket or next to my head while I am sleeping,” said team co-chair and unsung hero Jane A. Hedberg.

Team members are supposed to respond within 20 minutes, but if it just so happens that the call does not get through, the University Operations Center takes charge of the problem along with their responses to more routine safety and crime issues. The Team has at its disposal three freeze dryers on campus, one of which is stashed in the basement of Widener. These special dryers can sublime water out of up to 600 wet books. If they run out of room, library materials can be shipped to a private freeze-dryer company in Texas.

“It sounds pretty cool. As to whether it is economically efficient, I have my doubts,” said Alan A. Ibrahim ’11, a student supervisor for Lamont circulation. Other students think of it as a last resort.

“I would use this in desperate times for desperate measures, but other than that, probably no,” said Jowanna R. Malone, ’13.

Little do these students understand that the puddles are waiting.