Working On Water Damaged Books

I hope the dead appreciate what we are doing form them.  It took us 12 hours to copy 700 images from a water damaged book.  (Last week our weekly total was 15,000 images)  

The benefits are exposure to lots of mold and lots of paper dust in the air.  We will be lucky if we do not contract Black Lung or TB from the working conditions.  In addition to the poor air, the Archive employees spent the week trapping and poising are basement rats.  I personally have not seen one, but one attacked Kris no Monday.  She got the best of the Chiwawa size critter and he\she disappeared behind some book stacks with a broken tail.  (Maybe Rats are a little bigger in Lima?)  

                                            Here, Kris is using a sponge to dampen pages to unstuck them. When books get wet and then dry the pages stick together.  If the pages don't dry the water logged pages fall apart when handled.

Bob is attempting to alien damaged page parts.  Often it is like a gig-saw puzzle. For the past month we have photographed newer books.  David was laughing at Bob because of the extra work required to complete a water damaged book.  

               David and Bob are trying to decide how to improve the quality of a photograph.

           When pages get wet the ink fades or bleeds, and camera settings need to be altered to enhance the damaged records.

So, now that you have seen that our work can be a little tedious. Look at the story via the Link Kris posted.  The people of Niue (A small island in the South Pacific 180 miles west of Samoa) had their civil records destroyed during a category 5 storm.  The Church was able to present them a copy of their destroyed records because 30 years ago several missionaries had photographed them and a copy had been preserved in Granite Mountain.