McGrath, Ellen T.

Milles, James G.

Zubrow, Marcia

English

Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law

University at Buffalo School of Law Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law Other Scholarship Faculty Scholarship 7-1-2005 The University at Buffalo Law Library's Recovery from Fire James G. Milles University at Buffalo School of Law, jgmilles@buffalo.edu Marcia Zubrow University at Buffalo School of Law, llmarcia@buffalo.edu Ellen T. McGrath University at Buffalo School of Law, emcgrath@buffalo.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/other_scholarship  Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation James G. Milles, Marcia Zubrow & Ellen T. McGrath, The University at Buffalo Law Library's Recovery from Fire, 30 ALLUNY Newsl. 9 (2005). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/other_scholarship/63 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Other Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. For more information, please contact lawscholar@buffalo.edu.                                                                                                                                              Volume 30, Issue 2 Page 6 The University at Buffalo Law Library’s Recovery from Firecoverage contributed by Ellen McGrath, Jim Milles, and Marcia Zubrow; with photos by Jim Milles An Introduction -- from 03/22/05  James Milles, Associate Dean for Legal Information Services, Director of the Law Library, Associate Professor of Law Univer-sity at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York , from the files of Law-Lib (reprinted with permission of the au-thor): On Saturday morning, March 19, O'Brian Hall was damaged by a fire located in a food court located on the second floor, acrossthe hall from the Law Library.  Several law school offices and class-rooms were damaged, and repairs are now underway.   Unfortunately, some of the most extensive damage occurred inthe Law Library.  While no materials were lost, soot and smoke permeated the entire Law Library, requiring a more extensive andprolonged clean-up.The Law Library staff is working very hard to resume services asquickly and fully as possible.  … We are very grateful to the staff and administration of the Univer-sity Libraries for their support in helping us continue to meet the special needs of the Law School’s faculty, stu-dents, and staff.  Thank you all for your patience as we adjust to this difficult situation. University at Buffalo Law Library in Exile: The Road to Returnby Marcia Zubrow, Head of Information Services, Charles B. directed by the New York State Office of General Ser-Sears Law Library, University at Buffalo vices and was accomplished by a combination of state em-ployees and outside contractors.Saturday, March 19, 2005 was a memorable day for theUniversity at Buffalo Law School and the Charles B. Sears Once the initial shock of the fire passed, work by the li-Law Library. Early in the morning, a fire broke out on the brary staff began on two fronts. For those readers whosecond floor in the Law School Food Court, a room with are not familiar with Law Library, we have six floors occu-food vending machines that also contained the student pying floors two through seven of O’Brian Hall. On themailboxes. The fire was relatively quickly contained but first front, we had to pack everything from the offices onleft in its wake major damage to the area where it raged the second (entrance) floor of the Library. Those offices and significant damage to John Lord O’Brian Hall, the Law were most affected by the fire and are the work “homes” School’s building. Luckily, no one was hurt and all of the of thirteen of our nineteen staff members. In terms of thedamage could be repaired. Although the Law Library’s book collections, the second and third floor books sus-book collections were covered with soot and smelled of tained the worse damage. When I say that the packing smoke, no books were burned or damaged by water, an- process was nasty work, it is an understatement. Becauseother common source of damage in a library fire. In this of a three story atrium in the Law Library, smoke wasarticle, I will focus on the effects of the fire on the Law drawn into that open space and left an aftermath of sootLibrary and its services. Within a very short time after the and air laden with smoke. Everything was covered with fire was out, the University began cleaning and recon- grimy soot and the air reeked of smoke. The air handlingstructing O'Brian Hall. The response time was admirable; system was closed down for cleaning and no fresh air the University began to implement the University disaster came into the building. We had two days to complete allplan immediately. All clean-up and reconstruction was (Continued on page 7)The former Food Court, scene of the fire, after clean up had begun l  , Iss  ag                                                                                                                                                                               Volume 30, Issue 2 Page 7 University at Buffalo Law Library in Exile: The Road to Return (Continued from page 6)the packing in order for the complete contents, including furniture, of the offices to be moved into huge storage con-Soot damage in Susan Dow’s officetainers sitting outside of O'Brian Hall. Also, all the books from twelve bookranges had to be moved and the ranges dismantled. This work was in preparation for asbestos abatement that was required prior to any cleaningand reconstruction. Miraculously, we were able to complete all of thepacking in the time allotted. We were helped by the other libraries and librarians on campus and by the Law School. For example, the University Libraries micro-computer support team and the Law School’s Law IT teamhelped dismantle all of our computers. The University Libraries loaned temporary shelving and extra book trucks and individual librarians offered to  help with packing. We are very fortunate to  have had assistance from our library and university colleagues. During the first few days, we also hadto establish a book cleaning protocol and Marilyn Kramer, Head of Cata-loging in the University Libraries Central Technical Services Department, was invaluable in helping to write the protocols. Also, we received valuable advice from the Northeast Document Conservation Center in writing the protocols.The second front concerned planning and implementing a plan to provide library services for our law school commu-nity. On Monday, March 21, two days after the fire, the law librarians metwith the Director and Associate Director of the University Libraries andseveral other key colleagues and friends from the University Libraries. Thepurpose of the meeting was to find temporary locations for our now dis-placed library staff. Lockwood Library and Central Technical Services, bothlocated just down the hall from the Law Library, were able to accommo-date everyone except Jim Milles, the Law Library Director, his administra-tive assistant, Amy Hothow, and Terry McCormack, the Audio-Visual Li-brarian. Jim and Amy stayed in temporary offices in O'Brian Hall to be onlocation for decision making as the reconstruction proceeded. Terrystayed because the Law School began classes within four days after the fireand he needed to be in the building to provide the normal audiovisual ser-vices. Terry and his student assistants did an admirable job providing ser-vice as usual under very difficult circumstances. By Tuesday, March 22 (the first day of spring), all of the remaining Law Library staff members from our Technical Ser-vices, Access Services and Information Services Departments were welcomed to their new locations which had beenoutfitted with computers and telephones. Then we worked on providing services to our "normal" patrons and I amvery proud to say that we were able to commence our services on Wednesday, March 23, only four days after the fire.The Access Services Department, including circulation, reserve, and interlibrary loan, was located in the main circula-tion area of Lockwood Library. We decided that we would retrieve any booksfrom the Law Library that were requested by patrons. However, before wecould deliver them to the patron, we needed to have the books cleaned either by a cleaning crew in the Law Library or by the Preservation Program in theUniversity Libraries Central Technical Services Department. Many people thinkthat our patrons just use databases now and do not want to use books. How-ever, we discovered the opposite was true. We were retrieving numerous books all of the time we were in Lockwood Library. The Technical ServicesDepartment, including Cataloging and Acquisitions, because of the constantflow of incoming materials, continued to process standing orders as well as or-der new titles. Throughout the entire time the Law Library was in exile, theAcquisitions Department’s Passport Acceptance Facility continued to operate 2nd floor reading room Reference shelves removed  (Continued on page 8)l  , Iss                                                                                                                                                                           Volume 30, Issue 2 Page 8 UB Law Library in Exile: The Road to Return(Continued from page 7)in our various locations. In addition, the Technical Services and Access Services departments worked closely together in retrieving requested print materials from the Law Library and readying them for the requestor.The Law Library’s reference desk in exile was located in the Business/Government Documents area of Lockwoodwhere we were welcomed by our colleagues. Some of the government documents duplicated our collection and, in many instances, Lockwood's collection contained documents that we do not own since Lockwood has been a federal depository library much longer than the Law Library. A prime example isThe Law Library staff receives cleaning instruction.Left to right: Marcia Zubrow, Nina Cascio, Mary Miller, Melissa Bednarz, Lisa Paschis, Nancy Babb, Terry Dy-chowski, Janet Adornetto the relatively complete serial set owned by Lockwood that is always re-quested by law students, especially law journal cite checkers. We wereable to retrieve the serial set volumes for our students ourselves ratherthan just sending them down the hall to Lockwood. The Law Library In-formation Services Department also has a document delivery service for law school faculty which we were able to continue during the time wewere in Lockwood. Law students, and our other non-law student pa-trons, had no trouble finding where we were located and, after the firstweek, we maintained our normal reference service hours. We brought a core collection of reference books with us and were able to function fairly well with that collection, electronic resources, and retrieving otherprint materials as needed.We spent three and a half weeks in Lockwood while the reconstruction work continued in O’Brian Hall. During those weeks, we were back and forth between the two locations constantly, retrieving books, choosingnew carpeting and paint colors, and meeting to plan our return to O’BrianHall. As I mentioned earlier, floors two and three sustained the most sootand smoke damage and needed the most reconstruction. Every book in theLaw Library was cleaned; those on the second and third floors were given the most complete treatment. Our rare book collection of approximately2000 volumes was cleaned using specially developed procedures as a sepa-rate project after the entire Law Library reopened. The upper floors, four through seven, were cleaned first and readied for library patrons. Also,computers and printing services were made available for law students. Allof the law student computers, many of which are normally on the thirdfloor of the Law Library, were cleaned and moved to the sixth floor of theLaw Library. Printing capabilities from the law student computers and from Lexis and Westlaw were re-established. Wednesday, April 13, was an exciting day for us and law students when we moved back into the upper floors of theLaw Library. The fifth floor, the permanent location of the Audio-visual Department, became our main floor of opera-tion. All of our services, Access Services, Technical Services, and Information Services, were provided from the fifthfloor. Also, the Law Library’s Administrative offices were on the fifth floor. As you can imagine, there were many chal-lenges, such as developing a system to allow non-law school patrons needing legal materials into the Law Library andone telephone line for both Technical Services and Information Services, but we were very happy to be back in O’Brian Hall. On Monday, May 9th, only seven weeks after the fire, floors two and three were ready for reoccupation and wemoved all of our services back to their original locations. Work continues on fine tuning the location of equipment,computers, and furniture but our services are generally back to normal now.Immediately after the fire occurred, Jim Milles decided that maintaining communication among the Law Library staff and with our patrons was extremely important. For the staff, he set up a daily meeting during the noon hour in one of thecampus cafeterias. Although we were not all able to attend everyday, it was an invaluable time for us to be updated on(Continued on page 9)Marcia Zubrow provides reference service from the Archivesl  , Iss  ag                                                                                                                                                                                 Volume 30, Issue 2 Page 9 UB Law Library in Exile: The Road to Return(Continued from page 8)the reconstruction, exchange ideas on necessary deci-sions, and interact with each other. For our patrons, Jimimmediately created the Law Library blog called UB Law Library in Exile, now renamed by a law student pollUBLaw Phoenix http://ublawlib.blogspot.com. We used the blog to inform our patrons of our available services,locations, and contact numbers as well as to update themon the reconstruction process. Jim included photos sothere is a visual record of the fire’s aftermath and the reconstruction. Just as we were displaced from our nor-mal workplaces, the law students were displaced fromthe Law Library, too. There is much discussion in library literature about the library “as place” and it became evi-dent that the Law Library serves several functions in the lives of law students. Many students expressed to us thatthey felt lost without having the Law Library available tothem. It is hard to say who was happier about our returnto the Law Library - students or library staff. Finally, frommy own perspective, the experience of being part of a construction site was very unique. The experience al-lowed me to see a totally different culture from the aca-demic world and to gain an appreciation for that culture.In summary, we hope that the fire in the Law Library wasa once-in-a-lifetime experience. We are extremely fortu-nate that no one was injured and we did not lose any ofthe book collections. Also, we are fortunate that we arepart of a University that was prepared to provide the necessary support to accomplish such a large reconstruc-tion project. We are fortunate to have librarian col-leagues who offered a great deal of support. Finally, weare fortunate to have dedicated and committed Law Li-brary staff members who worked together as a team toget the job done, no matter what the job was. What elsecan we say but, we are very lucky and thank you to eve-ryone who helped us!Welcome home! L-R:  Maureen Glenn,  Susan Dow,Jim Milles,Mary Miller,Amy Hothow, Nancy Babb, Karen Spencer (kneeling),  Janet Adornetto,  Melissa Bednarz Visit the UB Law Library atALLUNY’s Annual Meeting,9/30 - 10/2see the Local Arrangements Committee report on p. 46 for more information about the Annual Meeting.Random Fire Reflections from Ellen McGrath Head of Cataloging, University at Buffalo Law Library • Having good relationships with colleagues, while always helpful and rewarding, can pay off big time when disasterstrikes.  Our University Libraries’ Central Technical Services (CTS) had computers setup and took in our technical services staff almost immediately.  Our Libraries’ Systems Office staff also played a big role in our many moves. • Having access to most cataloging tools on the web means that we truly can catalog anywhere.  And we did, as wemoved multiple times: to CTS, then to a temporary space upstairs in the Law Faculty Library, and finally back to ourcompletely refurbished offices. • Keeping our Cataloging Department well-organized and categorized helped so much when it came time to box it allup and label it for later retrieval.  Unpacking went fairly smoothly as a result too.• Along those same lines, clearing out your office regularly is a good idea. When you have to do it in a hurry, you donot always make the best decisions.• Writing your user IDs and passwords down or better yet, keeping them stored remotely becomes essential whenyou lose access to your own computer.  While macros can make your life a lot easier on a daily basis, they are ofno use if they are only stored locally on your computer and that machine is gone. By extension, having all your files networked and backed up remotely is a lifesaver when you cannot use your own computer.  It means you can ac-cess everything you need from anywhere and everywhere.  And we did!• Being flexible is always an admirable trait, but especially so when disaster strikes. Everyone pitched in and did what-ever had to be done in order to reach the goal of getting the library reopened as quickly as possible. • Having a lot of “house dust” on the books can actually protect them when a layer of soot settles on top of it.  I al-ways felt guilty about the dusty books.  Who knew? l  , Iss  ag   

The University at Buffalo Law Library\u27s Recovery from Fire

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The University at Buffalo Law Library\u27s Recovery from Fire

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