Same Library, Different Work

So, at the beginning of the month, I changed locations. There are a lot of parts of the library. There the historical building where I was working; the new library where the study center is and where all the regular books are; the Karlsmühle, where they store(d) all the books damaged from the fire; and Legefeld, the paper restoration center where I work now. I'm sure there are probably more, but that's all I remember right now. Ha.

So yeah, I kinda work in the middle of nowhere now. I havsicae to take a bus to this town, Legefeld, outside of the city . . . that's still actually part of the city (which is great because I can just buy the regular bus pass).

When the fire happened, as expected, a lot of books were damaged by the flames, the heat and the water from the extinguishing. Fire damaged paper is really brittle, so you can't really send it back into circulation unless you stabilize it somehow. I mean, stabilizing one page or one book or five books, is one thing, but thousands? How were they even going to do that?!

The library called back this cool guy who had retired, Herr Müller, who has a LOT of experience in paper restoration. This guy basically set up a paper stabilization factory! It's SO AMAZING!

So basically, they wash the paper to get rid of all the dirt that comes with a library getting burned down

and they grind up paper

into pulp

using an industrial food blender.

Then, we take this machine and put the wet pages in it

and run some pulp mixed with water over it

then put Japanese paper over the new pages that we just made to stabilize the stabilization.

Basically, we turn

into

A new page that you can bend and use that normal! We then cut everything up into the format of a real book and send it out to get bound in the bindery.