LJ Talks to… Marie DeVries of the Cedar Rapids Public Library

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 6/20/2008

LJ’s Norman Oder spoke to Marie DeVries, who last week was the development coordinator for the CRPL Foundation, but this week has become the library’s external relations coordinator. (Photographs are courtesy of the library.)

How’s it going?
This is all fluid. We’re just doing triage, it’s what’s got to be done today. So [interim director] Tam Glise and I are trying to handle the external affairs. Other librarians and managers are just trying to keep up with what is going on internally. We have a branch, very small; we’ve moved a lot of librarians and staff over there. It’s in a mall, with empty storefronts, so they’re allowing us to store books and have programs there. We held a summer reading program in a former Famous Footwear store. It’s a big empty room; we just threw some tables in there and made do.

What happened when the water rose?
The main branch sits basically across the street from the river, so we got hit really hard. The water on the first floor was about five feet deep. They anticipated it would be a foot or. So staff moved all the materials on lower shelves to top shelves, which were too high for our patrons. We thought, well, we can save those books. But the recovery team is telling us, we can [freeze the books for recovery], but you’re not going to be happy with it. As of today, they’re saying everything on the first floor has to be dumped.

But the second floor, with the children’s collection, is okay?
Obviously the water didn’t get up there, but every day that passes is a problem. The humidity is incredible. You can hardly be there without a mask for 15 minutes. The muck left behind by the river is filled with who knows what. We have a lot of industry in downtown Cedar Rapids. They all are located along the river, and they’ve all been compromised, so many of the chemicals they had in storage are in the river. And, of course, [there’s] raw sewage. So [they’re] telling us everything on the first floor has got to be pulled out, removed, and dumped. We have some giant dehumidifiers trying to dry [things] out. That air is seeping up into the second floor. We’re hoping they’ll get it to a point where that collection on the second floor is okay.

The library doesn’t have power yet.
They’ve restored some power to some buildings by using generators. As you can imagine, there are so many businesses and City Hall, police, and sheriff’s departments. They all had to evacuate. They all get priority.

You did save valuable materials.
We also have an extensive and valuable art collection, over 800 original children’s book illustrations from the 1930s to the 1970s.They got the entire collection up to the second floor, and most of that, since the flood, has been removed. Wednesday they started moving the books and the art collection. By 5 o’clock Wednesday they evacuated the downtown. The water was already in buildings by Wednesday afternoon. Then it kept rising.

You have just one branch.
We have partners—Marion and Hiawatha, two communities [which] have fairly small public libraries; we’re in a network [Metro Library Network] with them—they are of course pitching in. Many books and materials are being returned to those two libraries, and they are just lending them back out. That’s been a great resource.

How much of the collection did you lose?
We have lots of data about our collection, but it’s all in our servers, and we don’t have access to them. We have between 290,000 and 300,000 items in our collection. How many children’s books? I don’t know. Once we get our servers up and running, we’ll be able to figure things out. Today they’re thinking about pulling the servers out, because they could be compromised by humidity. The only one we’ve pulled out has circulation [information]. It’s now in place at the Marion Public Library.

I know it’s not comparable, but in New Orleans, the downtown was spared.
We have, in our downtown, all the public services like City Hall, the sheriff's department, the police department, the main fire department, the museums—the African-American Museum, the Czech and Slovak Museum, the Science Station—all of those [have} flooded. Two theaters flooded. Many banks in the downtown area and the bank that serves the public library foundation, though it has other branches—are all flooded. And then thousands of homes that surround the downtown are flooded.

How well are things getting organized?
The city and police department and fire department and all those businesses are setting up outside the downtown area in temporary offices. As you can imagine, it’s pretty chaotic—everybody’s trying to get new computers and basic telephone service. I wanted to get a letter out to our supporters—my printer has the mailing list—and just getting a letter out took me three days. You have to think about doing everything in different way. We’re in three different locations, and getting around the city—the traffic patterns have all changed. Traffic lights aren’t working in downtown Cedar Rapids.

How well will the main branch recover?
What we’re being told the structure looks OK. It’s a big cement building, opened in 1986. And, surprisingly, the windows didn’t get blown out. At this point, our board is saying, the structure is good, and we’re not going to abandon our downtown. I’m sure FEMA will have something to say about this: we—the library and everybody else—are going to have to do some things differently when we rebuild.

Will you offer service in interim locations beyond the west side branch?
Our partners, Marion and Hiawatha, are helping. But we figure we’re not going to get back into the main library for a long time. The whole thing’s going to have to be gutted and reconfigured, and who knows what kind of mitigation we’re going to be asked to do or want to do. We have a librarian searching for space we can move into.

What’s the mood of staff?
They’re pretty much in shock. The city has made a commitment to keep staff on. The policy right now is, if you don’t have work for them, at your respective places of business, we are able to loan staff to other agencies; there’s many, many nonprofits. They’ve loaned some of the library staff to a crisis line they’re staffing 24/7. At least four of our staff members—[the library has more than 60]—had houses that were compromised or lost. The city has a leave policy for those people.

If people want to make donations, where should they send checks?
Cedar Rapids Public Library Foundation
500 First Street, SE
Cedar Rapids, IA 52401

[LJ will provide updates on future needs.]