News You Can Use:   Fixes from the E. Lingle Craig Preservation Laboratory

You get caught in a rainstorm with your favorite book under your arm. Its cover becomes drenched, its pages soggy. What do you do?

At the Craig Lab, a wet book is never just a wet book. Its pages can be wet just at the edges, soaked entirely, stained or spilled on. We may use different treatments for plain or glossy paper, leather or vellum, or various dyes and glues. But all the books get dried out, and there are a few basic treatments that anyone can use.

Air drying allows moisture to evaporate out of the book, and can sometimes be helped by a gentle fan. For edge-wet books this method is simple and effective, but very damp items will deform, wrinkling and expanding as they dry.

Interleaving involves placing absorbent sheets between the pages of the book to draw out excess moisture. The less moisture in a book, the less it will deform, so interleaving can be an important first step. Use paper towels or newsprint.

Freeze-drying can be used to dry books with almost no deformation. When books are frozen at 30º F, the frozen water sublimates out of the book, changing directly from ice to water vapor. This process takes time, but works wonders. At the Craig Lab, we have a specially designed vacuum freezer for this purpose, but you’ll see results using your home freezer.

Glossy, or clay-coat, paper is the biggest problem in drying. The clay that gives these pages their sheen takes in water, effectively becoming mud, and “bricks” as it dries. Glossy pages should be interleaved or freezer-dried quickly.