Howard-Tilton Memorial Library Build-back and Hazard Mitigation Project: All Clear: Escorted Access and Caution Tape No Longer Needed

Friday, October 18, 2013

All Clear: Escorted Access and Caution Tape No Longer Needed

Escorted access and caution tape in areas of the book stacks on the 2nd and 3rd floors during evening hours on the Freret Street side of the library are no longer needed. They've been replaced by the provision of temporary extra fire exits nearby and near the center of each floor.

These temporary measures are related to the construction work that will build shear wall vertical concrete slabs running from the 2nd floor up within the emergency stairwells at each end of the library building, and behind one of the marble panels in its central stairwell. Work within the emergency stairwell on the Freret Street side of the building is expected to continue through next month.

NOISE ALERT: While the work area abutting the stairwell has been walled in and insulated, library users may still hear construction noise nearby on the floors where the work is taking place. Crews work only on weekdays and their workdays end at 5 pm.

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Project Purpose

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library is located on the uptown campus of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 its lowest level filled with more than eight feet of water, which caused severe damage to the building while submerging its basement collections. The nearby Joseph M. Jones Memorial Building (Jones Hall), which houses the library’s Special Collections division, sustained major flood damage also, in the lowest level of its library stacks core.

Flooded in the Howard-Tilton building were its music library and very large collections of government documents, newspapers, and microforms. Other areas destroyed included a large area of overflow shelving for general collections and two areas for closed collections storage: one for books waiting for special cataloging and for art and photography titles requiring a secure location; the other for older science materials. Much of the shelving in the basement of the Howard-Tilton building was compact or high-density shelving that accommodated a maximum number of shelves within the spaces used for them. In Jones Hall the flooded stacks core area was packed with closely arranged shelves that housed rare collections.

In the Howard-Tilton building alone more than 700,000 books and recordings were submerged underwater, as were nearly 1.5 million individual pieces of microform. In Jones Hall another 700,000 or so manuscript folders and other archival items were also flooded. The remarkable collections salvage, recovery, and rebuilding effort that followed can be seen as part of an overall library recovery that this next stage of building remediation--a 5th and 6th floor addition atop the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library--will help to complete.

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library Build-back and Hazard Mitigation Project

Friday, October 18, 2013

All Clear: Escorted Access and Caution Tape No Longer Needed

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Project Information

Layouts

Request Books in Restricted Areas