Drying by freezing

Our local county records center has had some flooding in recent
weeks, and at this point the affected materials have been taken to a
freezer pending recovery decisions.  The director of the center
wants to prioritize the materials and freeze-dry some [such as some
of the docket books], but is hoping that a more minimal recovery
approach could be used for a lot of the more recent, unbound
boxfulls of paper records. She specifically asked whether these
boxes of wet paper would dry simply by being left in the freezer
long enough--and if that works, how long does it take, and are there
drawbacks to this approach.  I have always understood that a wet
book placed in a freezer would eventually dry on its own, but now
I'm looking for specific testimony (pro or con) from people who have
employed this method to dry either books or unbound paper.  If you
have any information to share on this, I would appreciate hearing
about it. Please reply  to me directly and as soon as possible; I'd
be happy to summarize for the list.  Thanks very much,


Charlotte Tancin
Hunt Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
15213-3890
412-268-7301

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 9:59
                Distributed: Thursday, February 8, 1996
                        Message Id: cdl-9-59-002
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