The Day 300,000 Books Fell

“The top four floors of San Jose, California’s, eight-story Martin Luther King Jr. Library, which serves as the public library system’s main branch and the San Jose State University library, were temporarily closed to reshelve books after a 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit the city October 30.”

The building suffered no major damage but the building did intentionally sway back and forth to absorb the shock of the quake and as a result 300,000 books fell of the shelves!

They are almost all picked up.

American Library Association article

Image above of a bookstore after the Bay Area’s 1989 Point Loma quake by J.K. Nakata of the U.S. Geological Survey