"Neighbor helping neighbor"

UI alumnus, Iowa City resident, and Wall Street Journal editor-at-large Michael Judge published a column about the eastern Iowa floods in the Journal's June 17 edition. He wrote:

"Even as we mourn, we prepare for the flood's aftermath and continue to salvage what we can. Among the thousands of stories of neighbor helping neighbor, volunteers sandbagging night and day to protect property that belongs to others, perhaps the most inspiring was the effort made to save the University of Iowa and its classrooms, libraries and museums.

Last week and through the weekend, hundreds of volunteers gathered on campus to reinforce the in some places 10-feet high sandbag walls erected to hold back the Iowa River. Students, teachers and townspeople formed a human chain to relay books from the basement and lower floors of the UI Main Library to higher floors, moving thousands of titles, one-of-a-kind dissertations and rare books out of harm's way."