The photos above are just a glimpse at what happened inside the University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library during Tuesday’s earthquake — tens of thousands of books spilled out from their shelves and onto the floor, spawning a huge clean-up effort.

The ground shook. The books dropped. The staff got to work.

McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland was the site of a major cleanup after more than 27,000 books fell from their shelves following a rare East Coast earthquake.

Materials also fell at other libraries on campus, including Hornbake Library and the Architecture Library.

But just more than 24 hours after the quake, all the books were on carts, ready to be evaluated and sorted. Workers separated damaged books from those ready to be reshelved.

Great people work in libraries.

Here’s hoping the numerous aftershocks that have been reported in the last few days haven’t erased all the librarians’ hard work.