Rare books from Sussex University library which got soaked during the floods are being frozen in a bid to preserve them.

Many of the books along with file records from East Sussex County Council have been put in vacuum freeze by a specialist firm in Oxfordshire, so in the future they can be dried out and decontaminated to remove traces of dirty flood water.

But some of them could still be lost because it may prove too expensive to repair them.

It costs about £5 for experts Harwell Drying and Restoration Services to restore an A4 size book of about one inch thick to its former condition. So, the bills for the university and the records office could reach thousands of pounds.

Elizabeth Hughes, the archivist at East Sussex County Council's records office, explained: "The floods came up about 1ft deep into the office which meant the records we had not managed to remove from the bottom shelf got wet.

"Most of them were not records that would be kept for ever, but some have to be kept for certain periods of time for statutory or legal reasons.

"We decided to destroy those which were nearing the end of their shelf-life anyway and others have been frozen and will be freeze dried to remove the water and salvage them."

Emma McKenzie, the administration manager at Harwell Drying, said the firm's work had quadrupled since parts of the country were submerged in water last month.

But the firm faces a race against time because the books and papers have to be vaccum dried as soon as possible if the material is to be recovered. With flood waters in some areas slow to recede, some material cannot be saved.

Depending on how wet the material is, the vaccum-drying process will take between a few days and a few weeks to complete. After that, painstaking cleaning will begin.

Jacqui Bealing, of Sussex University, said: "All the books that were damaged have been frozen. At a meeting this week we will decide which of them should be salvaged."