Last month, mold was found on several books in the storage basement of Janet D. Greenwood Library. At first it was thought to be an isolated incident, but the mold turned out to be present on nearly 45,000 books. There was a blog post released last week that went into detail about the incident. The library basement will be quarantined until it is completely cleaned.
Dean of the Library Suzy Palmer said, “If you have to work through a disaster, this is how to work through it.”
Palmer and Amanda Hartman, head of Special Collections and Digital Initiatives, have taken the necessary precautions to control the situation. Palmer and Hartman’s main concerns are to ensure that no one is exposed to the mold, that the mold is contained and that they have a plan of action made by various experts for the issue.
Hartman first discovered mold on only one book. The discovery led to more frequent visits to the basement where it turned out that it was, in fact, one of many more moldy books.
However, most of the books in the basement are duplicates of material from the upper levels of the library. There are also microfilm and VHS tapes that are contaminated; however, these can be cleaned with Clorox wipes. After the materials are cleaned, they will not enter the basement again. They will be put upstairs where the main collections are.
“It is a kind of tight space, so we might have to make room,” Palmer said.
Once Palmer became aware of the mold, she notified the Faculty Senate Library Advisory Committee. The committee is responsible for reporting to Palmer and notifying all students, faculty and staff of library issues.
The basement has never been a public area for students and faculty. Only those under special circumstances have access. Since the basement is an enclosed space, the entire library is fortunately safe from the quarantined basement.
“The great news is that it [the mold] was not caused by a particular incident,” Hartman stated. There was no spillage or leak of the sort that sparked the mold to form.
Palmer added that mold in libraries is not an unusual problem. Shortly after the incident, she sent an email to other public library institutions and “got a lot of responses within hours for who to go to for help and suggestions of who to call. That means there are best practices for how to deal with this, so we did not have to start from scratch. It is comforting in how other people have gone through this and that we have a lot of support from colleagues in other institutions.”
The plan of action includes composing a list of which books to keep, investigate if it is cheaper to replace the items or decide on another option, and then discard the rest of the books. They will be boxed off and immediately discarded in order to avoid further contaminating another environment.
Afterwards, BELFOR, a disaster remediation company, will come in to clean. The estimated time it will take is around one week, meaning most of the preparation work is in the hands of Palmer and Hartman.
An environmental hygienist came to evaluate the mold and air quality, and the detailed report is available online for anyone interested in viewing it.
“The environmental company wanted the remedial scan in order to have the best practices lined out for them so they knew what type of mold it was [in order to] to treat it properly and clean it the right way,” said Hartman.
Hartman added that while the floors, walls and shelves are being cleaned, there would be air scrubbers that filter the air running.
In order to determine which books need to be kept, replaced or cleaned, an email containing a list of all of the books in the basement was sent out to faculty to give them the opportunity to notify Palmer if they wanted something in particular.
According to Hartman, many faculty members have been very helpful in looking at titles that they should investigate.
Palmer plans to send out a reminder email in mid-April so everything can be underway as efficiently as possible.
“Thankfully, we are not going to really be impacting the library’s collection,” Palmer said.
Depending on how many items need to be cleaned, the cost will range from $25,000 to $45,000. Hartman said the more that needs to be cleaned, the more people the company will have to send over, which raises the cost. Palmer noted that the $25,000 price saves 2,000 items, and that is probably the number they are looking at in this situation.
The source of the money from the university that will pay for the costs is still being determined.
“In addition to the faculty being supportive, the administration has been very easy to work with and doing what we need to do,” Palmer said. “It’s not a happy situation, but everyone is making it easier to deal with.”
