Cori Wilhelm: All right.
Cori Wilhelm: Thanks everyone for joining us. For this spotlight on Sunni libraries. We're clearing the air about mold in our collections.
Cori Wilhelm: I'm glad you you're here to join us. I am recording, and we'll share out the link and the slides potentially also as well. But I'm joined today by Milo Cameron from
Cori Wilhelm: Mohawk Valley Community College, and Madeline Beach and Christie Lee from Suny, New Paltz.
Cori Wilhelm: and they will all be sharing their experiences with mold, and I think there will be time at the end. If if the audience would like to share any experiences with mold and so, during the presentation. If you wanna throw any questions in the chat? I can monitor that, and then make sure presenters get a chance to answer them.
Cori Wilhelm: so I will now turn it over 2, I think Madeline and Christy and I think you should be able to share.
Madeline Veitch: Hey, I can go ahead and share. Does it sound good, Christy?
Madeline Veitch: Go ahead, Melanie.
Madeline Veitch: Alright if you can. I can. I have it both them up. So go ahead. Oh, wait! Forget the order of operations here I have to share and then go into present mode.
Madeline Veitch: I'm gonna share.
Madeline Veitch: And
and
Madeline Veitch: there we are. Is that going out
Madeline Veitch: that looks good. Madelyn, yeah. Okay, great. So
Madeline Veitch: we're going to talk a little bit about navigating our mold zone. Kind of from advocacy to remediation communication through a mold crisis that's really still ongoing.
Madeline Veitch: I'm out of beach. I'm a collection development and zoom librarian, and I'll let Christy introduce herself and
Kristy Lee: Hi! Christine Lee, head of library technology system, librarian, Sunni nu pas.
Madeline Veitch: And during this time that we're going to be talking about Christy was also serving as interim, Dean. So
Madeline Veitch: that was last year last year. Yeah, I guess it wasn't the full mold crisis. But so this is just kind of an overview of what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk a little bit about what our mold situation was. And how we got to the point where we were closing the ground floor, making plans to to clean all the materials.
Madeline Veitch: Christy's gonna go into some detail on the technical aspect of closing a floor and making materials unavailable. And then on communicating both within the library and to campus in her roles interim Dean.
Madeline Veitch: And then I'm gonna talk a little bit about collections, access and collection development, and how we responded to kind of having materials be inaccessible because of mold and then the long view, which is sort of like, what do we learn? Where are we? What are sort of our big thinking about mold in general?
Madeline Veitch: So wanted to give you a bit of a multi timeline of our experience. And it's complex, right? So from forever ago, time in memorial until 2020, we did have books that would turn up in our collection with some amount of mold on them. We also have noticed that some of our books have staining from previous cleaning, probably from bleach
Madeline Veitch: So there! There was evidence of past outbreaks and clean up efforts. We were aware that that we were having some multi books. Like many campuses in 2020, we shut down for a period of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic
Madeline Veitch: and we didn't reopen until fall of 2021. So fall 2021. We reopened, and then by January February of 2022, that next semester we observed mold on the ground floor. It was a kind of a white, powdery mold. There seem to be an epicenter around our literature books, but we were finding books spread out, but mostly in the initial phase. We were focused on that epicenter.
Madeline Veitch: We had an official mold assessment from an outside vendor came in and looked at the mold.
Madeline Veitch: We also brought in vendors to look at cleaning the books in the hardest hit area. And that's where we sort of had started our focus and
Madeline Veitch: by June we decided to close the floor. We were awaiting the start of work. We also realized, like a big part of our issue was environmental, right? Because it was a subterranean floor and unsealed concrete situation. We didn't have any dehumidifiers in the space of the time, so we got dehumidifiers and moisture sensors place
Madeline Veitch: and Chrissie Lee was serving as Dean by this time, and was instrumental in getting all of that figured out
Madeline Veitch: that summer and fall we had a big rethink. We said, we don't wanna just clean the books in the hardest hit areas. It needs to be comprehensive, so we revise the scope of work to make it inclusive of the full floor, and in November, finally we had vendors come in again to say what would it cost to clean books, you know, to find the moldy books on this entire floor?
Madeline Veitch: We got the quotes, but then we were in a holding period for a period of time which is probably are all familiar with. It was sort of like we knew we were ready to go, but we didn't have the money, so went to Albany. It sat for 5 months, and then this past summer Polygon, or chosen vendor, began the remediation work. And what they did is basically they packed up. They identified the multi books. They packed him up. They've shipped him out to a facility where they're cleaning them there.
Madeline Veitch: we also, this summer kind of came to terms with additional structural problems on the ground floor that we've been aware of. But seemed more serious with this summer's rain. So we were having a lot of groundwater seepage come up. And it's something we've known about and something we've talked about throughout this mold crisis that you know as Corey was mentioning. Like we have molds. We are not. We have. We have old buildings, we have old buildings right? And the old buildings have structural issues, and they're not
Madeline Veitch: The campus is not necessarily ready to, you know, make major changes to the buildings to to improve things.
Madeline Veitch: Oh, there we go! So where are we now? Our ground floor is still close, the books are labeled unavailable in the catalog which Christy will talk about. Polygon has those books off site. They're about to bring some of our books back, which we're a little nervous about because the structural issues haven't been dealt with. So we're bringing back cleaned books into a floor that may not be safe for them.
Madeline Veitch: Groundwater seapage is still being investigated. They're doing ongoing work to improve drainage around our building. We don't have a reopening for our ground floor yet. We're not sure when that's gonna happen, or what that's gonna look like with some of these structural issues still happening.
Madeline Veitch: all the books we've been purchasing in the interim that would have been shelved on that floor which is M. Through Z. In the classification schedules. Those are currently being shelved on our main floor. So at least they are safe from the mold zone. At the moment. And now I will turn it over to Christy to take it
Madeline Veitch: from here and talk a bit about all the closures and communication.
Kristy Lee: Okay, thank you, Marilyn.
Kristy Lee: and if you don't mind if you can forward the slide when when we go. as we go along. Okay, So
Kristy Lee: from the timeline, Madeleine mentioned most of the library activity and response to the mole situation started last year 2022.
While I was serving as the interim Dean of the library from april to
Kristy Lee: 22 to this year's March 23.
So, in addition to my system librarians role in New Paul. So I was doing 2 things all at once and
Kristy Lee: so I will talk a little bit off the technical side, because I don't want to take up all the times about the Alma setting and primo setting changes because a lot of them I get big help from the oldest Sls team especially shout out for Tim Michelle Yvonne
Kristy Lee: and I don't know who else was helping us in the background. But Tim and Michelle definitely responded to my call right away when when we decided to close this ground floor.
Kristy Lee: so for the technical side of things,
we.
Kristy Lee: Before we close the ground floor we had to make sure most of the material can be borrowed and loaned out through Sunni, resource, sharing, and Il because the ground floor has half of our print physical materials.
So that's about close to 300,000 items in there and
Kristy Lee: like, I said. II mentioned before Tim and Michelle. They respond to my ticket, my support ticket right away, and they are really our super heroes to the rescue, and they are so comforting. So let me know that
Kristy Lee: this is not the first time that they're doing this kind of things for other campus. And this is not a like a unique situation. Other campus have dealt with this, and they know how to handle it, and they can make sure that the materials that mark as unavailable will be like
Kristy Lee: pop up on the catalog right away with with the form to let people to borrow them. And it seems to work really, really well. And if I have more time I would talk about certain material that
Kristy Lee: the user prefer to have the physical format rather than the electronic format because we try to to did a little bit of the switching. And Madelyn will mention something like that also. So basically, we change half of the physical collection to physically unavailable in primo and resource, sharing pop the phone pop up
and so they can just request the material and the technical detail of how to do that in Alma and Primo, step by step, is documented in this presentation that I have put the link in this slide, and I presume Corey will share out this slide. We'll send it to Corey, and Cory will post it so everybody can see it. If you are interested to know how to config
Kristy Lee: in it's one or 2 step in the configuration, in all, in Alma and in the in primo side, which is not that bad, and, like I said, most of the hard work Tim and Michelle have already helped me, and specially Tim went in and pull out all those report, and we test them in the sandbox. And they worked, and it takes a little long longer, because it's large number of items that needed to change the item status.
Kristy Lee: So but all the details is in the in the slide.
So
Kristy Lee: the communication part. Marilyn, you can move to the next. Yes, thank you. Communication included, advocating to the canvas admin as the interim Dean last year I met with the provo, and at that time our provo is the was the interim provost.
Kristy Lee: And so we met every other week. And I talk about the problem, and that time. Provost was very, very concerned of the closing and the books, and we just have to present the plan to her at that time. And later on in June or July, when the new President came on board, and the President was fully aware of the situation. So
Kristy Lee: this also bring us to work with other departments on campus.
Kristy Lee: and when the Admin the Cabinet met the Vp. Of facility psi, and they all fully aware of the situation in the library. If we don't talk about it. They don't know about it, but I keep bringing it up. So they knew. And so we have to
Kristy Lee: work with flexibility, and to call up cooperatively to work with them. And they have been very helpful as well. They didn't really just like, you know. Hey, this is just another one of the water leakage problem, things that and then brush it under the carpet or something. But they really had pay attention to, because we closed the entire ground floor.
Kristy Lee: And so
the communication
Kristy Lee: communication and marketing department, they they really write a headline about the library closure and the effect on the collections, and they post it in the Daily News Digest, which is an email news newsletter that sent out to everybody on campus, including student faculty and staff.
and our friends of the library. They are very active volunteer group they, and they have their own channel, and they were advocating on our behalf as well.
and a few of the member are serving on the searing board, also faculty members. So that was a big help to get the message to everybody and advocating on our behalf as well.
So
Kristy Lee: from our experience. You can move to the next slide, Madeline. Thank you. So from our experience. I think communication especially important within the library and the community we serve the most affect all areas is not just in the stack. It affects our instructions and
Kristy Lee: reference instructions, our Aol service, and even the technical side, like on the system side. So everybody was involved.
and I was so grateful that everyone in the library, the staff, the librarians, we all work together, even though this is not over yet, and we're still working on this.
Kristy Lee: And we have, like form a ad hoc committee. So from all area that are represented to work out a plan even before we close the ground floor.
Kristy Lee: and I think the librarian have done their homework. They have interviewed or talked to other libraries, large library like Vassar, they have
Kristy Lee: had that more problem. and we get recommendation and other tips and tricks and things like do not hire the local cleaner that they only do basement of household and things like that because they're not professional to handle the book materials and things like that. So we got recommendation of a couple of book especially vendor that can clean the most on the books.
so we had a clear plan to support the instruction.
Kristy Lee: and before we close we already had our contact with the account. Academic departments like specially history, art, history, School of Fine Arts, and Performing Arts, and a couple of other department, because their majority of the physical resources are on the ground floor that is
Kristy Lee: completely shut down will become well, that time will be shut down. And so they know the impact of the closure.
Kristy Lee: So, as man. Madeleine mentioned that some of the books. Actually, they should be all coming back sometime this this month. But we dealing with another set of problem, how to put them back on the shelf in the right order and the correct order, and we don't know the structure issue. But our new Dean. They have been working, and with the facility side, and identifies
Kristy Lee: some of the area that have like really bad leakage, water, leakage, seepage, and on the ground floor area so hopefully, when the book come back they will be kind of safe to put back on the shelf. We have a few dehumidifier already on the ground floor.
Kristy Lee: So and I request them to be turned on 24 7. The next step is to have the A/C. System to do that. But that's another issues, because these are old buildings, and the A/C system is very old, and
Kristy Lee: they they are not just controlling or providing the A/C for one building. We have 3 or 4 buildings next to the library all supply, or provided the A/C by the same gigantic little mini factory A/C cooler chula units.
So to keep it. 24, 7 is kind of hard, but at least we should get the dehumidifier going once the books are there, and hopefully, that will be
Kristy Lee: less troublesome and minimizing the effect. But
Kristy Lee: who knows when would that be back?
So that concludes my part of the presentation. Now I'm passing the mic back to Madeline.
Madeline Veitch: hey? Sure. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about kind of how our reference and collection development had to respond and pivot. During this mold closure.
Madeline Veitch: the research and education team created a really great lib guide. Actually, Christy O'grady. One of our research and education librarians. Took the took the lead on, and it sort of walked patrons. And also, you know.
Madeline Veitch: librarians and staff working at the desk, who are helping patrons through the process of finding a copy of a book that was on the closed ground floor. So whether that meant starting with like Internet Archive or Howdy Trust looking for an existing ebook in our catalog, and then moving towards requesting books through inter library loan if needed. And it's it's all gone relatively, smoothly. I wish we knew. You know. I don't know that we know
Madeline Veitch: necessarily how overall circulation has been impacted, and that's something that we might at some point want to look at retrospectively. It's tricky because we had the pandemic. And then we came back, and then we had the mold. So that kind of a lot of changes happening pretty quickly.
Madeline Veitch: in terms of collection development. I really thought that I would be buying lots of ebooks. Because I thought the books that were on the ground floor people wouldn't be able to access them. We would choose to buy an ebook, so that we're not doubling up on print when we barely have storage. Now for the print that we have, and we're concerned about the long term kind of health of the ground floor.
Madeline Veitch: But what actually happened was not that necessarily, and a big part of why we ended up buying a lot of print that I didn't think we would buy. Was the many books don't have an ebook addition right? And as Christie alluded to before. A lot of our, you know, fine and performing arts. Materials are on the ground floor, and for them it's just not, you know, either an exhibition catalog never came out as an ebook, or it's not really the format. They wanna look at
Madeline Veitch: this in Indonesia format. So we bought a lot of print. We doubled up some print, and I looked at sort of the the history of our spending just to see how it was impacted. So during pandemic. We bought a lot of ebooks and then we reopened, and you know that dropped like $20,000 in our first year reopened. But
Madeline Veitch: the mold closure only brought it back up again a little bit. So
Madeline Veitch: it's interesting to see it. We're actually at the beginning phases of doing a kind of format usage study to really gauge what?
Madeline Veitch: What our users are interested in terms of, you know, ebook or print books. And it's been kind of interesting coming through this roller coaster of the pandemic impacting how people use books. And then the mold impacting how people use books. So there's just there are a lot of moving parts that we're trying to make sense of. Some of our takeaways, you know.
Madeline Veitch: just the length of time it takes Wendy from from the word go. When you know out we have mold to getting the mold assessed to getting a coordinated effort together, and then to navigating all those levels of kind of advocacy.
Madeline Veitch: you know. As Christie mentioned, there was a significant effort for us, was directed out of the library to these other units that support cleanup and trying to really make sure the communication channels were clear. Understanding what their priorities were, what our priorities were. There's a lot of advocacy work.
Madeline Veitch: and then the structural issues they may be the hardest things to fix. You know. I we don't really know what the long term life of our ground floor is whether it's going to, you know, be remediated. The structural issues gonna be remediated to the point where it's usable long term again. And and we don't run into this every 5 or 10 years. That's what we're hopeful. But we're just gonna keep on
Madeline Veitch: keeping on because that's what we have to do. We library gotta be a library. So thank you. We wanted to end with moss rather than mold. Another beautiful growing thing. That's not as doesn't strike as much fear in the heart. So that's it, and I will stop my share.
Cori Wilhelm: Thank you, Madeline and Christie. That was that was fantastic. And we have one more presenter, and then maybe we'll go into a a discussion session afterwards. So next up is Milo Cameron, from Mohawk Valley Community College.
Milo Cameron (they/them): Hello, everybody! Thank you so much for coming. Let me just go ahead and share my screen here.
Milo Cameron (they/them): See if I can get this going. So this is an adaptation of a
Milo Cameron (they/them): 5 min lightning talk that I gave at the Suny Law Conference in June. So there are plenty of updates, lots of news going on that's been tacked on to the end.
Milo Cameron (they/them): We're gonna start off with just a quick like contextualization. Because the Rome campus of Mvcc. Is pretty unique in terms of the campus building structure, and the library inside of it, so that has played a huge part
Milo Cameron (they/them): in the mold problem itself and how we address it. so we're going to do a little bit of contextualization. I'll tell you how we identified the mold, and how we addressed it immediately, and how things have changed since then. So we have some long-term maintenance
Milo Cameron (they/them): plans, and how those turned out over the course of a year. The answer is not great, but we'll learn together. So let's go ahead and take off.
Milo Cameron (they/them): So to set the stage. Mohawk Valley Community College has 2 campuses. One is in the main area. Is in Utica, and we have a relatively large campus there in terms in community college standards. We have a pretty good sized library that has an entire floor, pretty much of our administrative building.
Milo Cameron (they/them): however, on the Rome campus it's like a little tiny micro library. So I did an extremely vague
Milo Cameron (they/them): calculation in my head. And it we have about 9,000 books in the entire Rome campus library.
Milo Cameron (they/them): Including reference materials. We have a lot of newspapers and a section of Dvds which is pretty popular. We also have most of the space is dedicated to these tables that you see here for studying. We have a couple banks of computers. We have a couple small study rooms, and then we also have this lovely sitting area with a fireplace which unfortunately cannot
Milo Cameron (they/them): be seen from the desk. So you just have to know it's there, but you don't get to enjoy it. Digress. It's a very small space with a very limited collection.
Milo Cameron (they/them): The roam campus is also has a much lower
Milo Cameron (they/them): attendance rate. It's got some specialized programs and a few general Ed courses. But there's not nearly the same amount of traffic there that we get on our Utica campus. So
Milo Cameron (they/them): this satellite campus is all one room or the the library is all one room. The same building that the library is in houses, all of the classrooms, all of the administrative stuff student services. Everything is like all in one massive building.
Milo Cameron (they/them): the building did undergo some renovations in 2,016. So we do have our own wing. That's entirely brand new, and it is stunning. You see all of those windows and lovely lights and matching furniture. It is truly a luxury amidst all of our campuses that are from the 1960 s.
Milo Cameron (they/them): That said it's also been a point of innovation for us as a campus, and also within sort of the Sunni system. We transitioned to using RFID for our books, so they all have a little stickers in them that know too much. That's all microchips and
Milo Cameron (they/them): wackiness. And we've got a lot of technological upgrades there through grant funding and things.
Milo Cameron (they/them): The collection here is also really specialized because we have such limited space. And we have such unique programs on the Rome campus. We have a pretty good culinary program. We have drone piloting certificate.
Milo Cameron (they/them): and we used to have a like textiles program. So our collection really reflects that we have a huge cookbooks, and food, culture and everything you could think of related to food cooking and things like that. We have a huge section for that. We have lots of stuff on crafting and the arts and crafts movements and tech not textiles and techniques and beating and knitting and all sorts of stuff like that which I'm a big fan of.
Milo Cameron (they/them): We also have a lot of unique people coming into the library. So we cater to high school dual credit programs. Boces comes in and works with us, and then we also have MV. Il, which is a program for retirees who are continuing education just kind of for fund and enrichment. They use our facilities a lot. So we've got a wide range of people coming in. And we've got a really unique collection.
Milo Cameron (they/them): so what are the problems here? How does this all relate to mold?
Milo Cameron (they/them): Well.
Milo Cameron (they/them): the conditions! Have been brewing for mold for a while. So, as I said, we got our own wing in 2,016, which meant that we had to remove all of the books in the library. They were stored off site in a non temperature controlled facility.
Milo Cameron (they/them): And then, when the new wing was put together, they were all brought back in. So it is suspected that while they were in that off site storage, the mold infestation sort of took root. But they didn't manifest until much later. So
Milo Cameron (they/them): there's also been significant Hvac problems with the newly refurbished building. So there are constantly problems with weird sounds going off and chemicals and high humidity and and stuff. It's kind of a hot mess and that triggered. Then the bloom, as we call it, in the
Milo Cameron (they/them): fall of 2022. So my very first semester here at Mv. Was very exciting.
Milo Cameron (they/them): So the way that we identified the mold. If you haven't seen it yet. In the summer we found one book with signs of mold which looked like that, as you see, all fuzzy and speckly and gross we said, Oh, no, that's bad. Discarded the book. And said, I'm sure glad we took care of that. That's not how it works. So in October. Then.
Milo Cameron (they/them): while we were doing some routine searching, and it's always when you're in the collection doing routine work that you find these kinds of things.
Milo Cameron (they/them): We found the outbreak that had spread to the entire collection. There was mold everywhere, and it was nasty. So we saw gray, fuzzy spots that mostly occurs on the spines covers top edges of books, especially on ones that have fabric, or like a paper. Binding on hardcover.
Milo Cameron (they/them): those are the ones that really like mold. It's got a lot of pores for it to dig into, and lots of opportunity for it to absorb moisture. There was discoloration and water damage on some books which wasn't directly related to the mold. But it's also not great.
Milo Cameron (they/them): One of the tips that I have for checking. If something you think is mold actually is, is to sort of wipe on it with your finger. If it rubs away, then it's mold. If it doesn't. It's probably just regular wear and tear on the spine. They're tough to differentiate sometimes, but the the smear test tends to work.
So with this huge outbreak we ended up discarding over 60 books from across the collection, now in a collection of only 9,000. That's pretty significant.
Milo Cameron (they/them): And we then had to mount a full-scale assault.
Milo Cameron (they/them): So this is what things were looking like huge spots everywhere. I had seen mold before years ago, when I was a student worker at Western Illinois University.
Milo Cameron (they/them): we had a mold outbreak, and that was A library of 2 million books, and we had. There was a whole thing. My job was to identify the mold, and then I didn't have to worry about what they do about it. I just told them where it is so. I'm good at finding it. And I had hoped I never need that skill set again. But here we are, my friends.
Milo Cameron (they/them): So when it is now my problem to figure out what to do about it. We started off, as many librarians do, by researching what the heck experts have to say about the whole thing.
Milo Cameron (they/them): we started off because it's a very small collection, and it's very isolated. We decided to handle it ourselves. So we took our available resources and the significant budget constraints. The college is facing and we turned it into a good old home effort. So
Milo Cameron (they/them): we
Milo Cameron (they/them): let's see, we did our research first by asking experts. So it just so happened that during this period of mold concern there was an ask an archivist program going on. So I went ahead and wrote in to see what an archivist has to say about a library mold outbreak, and they wrote back to say, Hey, this is a big deal. You should take it seriously, and
Milo Cameron (they/them): do basic things, isolate the mold and clean the books and etc. And then the next day the archivist literally called me in my office and said, Hey, I want to make sure that you understand exactly how serious this is. Please take it very seriously. It is a huge deal. You have got to take care of this. Don't let it spread
Milo Cameron (they/them): And that sort of instilled in us a sense of urgency and seriousness that we maybe could have taken even further. But we'll get to that.
Milo Cameron (they/them): We also looked for advice online from the New York State Library, the Northeast Document Conservation Center, the American Library Association and the New York State Library.
Milo Cameron (they/them): all of these things we compiled into a document that gave us sort of a general game plan for the resources that we needed and the actions that we had to.
Milo Cameron (they/them): So in general, all of the sources essentially said, Protect yourselves. Some people are really allergic to mold, and it's not good to be immersed in constantly. Make sure that the cleaning is extremely thorough and methodical, because if you miss a book that's even been exposed to mold, then there's a chance that it's going to resurface and make sure that you continue paying attention because it can resurface at any time. So
Milo Cameron (they/them): Once we had a general understanding of the requirements of
Milo Cameron (they/them): attacking a mold problem. This is how we decided to proceed.
Milo Cameron (they/them): We started off with getting the right material. So it was extremely important that we got a vacuum specifically with a heap of filter, because the mold spores are really easy to distribute. They're really easy to miss. They float in the air. We got a vacuum that had a brush attachment
Milo Cameron (they/them): on the end, and had a heap of filter so you could vacuum the entire set of books while they're on the shelf, so you don't agitate the spores as you do your cleaning.
Milo Cameron (they/them): We also had to use heavy duty alcohol, cleaning wipes, so not lysol wipes which are more soapy. But it had to be alcohol to disinfect without super damaging the books. Soap is not going to cut it. You have to get in there and kill it right?
Milo Cameron (they/them): We also had huge stores of masks and gloves to anyone working in the stacks, so that nobody got irritated by the mold, and we didn't destroy our hands with all these crazy chemicals we were working with.
Milo Cameron (they/them): So the ppe was very important.
Milo Cameron (they/them): The procedure was first to quarantine the library. So we do a lot of resource sharing both because it's a very small collection that can't serve all of the students needs on its own. And because we have a lot of unique items that go out.
Milo Cameron (they/them): So we had to halt all resource sharing Inner Library loan. Anything going out of the library was not happening. That library was locked down for things. Leaving it
Milo Cameron (they/them): we had to continue allowing books from other libraries to come in. because we still needed to serve those students right. Not all of them have
Milo Cameron (they/them): the ability to go to the Utica library to collect books or have access to greater books. So
Milo Cameron (they/them): we use the system we call the red box there's a courier twice a week who brings a big red box? From Utica to Rome, and
Milo Cameron (they/them): from Rome to Utica. So we take the contents of those boxes. Anything coming in, gets isolated and stays at the desk in a contained area, it gets
Milo Cameron (they/them): checked out to the people who ordered it, and then, when it returns, anything going into the red box immediately gets wiped down so that we don't spread to the Utica campus, or God forbid anywhere else in Sunni
Milo Cameron (they/them): in terms of our own collection. Then we vacuumed. We removed each book, cleaned it down once. All of the books were off the shelf. We wiped down the shelf, and then, when everything was dry, we put it back on and shelf red. So we did that for the entire library collection by hand. It took the whole semester, and it was very satisfying when we finished.
Milo Cameron (they/them): so as soon as you finish cleaning the collection, it feels like an incredible experience. It's an achievement. And it was. It was a really big deal that we managed to clean that all out.
Milo Cameron (they/them): There was so much work that was put into it, and I cannot speak the praises of the clerks in Rome enough, because they really put so much blood, sweat, and tears into saving this collection for their students.
Milo Cameron (they/them): so at the time
Milo Cameron (they/them): summer of 23, this was what we were looking at, looking forward. So it took the rest of the fall semester in the spring. We waited a few months to make sure that there were no new blooms of mold, and then we reopened resource, sharing and interlibrary loan to go out from Rome.
Milo Cameron (they/them): During that time everything that was leaving the library is still getting cleaned again. Before it goes into the box so that we're not risking spread. And then everything that gets returned either through the red box or through like our normal dropbox. We clean really thoroughly, in case there was stuff that was checked out while we were cleaning the main collection, just to make sure that we're covering all of our bases
Milo Cameron (they/them): at the time we said, this is going to continue for a year. Unless it turns out to be a seasonal recurrence. We will monitor the stacks and relax these
Milo Cameron (they/them): procedures as we go. Congratulations! We did it
Milo Cameron (they/them): except we didn't.
so
Milo Cameron (they/them): we were feeling very proud of ourselves. We started this new program where we weren't getting a lot of new books into Rome.
Milo Cameron (they/them): just because of how collection development was working in distributions and things. So we decided to get the new books that were coming into Utica. Once they came off of the new book display in Utica the clerks and I, who work with Rome, got to select some of those books to be sent to Rome for temporary new book display, so that the Rome people
Milo Cameron (they/them): still got a display of new things and have a little variety, and that went super well.
Milo Cameron (they/them): It was very exciting, and we had to immediately stop it when the worst outbreak I have ever seen popped up so
Milo Cameron (they/them): over the summer the A/C. Was shut off in the building at night and turned back on during the day to save energy.
Milo Cameron (they/them): which is great except for what happened is when the A/C. Was off. It got really humid in there and then, when they turn the A/C. Back on it condensated all of that humidity to the point where people who shared our wing were complaining that papers left out on desks were like floppy and damp because of all the humidity in the air and the condensation. We could see the paperbacks that we had on display
physically curling their covers because of how humid it was. And there was mold
Milo Cameron (they/them): on the vents that the air circulates through. So you can see in this picture. There were like 6 of these in the library that looked like that. We were told it was dust.
Milo Cameron (they/them): and that it was fine.
Milo Cameron (they/them): so that's not great.
Milo Cameron (they/them): as you recall, the original book took 60 books or the original outbreak, took 60 books out of our collection, and we had to clean every single item in the collection over the course of the semester. It was very labor, intensive. It took out a good section of our collection. And it was really tough to build that back up.
Milo Cameron (they/them): This new outbreak has so far cost us over a hundred 60 books, and there are more on the shelves that haven't been taken off yet, because we're trying to catch up and figure out a plan before we keep stripping the shelves. There are visible gaps happening.
Milo Cameron (they/them): and it's throughout the entire collection, because it's all sort of shared in one room.
Milo Cameron (they/them): This time around. We just don't have it in us. The staff in Rome have agreed that we cannot spare the people, or the time or the energy to clean the collection by hand, especially if the facility is going to continue to aggravate the mold and bring it back. So
Milo Cameron (they/them): instead of going for the Diy approach this time we're working more closely with the college and facilities to sort it out now. The college and facilities are also super short staffed, so they can't just go in there and clean it for us, which means we're looking in the direction of professionals.
Milo Cameron (they/them): So
Milo Cameron (they/them): for the time being, we have, of course, reinstated the no external lending policy, no resource sharing no interlibrary loan. Nothing is going out to other schools.
Milo Cameron (they/them): Students can still borrow items from the library. But they have to be cleaned before they they leave, and all items are being cleaned when they were are returned.
Milo Cameron (they/them): It's not a huge issue. I would like to close the collection. But it's extremely
Milo Cameron (they/them): restricting for those students. And also we don't get a lot of checkouts out there, anyways. So we're not actually risking that much by not making a big deal out of that.
Milo Cameron (they/them): it's complicated. The mold issue has been escalated. So we're talking to upper administration. We're talking to heads of facilities. And they have committed to setting up humidity sensors. I believe we're getting dehumidifiers. And they're going to more closely monitor and control the Hvac system in our wing of that complex
Milo Cameron (they/them): we are just now talking about getting professional mold treatment companies in so we'll likely be talking with Christy and Madeline about the contractor that they went through, because we are still looking for logistics on that
Milo Cameron (they/them): But we haven't contacted anybody yet. So we are back into crisis mode but we're not trying to handle this ourselves this time, because it is clearly a much bigger deal than we anticipated.
Milo Cameron (they/them): So my takeaways for this as the third time, now that I've experienced a major mold outbreak working in libraries, just remember that it can happen to you. I
Milo Cameron (they/them): imagine that many, if not most, of the people at this workshop have already experienced mold. And that's why you're here because you're trying to figure out a way to fix it.
Milo Cameron (they/them): I don't have a perfect answer for how to fix it, but spread the word. Tell people who don't yet have mold to pay attention and make sure that they're monitoring so that they it doesn't become a crisis before they see it.
Milo Cameron (they/them): As the archivist tried to explain to us, book mold is no joke, and it spreads very, very easily. So make sure you're protecting your collections. You're protecting your people that includes students, staff faculty, anybody who might be interacting with these things they need to know about it, and they need to be protected as necessary.
Milo Cameron (they/them): Take the outbreaks, breaks seriously, even if they're small, and immediately start taking steps to explain the severity of the situation. To not just your library people, but administration facilities everybody whose ear you can tug on, get them in on the conversation, because it's not just your library at risk. It is the entire campus and by extension all of Suny and anybody that you enter library loan to. So
Milo Cameron (they/them): Another really important thing. And this is something that we have done well amidst all this chaos is, if you have any experience or advice for people experiencing book mold outbreaks, share it. Having these conversations, comparing notes, hooking people up with contacts is the best way for people to get ahead of the problem and address the problems that they already have. So
Milo Cameron (they/them): we're really collaborative here, and I think a lot of suny libraries often operate in solidarity, which is one of the things that I love. So don't keep it to yourself. Don't say it's not that big of a deal. It's a huge deal. And the best way to make it not a nightmare for you is to lean on people who can help.
Milo Cameron (they/them): So
Milo Cameron (they/them): that is me. I continue to forget to put a contact slide on here. But I will put my email in the chat. My name is Milo Cameron. I use them pronouns. And my email is M. cameron@mbc.edu. Thank you for your time.
Cori Wilhelm: Thank you, Milo, and thank you, Christy and Madeline.
Cori Wilhelm: I see the the similarities and differences in your approaches. But yeah, we can open up the floor to anyone. If anyone has questions. I did see this. Somebody asked about how many staff members were involved, and Steve is from Mbcc. And he responded to that 4 to 5, part time.
Cori Wilhelm: and Madeline says, get a humidity sensor.
Cori Wilhelm: In levels over 65, and more. Advantageous from all these are great tips.
Madeline Veitch: Yeah, any questions from the floor. Oh, go ahead. Oh, can I just build on that? I really just think you know, that it seems like across soony there, Major moves toward you know, energy saving and having multiple buildings on one age back. And then if there's a closure like there was for the pandemic that can impact it. I just think libraries.
Madeline Veitch: the campus facilities aren't gonna know that they need to be aware of our humidity needs. So I think we have to advocate and say, we need the sensors in place because we have a collection to protect.
Madeline Veitch: yeah.
Milo Cameron (they/them): I so agree with you. People don't
Milo Cameron (they/them): think about well, they don't think about libraries at all, but they don't think about the logistics of it. They just think it's a place that's got books and computers and stuff. But the very specific, like environmental needs that we have go under the radar constantly
Heather: other than Polygon. What were some of the other companies that you guys considered Christy?
Kristy Lee: there is a company. From Long Island
Kristy Lee: there, there. So we went through a bit process when when we decided that this is a problem that we will not be able to handle ourselves, we we didn't even attempt to get any staff member to touch any of the material, because,
Kristy Lee: like Milo mentioned, some people might be very allergic, and we do not wanna subject anybody to be exposed further to the mole. So when we I mentioned it to to the Provost that time
Kristy Lee: and provost contacted, or have me to contact other department, and one of them is the purchasing department acquisition. Purchasing the campus purchasing department, they immediately send out a what do they call it the Rfp.
Kristy Lee: And then from the Rfp. They select a vendor coming in, and the vendor coming in from all different area. Some of them will do the basement mo and other stuff, and Polygon was one of them. There was one company from Long Island. I don't remember the name, but I can look it up in our record if I can find those a bit. So they start started to do a bit.
Kristy Lee: a bidding process.
Kristy Lee: And there is in Sunni there is a I was going to answer Mahler's question, how much does it cost? It's a lot of money, because it went through the 250,000. If it's over that everything has to send to Albany to get the approval
Kristy Lee: and I don't know who's paying for that yet, so far, but because it went way over 250,000, and Polygon is not the highest bit
Kristy Lee: that's how they got selected, and the other highest bit was the company from Long Island, and apparently that because Polygon is
Kristy Lee: not a New York Company, so they need to comply with more of the paperwork. They cannot do the more cleaning up in on site because they are not licensed in New York State. So they have to move the books to Pennsylvania. That's where they they are license to do so. The books are trucked off to Pennsylvania.
So I think it was 291,000, maybe around that number, anyway. So that's why it was so delay because of the paperwork that they needed polygon to filled up the paperwork.
Kristy Lee: because they are out of state, and all those hoops and all the paperwork, anyway. So that's the The reason that they took so long. They came to see the collection. The vendor were here in May and June, and the work didn't start until this year. June or July, when they removed the book from our collections.
Heather: We also have a basically a standing contract with Polygon. I'm at Binghamton, and when they came to do a site visit, they highly recommended that every site, every Sunni site, or anybody library that might need disaster response. Go ahead and get that process you're talking about started. And it doesn't mean anything happens. It just means that
Heather: you are. You have all your paperwork ready, so that when an event happens you can call them and make it happen faster.
Cori Wilhelm: And I think that's a great tip heather. It's the chats kind of blowing up. It sounds like ulster where Marla is, has a problem pot stamp. Where Lauren is has a problem.
Cori Wilhelm: yeah. And it sounds like as Madeline explained. It takes a long time start to finish. Well, and it doesn't like anybody is finished yet. but yeah, we may need to look into
Cori Wilhelm: system wide. Can you know, can we check in on the collections? And yeah, get that process started?
Kristy Lee: Christy, there's a question how many volumes were sent away from New I just typed in is close to 30,000, because when they checked, they when they, before they removed the books.
I provided them with 4 laptops with a scanner.
Kristy Lee: so they scan the backhoe into a spreadsheet excel spreadsheet right on the desktop on the laptop, and I just went downstairs, and after they finish and left
I picked up the files from all 4 laptops, and I add them all together
Kristy Lee: one of the laptops scan over 15,001 of them scan over 12,000, and I add them all up is close to 30,000, and I hope they all come back.
Madeline Veitch: Yeah, that's a concern. Do they all come back? There's also like the issue of like they took up. They took the B the initial batch and then our environmental health and safety. Rep. Who's been working with us? Kyle Mung? And he went down and he found more that that had been left. So we had to call Polygon and tell them to come back. So it was also like not just like
Madeline Veitch: wasn't like. We got the vendor, and then we were like done. It was like once the vendor was here. We then had to be like just checking to make sure they were doing what we'd agreed upon. Because it was like it was such a huge number of volumes that they had to go through. So it was not. I'm sure it was not cost effective for them to go through a volume by volume. But that is what we asked for.
Madeline Veitch: Okay.
Kristy Lee: we still don't know who's putting the book back on the shelf at this point.
Madeline Veitch: Yeah, because that that we had a separate contract for that. We were gonna like, have them like, resolve it. And I think we didn't get that right. So they were like, well, you can resolve. You can resolve it yourself is cheaper, because your budget is already way past the 250,000.
Madeline Veitch: Yeah. And then also, like they weren't gonna clean the shelving. They weren't gonna wipe down all the shelving or deal with the carpet in any way. And you know, when we had our initial mold assessment, this was helpful to hear our initial mold assessor. I remember him saying, and it was chilling. He was like a library should never be carpeted, and we were like, because what we have on our ground floor is basically concrete slab.
Madeline Veitch: no vapor barrier carpet sitting. So when it gets wet it just stays wet. And early on we tried to advocate. We said, Please, please tear out the whole carpet in the whole ground floor, put in a vapor barrier, put in linoleum tile.
Madeline Veitch: and it just it hasn't happened. So
Cori Wilhelm: wow! And I think a lot of our libraries are carpeted.
Cori Wilhelm: Ii do think a takeaway. I think you both had great tips in your presentations. But get talking about it. Get your administration to recognize and understand, because it does sound like we have some more campuses out there with
Cori Wilhelm: problems that are are unaddressed. So make sure the Administration understands how important it is.
Cori Wilhelm: Any other questions from our audience.
Heather: We have another comment. And that's just that. If you have a small scale issue, you can always put those items that you've found with mold in the freezer.
Heather: and that will buy you time to deal with whatever you need to deal with, whether it be finding, funding or figuring out what you're going to do as far as the cleaning process.
Heather: I know that would not work for the 30,000 books that they referenced, but in a smaller scale situation that will work and like I said, I'm I'm at Binghamton. If anybody needs to or wanted to email me or something, we have a freezer in our studio, just for that.
Kristy Lee: We can ship the books to you. II counted today. I could probably fit 1,500, and that's about it.
and the book can be in the freezer for an unlimited amount of time.
Heather: So what we do is put them in the freezer. The freezer that we have on site is just an ordinary commercial freezer. The one we have off site is the, you know, the special kind. But for the one that just
Heather: is here, and at least
Heather: pauses. It's active life. So like talisian I'm I might have might not pronounce that right. But as she Taliesin, thank you, it's not gonna kill the mold. But at least it will kind of pause the process.
Cori Wilhelm: That's a great tip and heather. Maybe if you don't mind if you would drop your email in the chat, too. Just because I think
Cori Wilhelm: many folks are going to reference this slide deck and chat
Cori Wilhelm: for all the information that's been provided, I think. The tips were fantastic. So
Cori Wilhelm: from everyone
Cori Wilhelm: anything else, we've got about 1 one or 2 moments left.
Cori Wilhelm: Thank you. Heather
Cori Wilhelm: and Taliesin had also dropped a phone number for the.
Cori Wilhelm: is it the Northeast document conservation
Taliesin (They/them): center? Yeah, they have. They. Also, I wanna make sure people know, because II attended one this summer. They have emergency preparedness workshops that they run periodically. It's
Taliesin (They/them): I think it was like 50 bucks to attend and they do a really comprehensive hands on like you dunk things in water and learn how to take them out like level of training for it. So it's a really, really great. And they give you like a ton of resources that they have. And it's a really nice like, thorough, like full day class.
Cori Wilhelm: That's fantastic. And Susan, go ahead.
Susan Perry: Yeah, and this question is not meant to be, you know, trouble making, or anything but scientifically does cleaning books actually work.
Susan Perry: I mean, we're talking about soft materials and papers. I mean. I just feel like mold is so dangerous that
Susan Perry: I would just get rid of the books. I mean, II have this fear that cleaning doesn't really work. And and I've not experienced this before. I just wondered if you guys had come across any scientific data about the cleaning process.
Milo Cameron (they/them): That is an excellent concern. And
Milo Cameron (they/them): we kind of did both responses to it. So when we notice mold problem, we pull all of the things that are like actively fuzzy and those just immediately get discarded, because there it's so deeply entrenched in there. That is just a hot mess, and you're asking for trouble. To try to clean those by hand in house. At the very least. I have no idea what professionals can do. The
Milo Cameron (they/them): cleaning that we did was on books that were not displaying symptoms. So it was more of a backup plan, but obviously that didn't workout for us. It was what the recommendations that we saw encouraged us to do, but
Milo Cameron (they/them): it was down the list of ways which started at don't get mold. In the first place, went to cleaning by professionals is a very good bet, and throw it in the freezer, if you need to, and then if you absolutely have to take care of this yourself and have no other options, at least try to clean it to sort of slow things down. So that is a absolutely valid concern, and it is not
Milo Cameron (they/them): foolproof by any stretch of the means, but it is better than sitting on your hands and hoping for the best.
Kristy Lee: We don't have any scientific proof. But Polygon mentioned that after the books clean, they will go through the gamma radiation of the book material. I don't know if that's true or not, and we don't even know you know what it looks like yet. So I'm curious when the book come back, whether we'll have recurrence of Mo at all.
Madeline Veitch: Yeah. And I think a big part of it. What we've heard, too, is that like you can try to kill all the mold that you see, and you do your best. But then it's really about controlling the environment
Madeline Veitch: to make sure that they don't. It doesn't regrow. I mean, part of the problem is, our collections do circulate. These books go home with people into their moldy houses, and then they come back right? So like
Madeline Veitch: it's it's also, you know, I think what you can do is is is try to control. Try to create a situation that doesn't result in growth and spread because there will be individual books that become impacted by more
Milo Cameron (they/them): I agree, Madeline. once you get mold, you have mold.
Milo Cameron (they/them): Essentially. That's just the reality of it. And from there on you're experimenting and figuring out fun, new ways to manage it as cheaply as possible.
Cori Wilhelm: Well, that was fantastic. I want to thank Kristy, Madeline, and Milo.
Cori Wilhelm: That was that was informative, and helpful hopefully for many of our listeners. We are going to.