Reclaiming the JAC Library - reserving and Conserving Library Materials - Joint Astronomy Centre - Hilo, Hawaii

Information Outlook, July, 2000 by Ruth A. Kneale

Background

In May of 1999, I received my Master's in library and information sciences from the University of Arizona, and immediately after graduation moved to Hilo, Hawaii to take on the mantle of librarian for the Gemini Observatory. Shortly before my arrival, the Joint Astronomy Centre (JAC), which is located next door to the Gemini base facility in Hilo, had returned their ten percent part-time librarian to full-time astronomy research. Since Gemini and the JAC had a previously established shared-resource agreement, they asked if I would also manage their library as well. Evidently, the JAC hadn't had an actual librarian responsible for their library for several years; instead, they used individuals talented in multi-tasking from the astronomy and software staff. These people did a phenomenal job faced with both the lack of professional library training and the minimal time they were allocated to spend on the library (I shudder to think of what the room would have been like without their efforts !).

It was clear on my initial evaluation of the room that some serious work needed to be done. The JAC library, like the institution it serves, is twenty years old and has over 6,000 volumes (primarily monographs and bound serials). The 680 square foot room had one elderly dehumidifier that was often turned off by the infrequent patrons because of the "loud noise" and no air purifiers. Serials had been added to the library shelves as they arrived by the administrative assistants, but no monographs had been put in the room for almost a year, and the catalog had not been updated in even longer.

The Problem

The very first, impossible-to-miss indication that there was a serious problem was the pervasive odor throughout the room. Upon closer inspection, mold was visible on a majority of the books and bound journals. The second problem was the sheer disarray of the room. Books were haphazardly shelved, and there was a lot of non-library material being "stored" in the room. Staff members had been avoiding the library for months; in the disarray they couldn't find anything, and the atmosphere made some people physically ill.

A plan was needed, but to create a plan, research had to be conducted into what other libraries had done when faced with a similar problem. To my dismay, most of the information I found recommended that items that had become infested with mold (or mildew) simply be thrown away and replaced. That was not an option here; typically, small observatory libraries like the JAC don't have $500,000 (a conservative estimate of the total replacement materials cost) to spend on replacing all their books. Ideas had been bandied about when I was in school, among them the use of bleach and even microwaves, but I couldn't find a single article or paper on the topic. I searched in back issues of both American Libraries and Information Outlook, and I looked online for anything about mold in libraries or cleaning mold from books to no avail. So I did some tests and formulated what I hoped would be a comprehensive plan of attack.

The Plan

I took a duplicate volume of a bound journal and experimented with different strengths of diluted bleach on it until I found one that seemed to clean away the mold but did not fade, mar, or otherwise damage the binding and cover that I could see (two cups of bleach in 1.5 gallons of water, a ratio of 1:12). Eight two-gallon plastic buckets, four gallons of Clorox bleach, five cans of Lysol, and several boxes of plastic gloves and protective masks were bought, and volunteers were solicited from the Centre staff.

Every book, every shelf, every surface would be cleaned- and this would require a tremendous amount of physical effort (as most of us know, moving books can be quite a workout!), unpleasant odors, and discomfort. I was astonished and very pleased at the high number of volunteers. Even though they knew the amount of work involved, we had six to ten people working for the first three days and had to turn away help on the fourth.

The Procedures

On Monday, December 27, 1999, we began our assault on the shelves. Each team member wore plastic gloves and protective face masks for the first two days to help prevent the dust and other contaminants we were stirring up from lodging in our lungs. Buckets were filled with the diluted bleach solution and placed around the room, as were trash bags.

The first step was removing the books from the shelves onto a working area. Then the shelves were removed and wiped down with a wet cloth. The bookcase walls were wiped down as well, and then the shelves were returned to dry. For the books themselves, using a lightly dampened cloth, volunteers first wiped the outside covers of the book, the spine (paying attention to the joint), and the fore-edges. The inside boards and paste-downs (front and back) were gently wiped, and the book checked for further invasive damage, insects, and any other problems. The books were set upright with the covers opened in a V, allowing air circulation to dry them. Once the books were dry, they were re-shelved, and that shelf was flagged as finished.