Poor Man's Preservation: Mold Remediation on a Budget

Abstract

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale has a student population of 18,847 undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students. Morris Library, an Academic Research Library (ARL), has over 2.5 million volumes of monographs, serials, and microfilm. The library has three additional storage facilities across the campus and in the town of Carbondale. In 2011, mold was discovered on a bound journal title in one of the storage buildings. A brief assessment determined that there was a major mold outbreak spanning many collections within the building. At the same time, the library and campus experienced budget and labor issues which posed problems for planning a mold remediation project. Planning the project was just one of many obstacles. Other issues included securing money for supplies, labor, training, and the realization four months after the start of the project that the mold growth was much more widespread than originally thought. Research established that the mold was most likely between 5 to 12 years old but had not been discovered due to the limited circulation of affected volumes. This project offers one example of how institutions similar in size and budget can handle major preservation issues, including how to plan (or sometimes how not to plan) preservation projects in-house rather than outsourcing them.