Beware the SPORE!!!

Oh no!! A nasty learning experience has reared its ugly head....well more like silently crept, spread, or oozed its way around. We have had a mold outbreak in the collection. It was dicovered when Mrs. Vickie found a book in her office that had been covered in mold. While she was explaining to me about how it should be contained quickly to prevent spread we discovered more in some of the back rooms growing on books stored there. We brought our search out of the back rooms and began combing the collection located outside the door for any further signs of spread.

Sure enough there were many books located along the bottom 2 shelves of the stacks that contained mold on their covers. These were primarily older books with cloth covers. After spending some time in among the moldy books, taking down the call numbers, I was left with some sinus pressure, congestion, and a bit of a cough. Nothing serious I hope, just a reaction to being around it. I should be fine later in the day.

To protect the students I marked of the infected area with some caution tape we had stored away. I tend to find humor in everything and the idea of creating a "crime scene" in a library made me laugh. We put a sign up front letting students know about the outbreak and warned them if they had allergies they might want to use the learning lab instead.

Here are some pics:

Things I have learned about this type of situation are:

1. This is actually very serious. It affects not only the books, but the students as well. It should be taken care of a quickly as possible.

2. When something like this happens there are several ways to handle it. It can be expensive and sometime this expense determines the level of care the situation will recieve.

3. Vacuuming the books is one attempt at solving the problem. The other is to remove the affected book from the collection and destroy it. The rest can go through the cleaning process and hopefully the situation is contained.

The containment of ALL the spores seems like a daunting task, but the removal of the books most likely to be affected would help keep spread levels down. A final thought I had about the subject had to do with the future and the new library. This is something that needs to be taken care of before the collection is transfered to the new library. How do you go about this? Do you comb the collection after the outbreak and remove all books that have the possibility of spreading it to the new building? Is this plausible or is this always a constant battle with a paper collection. This thought leads into another and that is who would want a completely digital collection?

Not so Final Thoughts on the LCCC Library

I am back at the Library at Lake City Community College.  I could not be more excited about it.  After a brief stint in New York City I have returned home to learn more about the career I have chosen. 

New York as quite an adventure.  I learned a lot about the differences between giant libraries like the ones in New York and the smaller ones like the library at LCCC.  I went up to New York with the aspirations to work in one of the libraries at either NYU or the NYPL.  When I went to the library at NYU I could not even enter, unless I was a student there.  I could not speak to anyone either so I turned my attentions to the NYPL.  This was equally fruitless.  I began by searching their website trying to locate an office or someone I could speak to about what steps I should take to gain employment.  They had an internet application process with many positions available.  I posted my resume and applied for several different positions I qualified for.  I never heard anything back.  I finally started to notice where my applications were being reviewed and turned down.  This was all I could find out.  No information as to what I needed for the job.  Eventually I managed to make contact with someone who worked in the field and found out that where I was at, I was either overqualified or under-qualified for all positions.  There was no way to know when I would be eligible.  

Seven months had passed by this point and I needed to be involved with a library to further my education.  I began to think about options and decided the best option would be to go back to Lake City, back to Lake City Community College, and back to the library.  In short: HOME.  Whoever said you can't go back made a mistake. :)