McKeldin Library

Library staff members have closed McKeldin’s fifth floor until further notice after discovering an outbreak of nontoxic mold Aug. 9, according to a library spokesman.

Thousands of books were affected by the mold, said library spokesman Eric Bartheld. Library staff and a specialized contractor will clean all the shelves, and every book on the floor will be wiped down and vacuumed, a process that could take months.

Students looking for a place to study shouldn’t feel too inconvenienced, Bartheld wrote in an email, because the fifth floor houses a relatively small amount of the library’s overall study space.

According to Tim Hackman, head of Resource Sharing and Access Services, library staff members have discovered small amounts of mold on the fifth floor in August for the past two or three years.

High summer temperatures and an old, inefficient heating, ventilation and air conditioning system are likely responsible for the mold, Bartheld said. Libraries generally maintain about 50 percent relative humidity, a number that had risen to 75 percent or more at the time of the outbreak.

Facilities Management workers brought in dehumidifiers to reduce the humidity, which was back down to 55 percent on Friday, and are in the process of adjusting the air conditioning controls and checking that all the monitors work correctly, Bartheld said.

No other floors appear to be affected, Bartheld said, adding the library likely won’t have to dispose of any books.

“We’ve been really careful about containing the mold on this floor,” he said. “I don’t think anything will be so badly damaged that we’ll need to get rid of it.”

However, in order to save money on cleaning the books — a process that requires a specialized contractor and costs about 40 to 50 cents a book, or $100,000 in total — the library is accelerating a plan to remove some duplicate volumes on the fifth-floor shelves. The library will dispose of about half the duplicates on the fifth floor, about 10,000 volumes, said Hackman. Although the library planned to remove those books in the coming months, they can no longer be donated to other libraries or schools.

Of the 200,000 books on the floor, Bartheld estimated 10 to 20 percent had actually been contaminated, but every book will need to be cleaned as a precaution. Library staffers have been helping sort through and shift the books to better ventilated areas, he said.

Librarians and staff from branches throughout the university have been volunteering their time in hourly shifts since the sorting began Aug. 23, Bartheld said. As soon as they’ve finished sorting and shifting, the library will bring in the contractor to do the bulk of the cleaning, which is scheduled to begin in October.

“It’s been good to see all the care of the staff responsible for the collection,” Bartheld said.

A clear timeline is difficult to pin down because the sorting process is time-consuming, Bartheld said.

Throughout this process, the books on the fifth floor will still be available to reference and check out. Librarians will find and clean specific requests made through WorldCat UMD, the library’s primary catalog, and deliver them to the reservations desk 12 to 24 hours later for pickup, Bartheld said. Librarians may also expedite more urgent requests made in person.

There are no immediate plans to change or update the heating and air conditioning system on a large scale, Bartheld said.

“We have the HVAC system we have, so it will just require assiduous monitoring,” he said.

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