hazmat team...grrr...

that was me on friday. yes, the library hazmat team. don't worry, no anthrax or scary shit, just mold. and by the way, to librarians, mold is scary shit! this box of donations had been sitting in the reference office for WEEKS. there are no donation policies or procedures currently in place. basically, someone comes in with boxed (or not) items and says that they want to donate them to the library and the people at the circulation desk take them. they do not look at them, they do not count them, they do not determine if it is even items we would ever need in the collection. this is not how it works at most libraries... so we end up taking items that we don't need and will never need, such as records (there is no record player in the library), VHS (this format is no longer supported on campus), and books on how to cook chicken (there is no culinary art program and students do not check cookbooks out of the library for pleasure).

so i opened up four lovely boxes of children's religious books, trade paperback fiction from about the 1970s, and other stuff that we don't need in the library and unpacked them onto my desk for counting and sorting. that's when i discovered ACTIVE MOLD!!! argh!!!

active mold infects books around it because the spores just need to attach to another book to cause mold there. it's also a health hazard. so, i had to put on the gloves, the respirator, pack the books back up and then basically bomb my office with mold and mildew killer. luckily, the boss decided that we don't need to keep these books, so they've been put away for pick-up and destruction. so please, never donate moldy, water damaged books to your library. people like me get very angry when they have to replay that scene out of E.T. and then sit in a chemically-smelling office for the rest of their day.

thanks for listening to this public service announcement.