Charged by the Stewardship Standing Committee, a group of eight staff from various functions across Harvard Library were tasked to gather data and make recommendations regarding what library staff should do when confronted with contaminated library collections. Allyson Donahoe from Preservation Services and John Avedian from Environmental Health & Safety served as co-chairs for the group.

The group spent a few months in 2018 interviewing almost 50 people from across Harvard Library about their experience with contaminated collections. From these interviews, the group found that the most common contaminants were mold, pests, odors, and dust, as well as unknown materials and historic pesticide treatments. One of the group’s findings was that Harvard already owns contaminated collections and will continue to acquire them, but we can promote more understanding of the nature of contaminants and how best to deal with them.

Besides the information on the contaminants in collections, these interviews brought to light a couple other common concerns for library staff, specifically library ergonomics and employee safety. Based on this unexpected information, the group recommends a library-wide safety training program for all staff and student workers. While the specifics on how the training would happen have yet to be determined, the group proposed an outline for the library safety training, which follows below:

• Safety at Harvard University
• Safety Basics
  • Emergency response procedures
  • Evacuation and emergency contact information
• Worker Protection
  • Reporting injuries/accidents/illnesses
  • Fire safety awareness
  • Library ergonomics
• Commonly Encountered Conditions in Library Workspaces
  • Mold
  • Odors
  • Pests
• Not Commonly Encountered Conditions in Library Workspaces
  • Unknown substances
  • Pest mitigation measures
• Collection Emergencies
  • Facilities-related
  • Weather/transportation-related

The library-wide training is still in development, but this group did so much more! For anyone interested in all they found and their recommendations to Stewardship, their notes and recommendations can be found on their wiki page. Their findings delve deep and bring up a lot for us across Harvard Library to think about when acquiring and handling our collections.

By Kate Levy, Harvard Library Preservation Services

See also: Preservation