Mold hits U. of I. Rare Book Library

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Mold hits U. of I. Rare Book Library

URBANA | Collection worth more than $1 billion

February 8, 2008

Chicago Sun-Times, IL*

BY DAVE NEWBART Staff Reporter dnewbart@...

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/783945,CST-NWS-MOLD08.article

The gem of the University of Illinois' world-renowned library -- its

Rare Book & Manuscript Library -- is infested with mold and will be

closed down for several months.

About 15,000 books in the collection have mold, library officials

said. But the number could be higher, because that includes only

what's visible.

" It's a significant portion of the collection,'' said Tom Teper,

associate university librarian for collections. The 300,000-piece

collection is worth more than $1 billion and includes the papers of

Carl Sandburg and H.G. Wells, among many other rare books and

manuscript.

The Rare Book library will close Feb. 25 so an outside firm can

undertake a painstaking cleanup of each item, as well as shelves,

walls, floors and the ventilation system.

The cleanup could cost as much as $800,000, officials said. The

library is scheduled to reopen May 5.

The outbreak was discovered around Thanksgiving. Teper said there

was a spike in humidity outside, leading to problems inside the

library, which occupies a self-contained vault inside the school's

main library on the Urbana-Champaign campus.

The vault's ventilation system is more than 25 years old, and Teper

said it was difficult to control the temperature and humidity inside

the room.

A statement posted on the Rare Book Library's Web site says the

problem was caused by " substandard environmental conditions in our

facility where treasures of the University are housed.''

The statement said the collections deserve a " proper, secure,

environmentally appropriate building of their own.''

Irreplaceable collection

While erecting a new building is unlikely in the near future, Teper

said the school is " still determining what the exact corrective

actions are going to be for a long-term fix.''

Officials could not immediately say which books were damaged, but

said it doesn't appear that anything in the collection has been

damaged beyond repair. They also said the school has been advised

that the problem does not pose a significant health risk.

In addition to handwritten letters and manuscripts by Carl Sandburg,

the library has recordings of his radio broadcasts. It also has one

of the 10 first editions of Steinbeck's The Winter of Our

Discontent. Steinbeck gave Sandburg the book as payment for a poker

debt.

The library has one of the largest collections of incunabula --

European books produced before 1501, including pages from the

Gutenberg Bible. It also has a copy of the first Bible printed in

the Western Hemisphere in the early 1660s.

" We are really looking to protect this collection that is

irreplaceable and really a gem in the state of Illinois,'' Teper

said. " People come from all over to look at this material.''