Leaky roof

[ELEANOR COOK <COOKEI@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We have a potential disaster on our hands: part of our roof is needing 
to be replaced and it is leaky in a random way. We have not had any 
significant rain in over 3 weeks, since we discovered the severity of 
the problem. (believe it or not, we suffered no weather from 
Hurricane Bonnie).  Our campus administrators promise a new roof in 90 
days possibly, but in the meantime, we are planning for problems. If 
this roof is not fixed by winter, we may be in for serious problems, 
since it is flat and we are in a major snow region.

We are worried about water damage to books in our general stacks and we are 
also worried about mold blooms in the ceiling tiles and crawl space 
above the ceiling.  In preparation we have covered the affected areas 
with 4 mil. plastic which drapes about halfway down each range; 
patrons can fairly easily lift the plastic to get to books. 

There are so far no obvious (blue) mold  outbreaks, and our stacks 
have a relative humidity that is low most of the time anyway (in fact, 
usually we are too dry), but one column near a window has a weird 
white fungus imbedded in the wood panelling and we think we should 
replace this. No books are showing mold at this point.

We are working on disaster contingencies. We've contacted SOLINET and 
several companies that specialize in moisture control. We feel 
fortunate that we can kind of "plan" for this -- but I have a couple 
of questions for the experts:

1. In identifying local freezer spaces in the event of really wet 
books, we are running up against possible Health Dept. restrictions 
concerning placing non-food items in commercial food freezer space.
How should we handle this? Boone is a small town with not much cold 
storage other than food freezers. Disaster mitigation companies say 
they will bring their trucks but they cannot get here immediately 
since we are remote. We are thinking of asking staff with home 
freezers to "adopt" books if necessary.

2. Our Physical plant people say that the style of ceiling tiles we 
have are not replacable (ie, no longer made). But we would rather have 
the water-damaged ones removed and something else put up in place of them, 
regardless of what they look like. We want to remove the waterlogged 
tiles because of the possibility of mold. Any suggestion on how to deal 
with this? If the holes are left open, all the heat rises in the winter, 
and that causes problems with HVAC system.

Thanks for any advice. 

Sincerely,
Eleanor Cook
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Eleanor I. Cook                   828-262-2786 (wrk)     NEW PO BOX
Serials Specialist                828-262-2773 (fax)         & 
(and Preservation Specialist)
Belk Library, PO Box 32026                               Area Code!          
Appalachian State University                             Spring '98
Boone, NC 28608-2026              cookei@xxxxxxxxxxxx  
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