A Mold Outbreak in Tbilisi, Georgia: Technical and Interpersonal Challenges
January 10, 2018
Video
Watch the Video (70 m)
About the Lecture
Left: Dressed in personal protective equipment, Randy Silverman looks at some of the 80,000 rare books, stolen from Germany at the end of WWII by the Soviet Army, in Tbilisi State University Library floor 0 storage room. Right: Moldy rare books in the Tbilisi State University Library.
Tbilisi State University Library experienced a 15-year mold event that damaged 80,000 rare western books. Blue Shield Georgia’s successful Cultural Emergency Response grant from the Prince Claus Fund (Amsterdam) supported a 10-day onsite assessment of the problem in January 2017. The consultant assembled conservators, the building’s original architect, a preservation architect, and an air conditioning (HVAC) engineer to determine the cause of the bloom in the 1960-period building. Excessive moisture originating from four primary sources was believed responsible for the mold outbreak in four locked rare book storage rooms. A cost-effective protocol to curtail the source water, dry the involved rooms, and clean desiccated mold from the rare books was proposed to the Library and University administrations. Despite ongoing human health risks and the damage to rare books, the University elected to ignore the problem. This presentation will provide a personal view on building conditions that trigger mold blooms, technical options for terminating a large-scale outbreak, and speculation on unseen social conditions that may have prevented the solution’s implementation.
About the Speaker
Randy Silverman has served as the Head of Preservation at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library since 1993. He teaches workshops on disaster planning for the Western States and Territories Preservation Assistance Service (WESTPAS), and is recognized for his national disaster recovery efforts. He has 80 professional publications and has presented professional lectures or workshops in 30 states and 13 foreign countries. He was given the American Library Association’s Banks-Harris Preservation Award in 2013, received a Fulbright Specialists award in 2014, and was awarded the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, Gardner Prize, for "outstanding academic contributions" in 2016.
