Rain, Mold Damage CSUN Library Books

About 500,000 books at the Cal State Northridge library--half the university’s collection--have been exposed to damage by rain and mold during earthquake repair work, apparently causing more than $100,000 damage, administrators announced Tuesday.

The university has brought in a Texas restoration firm, BMS Cat of Fort Worth, to inspect the books and make recommendations. The $100,000 price tag includes the cost of assessing the damage and setting up dehumidification equipment, but the cleaning process will probably drive the cost higher, administrators said.

“I’m hopeful we can get it all done by September,” said Tom Tindall, CSUN’s director of facilities planning. “But I’m being pretty optimistic.”

Still unclear is how many books, periodicals and microfilms have been damaged and how much it will cost the university to waterproof the facility and repair and replace the materials. Library workers said they are waiting for more BMS Cat consultants to arrive before they enter the facility to inspect the books.

After the Northridge earthquake damaged the library in 1994, administrators thought the building’s pair of four-story, 50,000-square-foot wings could be repaired, but in 1997 it became clear the structures were beyond repair.

The west wing was demolished, but wreckers left intact the east wing’s basement and first two floors, which house the library’s automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS).

“It’s been an ongoing problem to build the new structure on top of the ASRS,” Tindall said. “We were drilling through the concrete that forms the ceiling and then sealing it as soon as we could. Then we were finding that when it rains some of these places are leaking.”

Contractors working on the $16.7-million project built a temporary roof, laid out tarps and tried other means to keep out the rain, but had only moderate success, Tindall said.

Library workers found rain-soaked books on several occasions and on Jan. 20 discovered mold was rotting some books.

“Our fail-safe system of keeping water out failed,” Tindall said.

Early in the library renovation, CSUN administrators ruled out moving the books to another site because of the cost and that doing so “would have meant that that huge quantity of material would have been unavailable to students and faculty,” school spokesman John Chandler said.

Chandler said he expects the cleaning process to have little impact on the library’s day-to-day business. Only the books used the least are stored in the retrieval system, administrators said.

Still, news of the damaged collection saddened Akiko Hirota, professor of Japanese and Asian studies, who worried that some of the damaged books could be difficult to replace.

“What a shame,” she said. “Every single one of the library books we have are so precious.”