University of Maryland: about twenty thousand volumes were attacked by mold this summer. The
problem is so bad that librarians have shut down an entire floor of the
library.
However:
“Students will still be able to check out books. Books that are buried in
an entire floor full of mold. All because some hard ass librarian is
willing to pick up their sweat-grimed machete, daub their eyes with
grease paint, and march off into the alien jungle that has sprung up
around them. Not only will some tough-as-nails librarian wade hip deep
in spores to fetch that book you’ll probably only skim, but they will
then, before taping closed their own green-smeared wounds, a broken
cigarette dangling from cracked and slime-flecked lips, wipe that book
clean. All this so you and your dainty lungs can read without worrying
about toxic, toxic mold.”
(source: http://www.mhpbooks.com/these-librarians-make-you-look-like-a-wuss/ )
“Recipero, Revertetur, Supersum.” (Retrieve, Return, Survive.)
My typist braces himself for a request from his alma mater for money he doesn’t have. (He assumes it’s the main McKeldin Library that is contaminated and the worst thing to be found in the engineering library continues to be engineering students.)