The Mahomet Public Library is committed to following science and protecting their patrons during COVID-19.
“We’ve said, the board and I have said, whatever science comes back, that’s the science we’re going to follow in terms of quarantining things, because it’s a concern,” Director John Howard said. “You know, people take our materials and then they sit with them in their hands for hours at a time. And then we return them and then we hand them out to somebody else.”
Since reopening in June, the library was not only following guidelines from the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control, but Howard was also following guidance from national library organizations as they completed research on how long COVID-19 lived on the surface of returned library materials.
The first reports that came in said three days on books to be quarantined and four days on DVDs.
“We could live with that, so we did that for a while,” Howard said.
Then glossy books were to be quarantined for five days.
Those tests, though, were done with books sitting out on a counter. When researchers put them on the shelf, stacked as they normally would be, they found that the COVID-19 virus was still detectable after six days. Howard said that the studies still don’t detail if the virus is transmittable at that point.
The Mahomet Public Library immediately went to an eight-day quarantine for all of their returned or transferred material.
“Before any of us touch it, we literally have the books come into hefty bags,” Howard said. “They can be in the slot and go to a hefty bag so we don’t touch them at all until they’ve been quarantined.”
Keeping library materials in a bag for eight days was only part of the equation, though. Interlibrary loans were being quarantined for a minimum of 15 days, 7 days at the first library and 8 days at the Mahomet Public Library.
During that time, a library loan remained on a patron’s account without having the materials in their possession.
“It’s everyone trying to make sure that people are safe,” Howard said. “All of us recognize the fact that there is a danger. We don’t know what our patrons are doing with our materials, when they go out there or whether they’re so healthy, but when you hold the book, you hold it for a long time.”
Libraries also take into account that some people lick their fingers when they turn the pages.
Seeing some concern building among patrons, Howard decided to reach out to other libraries to see how they were handling the situation. In conversations, Howard learned that the Urbana Free Library used moderate heat, 133-degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact, to disinfect their materials.
“It sounds high but it’s very safe for books,” Howard said.
The temperature is similar to the temperature inside a car with its windows closed on a sunny day.
The Mahomet Public Library received a tent-like system on Sept. 12 and set it up in the Edgar Room where storytime and meetings are often held. The tent had trouble holding the heat in the large room, though, so staff moved it into a closet for chairs where they have been experimenting all week with regulating the temperature by leaving the doors slightly ajar.
The heating system is monitored by an iPad that sits near the library’s check-in station. The materials have to be in the heat for 30-minutes at 133-degrees in order to be disinfected.
Howard said the turn around time of three weeks should be cut to two days in the near future.
“This equipment allows us to reduce the amount of frustration during this pandemic,” Howard said. “You can’t eliminate frustration, but we can reduce it quite a bit and we can serve people better and a little bit faster and get people to what they’re looking for a little bit faster.”
Mahomet Public Library circulation numbers have taken a bit of a hit during the pandemic months, but Howard said that seeing just a 20-percent reduction in August is better than can be expected. With traditional storytime canceled throughout the summer months, circulation of children materials, such as picture books, has reduced by 40-percent.
“We’re pretty pleased that we’re that we’re at 80-percent (circulation) given the situation we’re living in right now,” Howard said.
The library has committed to putting funds towards more ebooks in during this time. Ebooks cost libraries nearly four-times more than traditional books. But, Howard said that its an investment the library is willing to make for the community.
“A lot of people have tried ebooks and they have never done it before and they are really enjoying them,” he said. “And it’s a safe way to get books right now.”
