Jackson’s flagship library continues to fall apart, as black mold is forcing yet another department out of the Eudora Welty Library.
“Basically, the IT area now has mold growing on the walls. We’ve moved our IT staff to Clinton because they could no longer work in the space without getting sick,” said Patty Furr, executive director of the Jackson-Hinds Library System.
The downtown Jackson branch continues to struggle, months after the second floor was closed by the state Fire Marshal and months after the administrative offices were relocated to the River Hills Building on Lakeland Drive last August.
The system is paying $3,400 a month to rent three office suites.
Now, library officials are making plans to relocate the system’s computer servers to a new location and bring in new industrial-strength humidifiers to protect the library’s books from black mold.
Furr said plans to relocate the servers had not been finalized at press time.
She said the servers need to be relocated.
“Everything depends on the servers. Our information system, our public computers, our cash systems, our phones, our Internet - everything,” she said. “If they go down, it would be three or four weeks before we would be up and running again.”
She doesn’t know how much it will cost to relocate the system.
The library board voted recently to discuss issues at Welty and the Charles Tisdale Library with city and Hinds County officials.
Welty houses nearly 100,000 books, including “a very deep fiction collection, as well as the many non-fiction, history and biography (collections),” Furr said.
“They are a treasure and are frequently borrowed by other libraries in the state. We are trying to save (them) so someday they could go into a new Welty library.”
Many of the books located on the library’s now-closed second floor have no indication of being affected by mold. Also, the areas of the library still open to the public have been tested and there is no threat of black mold, Furr said.
The building is tested every six months.
Leaks continue to be a problem throughout the building.
To combat the problem, large 70-gallon trash cans have been strategically placed on all three floors to collect water.
During heavy storms, the cans have to be emptied every eight hours.
“If it’s raining on the weekend or at night, someone has to go up there to empty them,” Furr said. “I’m worried about a hurricane. I can’t send someone up there during a hurricane. That’s a nightmare.”
On a recent visit, the patron elevator was blocked off with yellow police tape.
“It’s very difficult because people want books from the second floor and they want to browse the stacks,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of complaints because people miss the nonfiction collection and reference collection on the second floor.
“A lot of people studied upstairs. It was kind of like a tomb on a good day,” she said. “Rarely was there a day when you couldn’t go up to the second floor and find a terrific, quiet place to study.”
Around 170,000 people used the flagship location in 2016. Attendance has dropped by half since the top floor was closed, Furr said.
To accommodate patrons, tables and chairs from the second floor have been brought to the first. Also, librarians will go to the second floor to retrieve requested books.
“The only way we can get the books from one floor to the other is to put them in a van, drive them to the loading dock and bring them in. We can no longer use the elevator to transfer the books,” she said. “This is a real problem.
“This is a terrible inconvenience. It makes it so difficult. Everything you try to do in the building is hard because we don’t have an elevator.”
Welty was temporarily closed last October after the state cited numerous fire code violations.
The second floor remained shut off even after the library reopened days later and was still closed following the recent follow-up inspection by the state.
The fire marshal’s office conducted the follow-up review in May.
A letter sent to city officials on May 31 said Jackson had made “great strides” in addressing violations.
Among them, the city had done maintenance to the branch’s fire alarm system, removed some combustible materials and serviced the fire extinguishers.
Jackson also has made some improvements to the branch’s two elevators, including adding restrictor bars to prevent them from opening between floors.
The library system added some new lighting to the elevators as well.
While some progress has been made, other concerns still needed to be addressed.
Egress stairs, as well as some exits were obstructed or barred shut, the letter states.
Additionally, some shelves were stacked too high with storage, some fire extinguishers were obscured, some emergency lighting was not functioning and some electrical wiring on the second floor was exposed.
The marshal also cited broken and missing ceiling tiles and the lack of fire evacuation plans being posted throughout the building.
The library can’t replace the ceiling tiles because of the leaks, she said.
“Without the ceiling tiles, the fire marshal will not allow us to reopen,” she said. “It’s sad.”
A copy of the fire marshal’s letter can be found at northsidesun.com.
