 Hello, everybody. This is Mike Mourno from Learning Times. I will be your technical producer, and so if you require any assistance during today's webinar, please communicate with me using the chat tool. It's available at the bottom of your screen by clicking the chat button. You'll see as well there is a Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, and you are encouraged to use that to submit any questions for our presenters, and they will be responded to at the appropriate time. And as well, there is closed caption available. If you look at the bottom of your screen, you can click the CC live transcript button and then click Show Subtitle, and the transcription will become available for you. On that note, I'll pass things back to Robyn Bauer-Kill, both. Go ahead, Robyn. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another C2C Care webinar. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen, and then we will start from there. But before I start, I would like to acknowledge that this webinar is being moderated on the traditional lands and the Mikasuki and Seminole people and their ancestors, and I pay my respect to elders, both past and present. Well, again, welcome to another C2C Care webinar. We're really excited for the topic today, but I'm going to run through a couple quick programming notes and some stuff about our program, and I'm just going to go ahead and hand it over to our presenters. You are here today for the reopening archives libraries and museums caring for your resources during COVID-19 webinar. We'll be going from 1 to 2.30 p.m. Eastern. This is the heads up. This webinar is being recorded and should be available on the C2C Care website, most likely by Monday, possibly by Friday. Let's see how fast I can get it up to everyone. My name is Robyn Bauer-Killgo. I'm the C2C Care coordinator, and you just saw Mike, who is our senior producer over at Learning Times. If you have any questions for us throughout the webinar, please feel free to put them in the chat box, or even if you want to, go ahead and say hello and where you're from right now. Just really quickly, this is our home on the web connecting to collections.org. Most likely many of you registered for our webinar there today, but just to cover some of the basics in case you're new to our program, we have a full archive sitting on our website right now. We have archives that go back almost 10 years now for the free webinar series, and then we also have a course archive. So if you're interested in any of our past programming, I would urge you to go there. There's also a community tab. We have a really great, moderated C2C Care community that you can post questions related to collections care and actually place them for people trained conservators to answer them. So if you have a question about anything that you might have in your collection, storage question, anything like that, go to that community tab, click on it, find out and post your question and someone will get back to you pretty quickly with some really good information. We have two spots on social media that you can find out announcements about upcoming programming and just general news in the area over on Facebook and on Twitter. Both the Twitter one is at C2C Care and Facebook is called C2C Community, so I would urge you to go check those out if you're on any of those platforms. We do have an upcoming free webinar happening on April 20th. What's best for my collection? New approaches to environmental monitoring. We're really excited for this program just because it's going to be talking about a lot of the new environmental data that's coming out with collection storage and other information. It's a free webinar. It's happening on April 20th, so if you're interested, go to our website, register for it, and you can join us live on April 20th from 1 to 2.30pm. As Mike said, there are two boxes that you should pay attention to as an attendee to this webinar. There's a chat box. Everyone's doing gangbusters at the chat box right now, so I think you guys all know its purpose. It's there basically to talk to the panelists or to the attendees if you want to say hello and where you're from. I would also point out that we have a Q&A box. The Q&A box is there for you to put questions. If you have a question for any of our panelists during the webinar, put the question there. We will get to as many as we can at the end of the webinar. I really prefer everyone to use that Q&A box just because it's easier to track the questions rather than the running stream that is the chat box. Just keep that in mind. I'm going to go on and introduce our three panelists that we have today. We have three people joining us from the realm project. We have Bex Caswell Olson. She's director of book conservation, the Northeast Document Conservation Center. Anna Monson-Muller, who's the toolkit editor over at Realm, and Kendra Morgan, senior program manager. I'm going to go ahead and hand control of the presentation over to them. We will see you at the end of their time to do the Q&A afterwards. If anyone has any questions or anything else, feel free to put them in the chat stream like we talked about. We'll see you at the end of the presentation. Great. Thank you so much, Robin. It's great to be here today. We really appreciate all of you joining us. My name is Kendra Morgan and I am a senior program manager here at OCLC. I'm joined by my colleagues, Anna and Bex, who are also going to do part of the presentation today. Bex is also a member of the Realm Projects Operations Working Group. We have a couple of different committees and teams of people who are working on the project. One of the things before we dive in too much is just acknowledging that this really marks the one-year anniversary when many states, weekend, shelter-in-place requirements, and many public spaces including libraries, archives, and museums were closed to the public and often staff to try and slow the spread of COVID-19. I am coming to you from my home office now in Seattle, Washington. I haven't been working in our physical office now in a year. So it's certainly been a year of tremendous change for all of us. It's a pretty surreal milestone for sure. And while we have learned so much during this year, there's still a lot we don't know. I thank you for joining us as we continue to learn together. As Robin mentioned, we'd love to hear your questions, clarifications. Everything we're going to share with you today is on the Realm website. It is free of charge to use. It's all published under a Creative Commons license for you to repurpose. What I do encourage is anyone who is listening to this as a recording or down the line just to remember that things change and you'll want to check for updates on the latest information that's available because it is constantly evolving. So the Realm project is a partnership between three organizations, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which is the primary source of federal support for U.S. libraries and museums, with a mission to advance and support and empower these organizations through grant-making research and policy development. So I am a less as the project funder really catalyze the research partnership that is Realm. Their ongoing role is to consult on the project goals and activities. And they also convene the steering committee and two working groups. We have a scientific working group and an operations working group to help provide input and guidance throughout the project. The second organization participating is Battelle. And that's a scientific research institute which is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. And they've done extensive research in public health, consumer, industrial, and national security sectors. And they have a long and extensive history of work on emerging and infectious disease. OCLC, where I work, was brought into the project to lead and manage the execution of the project deliverables. So we are coordinating Battelle scientific research and we collect and synthesize the input from the two working groups I mentioned, a steering committee, as well as subject matter experts in collective fields. So we've also established a cross-sector communication network that has dozens of associations and organizations that support libraries, archives, and museums to help get information about the project. So you know working today with the C2C project for us is a great way to reach out to a new community of participants and help elevate the availability of the Realm project. Our final task on the project is to really disseminate the project research and information to our constituent communities. So again these types of webinars are extremely helpful as we seek to to share out the project information. So overall there are a few key activities for the project and I'll speak to each of them as we go through and we're going to dive in a little bit to each of the different areas. The first is to conduct literature reviews of the published science to see what is emerging about COVID-19 with a lens of looking at how this impacts libraries, archives, and museums. We're also continually engaging with subject matter experts and representatives from the field to inform our planning and the lab testing which is really a key deliverable. This project really kicked off with IMLS because of a direct request from the library, archives, and museums community to do testing on the longevity of COVID on materials that are specific to our institutions. What we do then is to take all of the inputs that we're getting from the research and resources. We synthesize them into toolkit resources which is what my colleague Anna will be speaking to today. She has a partner on the library side, Catherine, who they come together to try and synthesize the information, make it much more layperson friendly because as you might imagine some of this can be quite technical in nature and it's not necessarily our go-to spot in our daily job. So having a more layperson voice interpreting some of the data was a key aspect of the work. So the scope of the project is really to provide information to better understand SARS-CoV-2 with the goal of informing local decision making in the development of practices and policies. One of the things that has been truly achingly clear over the past year is the enormous strain that staff of your organizations are under. This is impacting in a very deep way our personal lives, our professional lives, and along the way we are listening, learning, adapting, figuring out how to connect on a multitude of levels as we seek to really do our jobs and provide services to the public. We recognize that it really is a universal human trait to want to know what is best and how to mitigate the spread of this disease and for many of our institutions this applies to how we work with staff, the public, and our physical buildings and collections. It's a really complicated situation. One of the things that is important to note though is that realm is not making recommendations with so much variability among libraries, archives, museums across the globe like even in the United States, right? We've got local, city, county, state, federal guidelines. Every institution really needs to develop policies that work along with their own community needs. So with that we are going to look a little bit about the look into the overall research that we have been paying attention to through the project. There have been three literature reviews conducted during the project so far. One was just published in February, so just last month, and we're going to walk through a few of the highlights of what we have learned and how we're surfacing that through the content. So the three questions that we looked at in the literature review was how might the virus spread through general operations in libraries, archives, and museums? This isn't very different than how it might spread in other spaces, right? Other places where people are engaging, using the public, shared public space. So while we didn't expect to find anything in the published literature that was specific to lambs, libraries, archives, and museums, we were looking to see what might be applicable. How can we transfer what other people are learning about public spaces? The second question was how long the virus can survive on materials and surfaces through environmental attenuation, which is just a really fancy way of saying die off naturally. So how long does it take for the virus to disappear with little to no intervention? And then finally, how effective are various prevention and decontamination measures in the near term? So what can we use? And this is one of the areas where Bex has expertise around prevention and decontamination of cultural heritage materials and books. So you'll hear a little bit more about her take on on some of the things that may work in other environments, but really aren't appropriate in our cultural institutions because of the damage that they might do to collections. I mentioned at the beginning that while we've learned a lot in the last year, there's still a lot that we do not know. And it's really important to acknowledge this when having these conversations. It's sometimes naming the the unknown is important to explain why we're making certain decisions, why we're presenting certain policies and procedures. It's because there's a lot that we don't know. So the first thing on that list is that we don't know how many virus cells an infected person or virus particles, rather an infected person leaves behind on an object through sneezing or coughing. There's been a lot of research like how much does a big sneeze get off? How much is a little cough? It's a little quite frankly, we've had a lot of really gross conversations over the past year with this project in terms of mucus and coughing, but that's a reality. That's what happens in our daily spaces. I think anyone who works in public spaces can tell you some horror stories about what they have found in their buildings, but we don't know what it looks like and how much virus can be left behind. There's been a lot of research, but just taking into account the difference between a 10-year-old sneezing and a 40-year-old sneezing, are you covering your mouth? All those differences. The second issue is how much virus someone can pick up when they handle an object. So touching something, if I sneeze on it and someone comes along and touches it, we don't know how much can transfer. And then, most importantly, we don't know how much virus is needed to cause infection. The human infectious dose for this disease is still unknown. And it is also something that when you think about the broad spectrum of variables, someone's size, they have pre-existing conditions, anything like that is going to impact the potential for causing infection. So while these things are all being researched and we continue to look for answers in what's published, it's still not obvious or clear what the answer is. I mean, it's still going to take a lot of time and effort. We're continuing to learn and adapt. I imagine that every single one of you at your institutions has had to change your policies and procedures as you have learned more as we move through this space. So let's move into talking a little bit more about what we do know. SARS-CoV-2, what causes COVID-19, is generally understood to spread through virus containing water droplets from sneezes, coughing, speaking, singing. There is evidence that there are other pathways for spreading the virus. So aerosolization, if it's in the air, is another potential spread. And then touching surfaces. When an object is infected with a virus, it's called a fomite. And one of the things I mentioned on the previous slide is that we don't know. And at this rate, one of the things that we understand is with such high levels of infection, contact tracing and understanding how infections happen are just very difficult at this stage of the pandemic. When so many people are infected, determining how they actually got infected can be quite difficult. It's kind of chasing down an impossible task. But those things are much less likely, but possible. So the research continues into those areas. Environmental factors such as humidity, temperature and air quality have all been identified as influential. But again, more research is needed. HVAC systems, the heating ventilation and air conditioning are a few that people have been looking into because they're so prevalent in our buildings. So different types of filters using a UV treatment on the air that's being circulated, bringing more air in. So that's stuff that some of the researchers are continuing to look at. And then the space where we're probably most familiar at this point, social distancing, physical distancing, hand washing. I think we've all gone through containers and containers of soap in the past year using masks and gloves, personal protective equipment, spending time outside when possible, meeting in open spaces where there's air, the surface disinfectants and cleaners, as I mentioned, BEX will address some of that because while some things are appropriate for use in a medical environment, for example, they will damage our collections. So a natural attenuation, letting the items sit or quarantine is a much more prudent approach. All right. So we're going to dive a little bit into talking about the lab testing that has happened with the project. We have published a total of eight tests. The seventh and eighth tests were released in January. And the results of these tests are all available online. So the main question, and again, this was what really drove the creation of the Realm project with IMLS, was how long does the virus remain active on materials commonly found in archives, libraries and museums? And when we say active, we mean virus that is viable, infectious, capable of causing infection, it's alive. There are two different tests. One just detects the presence of viral matter but doesn't distinguish between active or inactive particles. The other focuses on measuring infectious virus only. And that's what we've been using for this test. So a couple of high level points about the testing. We've done eight rounds. You can see a few photos here of the Battelle laboratory staff. We have cut up books. It hurts my little librarian heart, but it's all in the name of science. We've cut up books. We've cut up plastic. We've cut up materials that are common in museums and archives in order to get these test results. And those are applied to the materials using a synthetic saliva or a fake spit. And then those materials are monitored for the presence of virus over a specified period of time. So we apply the virus. We wait one hour until it's visibly dried. And then they check it then to see what the drop is. And when I show you some graphs in a little bit, even one hour of drying time makes a dramatic difference in how much virus is present. It naturally dies off quite considerably after just one hour. And then we have four time points after that. So in some cases in the results, at the fourth time point, there was still a virus present. So we didn't get to what we would call the limit of detection below the limit of detection where we can't find any virus because we can only pick four time points. And so we're somewhat guessing using previous experience with testing other available research as we estimate how many days to do the tests. But the Battelle laboratory folks apply the virus and they look for it at these specified time points. And then we review the results and we get them published as soon as possible. That has been a hallmark of this project is that it has been very iterative. We have released the results very quickly. Once they have been through a quality assurance process and the data has all been verified, we've released that data as quickly as possible to help make those informed local decisions. This is an example of some of the materials that Anna was working on and she'll share a little bit more of them as we get through. But this is just a sampling of the types of materials that we've tested. And in some cases, you will want to extrapolate like what does a plastic storage bag look like, right? It's made of low density polyethylene, which is LDPE. It's a type of recyclable plastic. And when we tested that, virus was present after five for five days. And those are types of materials that are found in all of our institutions. Storage foam is another one expanded polyethylene foam where we saw virus present out past six days. These charts and graphs are all available on the Realm website. What's a little bit harder about this type of chart is that it doesn't show some of the nuance about how the virus drops. And in order to get that, you'll need to go into each of the individual reports. And I'll show you an example so you can be prepared for what you might see when you review those reports. We've also compiled some results that look specifically at the material type. So marble, these are all like building materials, right, that are common throughout all of our organizations and how they look different. So this is a really detailed chart. But I wanted to walk you through an example. So this test was specifically, this is from test seven and eight, the most recently run tests. And in this test, we looked at the impact of warmer or colder temperatures on testing. Previously, we tested this expanded polyethylene foam, packing foam, very common in exhibits and storage and packing. We tested it between 68 and 72 degrees. What we wanted to do for tests seven and eight was to see what does a much warmer temperature. So around 82 degrees look like. And then what does a hotter, a colder temperature closer to 32, 34 degrees look like. So what I want to start with is on the far left hand side, that's the amount of inoculum that was applied. And this was one of those places where we had to think about how do we interpret these results because scientists, biologists, virologists use log scales. Log scales do not easily interpret for laypeople. So people like, I would expect most of you on the call today, it is an exponential scale. And so we really had to work with Battelle to figure out, well, what does that look like to a layperson? So a log scale of five roughly interprets to around 100,000 virus particles. And so that's the starting point for the inoculum. I mentioned that we allow everything to dry for one hour. And that's the zero day mark that you see in the bottom axis. So after just one hour, and this is the part where the scale looks very strange because we started close to 100,000. By the time an hour has passed, we're down below 10,000 virus particles for everything. All whether it was warm, cold, the ambient temperature, those all were below 10,000 cells. It naturally dies off quite quickly. What, as we go down, you'll notice that there's a green line, and it's between the 10 and 100 cells. That's called the limit of quantitation or LOQ. The limit of quantitation is 26 cells. And it is when the Battelle scientists can no longer use their fancy machines to count the amount of virus. And instead they do a visual interpretation. So they look through their microscope and for the presence of virus on up to five, there are five test coupons for every day of the testing. They look on all five of them to see if they can tell that there is virus present. So that limit of quantitation is 26 cells. Before that, they're using their fancy centrifuges and other equipment to look for the virus. After that point, they're using a microscope. The bottom, once they get to limit of detection, it means that they were no longer able to detect the presence of virus at all. So if we look at the testing here, the cold test for the foam, it never, after 10 days, it never got below 1,000 cells. It will linger for a very long time when the temperatures are cold. And this was, you know, this is important to think about if you are collecting materials in cold storage or, you know, if you work in a library and there's an outdoor book drop, that's an important consideration. The virus can last very long. So if you are using a quarantine method, waiting until that material is inside and at room temperature before starting the quarantine. Conversely, the red line that you see is the warm temperatures. And that showed, got to completely below the limit of detection by day eight. And it was no longer present. The dotted line is the ambient. And the furthest that we went out when we tested that was day six. And there was still a trace amount available of virus on that material at day six. So, and I really want to emphasize this as a trace amount of material. Many organizations are using quarantine periods of just one day. Others are doing five days. It has been very much a local decision for people as they consult with their local health departments following county rules, city, state, whatever there may be. But there is likely to be a trace amount of virus if there was any on that material to begin with. So this is a pretty, every test that we have released includes these data charts. The data is also available in raw format as well, if you want to look at that. All of it is posted on the website for you to take a look at. So we're going to take a little bit of a look at, you know, how do you take all of this and use it in making your policy decisions. Many of you have been living through this now, as we said, for a year. You've had to go through some of these results or have these conversations locally with your administration, with other stakeholders. So really, it's staying informed of local guidelines, checking in with the CDC on what's changed with regards to PPE. We certainly expect to see new guidance coming out as vaccinations increase. Consider if your collections and resources can be sanitized. If you're quarantining, using the realm results as one data input for looking at how long those quarantine periods might last, and then consulting your peers through your networks. And then a really critical one is informing your internal and external stakeholders of changes to policies and the reality that they're likely to get questions and people are going to want to understand what's driving decision making. An article that I keep saying this when I talk about it, but this article was published in September of 2020 and it's kind of become my touchstone, just both professionally and personally around understanding what we're all going through. And I just, I really can't underscore the reality of the stress that this pandemic causes people on a daily basis and the collective stress and the impact of that can be very, very debilitating in some cases, overwhelming at best, particularly when people are just desperately looking for more information to make decisions. But this article kind of put a name to some of what I was feeling, certainly as I navigated through this project and my personal life. So the first, and what the authors did is they laid out five tips to help with decision making. And the first is that most data is going to be flawed or incomplete and to be honest and transparent about this. So I can absolutely say that the realm data is incomplete, right? We can't test every item under multiple conditions and answer all the questions of the library, archives and museums community. There are just too many variables. So this is what we have and these are some of the gaps that people are likely to find. The second point is that for some questions, certainty is never going to be reached and consider whether you need to act on the evidence that you have and move forward. And with realm, I mentioned we're choosing to publish information as it becomes available. And we're acting and sharing what we have and will continue to do that. And we do expect that to change, right? It's going to evolve. So if you're watching a recording or coming back to this topic in a month, look to see what has changed. The third is that to make sense of complex situations by acknowledging the fact that they are complex. Sometimes we are ignorant about the questions. If things come in today that I don't know the answer to, I will tell you and then I will see if I can figure it out. There may be paradoxes in decision making. And that's part of the reality. Being able to collectively reflect on some of these things is really important with a group of people who in their daily work support our communities, our cultural institutions. We can learn from each other and acknowledge what we don't know and still continue to move forward. The next item or the next tip is that different people and different stakeholder groups are going to interpret data differently. Deliberation among stakeholders may generate multifaceted solutions. So proposing something to one group of people who think about X one way and then discussing with others in another way can lead to a more robust decision. And we can benefit from those multiple perspectives. And then finally, observing real world interventions, pragmatic interventions carefully observed and compared to real world settings can generate data to complement research findings like realm, which are in controlled trials. We need to try new things when they are supported by data and our policies will need to evolve. So when we get to the Q&A period, I will post the link to this. It's a very short article. I think it's well done. And it just really helps to lay out a few things to really name some of the uncertainty that we're feeling and challenged by. All right. I'm going to pass it over to my colleague, Anna. And she's going to talk more about the toolkit resources that are available to you for free on the realm website. Thanks, Anna. Here I am. Thank you so much, Kendra. Yeah. So my responsibility on the project is as one of the two toolkit editors, as Kendra mentioned, my focus is on museums. And I'm joined by my colleague, Catherine, who has extensive experience from the library and archive side. And I just wanted to cover a few of the resources that you'll find on the realm website. We do have a project overview document that we were calling realm 101 that we've developed both for the library and for the museum audience. These are really helpful if you want kind of a quick overview of what the project is focused on. It's particularly helpful if you are, say, taking the results of realm and using them in your decision making and you want to explain to your board or other stakeholders what the project is about. We've, as Kendra referenced, also been putting together visual aids that interpret the complex data that we're receiving from Battelle into quick reference sheets that you can use in your everyday decision making. You saw a preview of this big visual aid that Kendra shared earlier that shows all of the results side by side in terms of days to attenuation. But we've also put together collections of surfaces like Kendra shared with you and other collections of individual resource, individual resources for specific topics, plastics, books and paper, media. If you have, in particular, an interest in plastics because you come from an exhibits background, taking a look at polypropylene versus LDPE versus HDPE might be the extent of your interest. So we've tried to curate that for you. Additionally, one of the outcomes of the project has been a series of literature reviews conducted by the scientists at Battelle. These are still being conducted now and each iteration of the literature review has been accompanied by a takeaway document so that you don't have to comb through 30 pages of the latest research on SARS-CoV-2. We've highlighted important findings, particularly about decontamination, prevention and how the virus spreads. Additionally, we have curated some of that content into a series of checklists. If you are faced with making decisions on policies we've collected some considerations that may prompt a new way of thinking for you. If you're looking at your cleaning procedures and protocols, we have a checklist on that topic, as well as a synthesized collection of topics that are of use when you're thinking about your own reopening plans. So we looked at a whole series of library and museum reopening policies that were kindly shared on the internet and highlighted common themes so that you can be prompted in your own decision-making about reopening. Additionally, we are trying to collect resources on specific topics that are of interest to the library, archive and museum community. So we're referring to these as our resource roundups. We currently have these three topics represented on the Realm website. We're continuing to collect additional resources on new topics, things like how do we manage our docent and volunteers during a pandemic when many of them are still not vaccinated. So more of these are upcoming. We have been collecting a couple of videos. In particular, we have a introduction to Realm video, which covers a lot of that Realm 101 content, but from Kendra's perspective as well as our IMLS and Battelle partners talking about the process of the project. So that, again, is another resource if you, a colleague or a stakeholder would like some additional information about the project. And we have started to conduct interviews with library, archive and museum practitioners talking about their own experiences with reopening. And more of these are upcoming. So all of these that I've covered today are currently published on the Realm website. You'll find them under the resources tab at the top. And then they are sorted by library, archive and museum areas of interest. And as I mentioned, we do have some additional upcoming resources. You can keep up to date on anything that's being released by the project by signing up through our mailing list as we have regular releases of new material. Thanks, Anna. I'm going to answer a few of the questions that came through in the Q&A. And one is if there has been any documented situations where individuals have become infected by handling library materials and not that we are aware of. So not that we are aware of. I mentioned earlier that contact tracing is particularly challenging right now because of the spread of the virus. It's quite difficult to do anything like that in any situation right now because the focus really is and understandably is on the person to person droplet spread. The second question that came through was if there's any information pertaining to the new faster spreading strains of COVID-19. So what we've been talking to our colleagues at Patel about is how these strains may impact attenuation rate. We have been testing the same strain since the beginning. It's a strain that came from Washington state. So we are kind of exploring if they might behave differently with Patel and their understanding of vaccine or variants to begin with. Variants among viruses is a very common issue. So it's certainly something they are familiar with. And we're just looking to see what we might be able to learn from past experiences with variants and how that might apply to COVID-19. All right. And then can virus on an infected material become airborne? That is a known unknown. We do not know if that is possible for virus that I mentioned that we wait an hour for it to dry. So we don't know if someone can brush the paper and then release it. Does it aerosolize? We just don't know. But it is certainly something that is of interest. We continue to look through the literature. It's part of an ongoing search of the literature to see if any new information on that is available. All right. I am going to hand it over to Bex Caswell Olson of NEDCC. And she is going to speak about caring for your resources. Thanks, Bex. Awesome. Thank you. So let's see. It seems like I am not able to control slides. All right. Let me... Oh, there you go. All right. Awesome. Thank you. So yes, I am Bex Caswell Olson and I am the director of book conservation at the Northeast Document Conservation Center or NEDCC located here in Andover, Massachusetts. And not moving. Okay. Just a little finicky. Sorry about that. So as you can imagine, disinfecting collections of materials is something that we have been getting asked about a lot here at NEDCC over the last course of the last year, really. And so in response to this, we decided to release a formal publication as part of our preservation leaflet series, which is a series of free leaflets that are available on our website. So if you head over to nedcc.org, this is what the landing page looks like. And I have a nice red arrow pointing to the fastest way to get to the preservation leaflets. Leaflet 3.5 is disinfecting books and other collections, and that's under the emergency management section of the preservation leaflets. There are a lot of other great leaflets that are listed on this webpage that I'm some of which I'll be referencing to today. And so if you're not familiar with these, I definitely encourage you to check them out. So as Kendra mentioned, there is still a lot that we don't know about COVID-19 and how it spreads. But I think something that we can all agree on is that surface transmission or transmission through fomites is possible because we know that the virus does live on various surfaces for varying amounts of time. And so the idea that we should keep disinfecting really high-touch surfaces like doorknobs, work tables, public computers, things like that, any sort of shared equipment or thing in your space, I think that's still really a great idea. So while I can't recommend one specific cleaner, what I do recommend is that you head over to EPA's list N, which is disinfectants for coronavirus. And they provide a list. It's over 900 products are on this list at this point in time. And these things are really rated or tested for use on hard non-porous surfaces. So again, things like tables and door handles. It can be really hard to find a bail availability of various cleaners right now. But if you do have the ability to be discerning in your choice, I suggest that you take a look at that far right hand column that I've circled in red there, which is contact time and contact time ranges from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. And I think for me, if I had the ability to choose, I would try to pick something that had a shorter contact time. If I could be even a little choosier than that, I would try to err towards things that did not have artificial fragrance or artificial dyes in them, just because that would be less likely to react with materials. So again, a lot of these products, they're going to contain pretty harsh chemicals, things like bleach, hydrogen peroxide, chlorine, ammonia or some derivative thereof. And so therefore I really don't recommend them for use on collections materials. But I think they're perfectly fine to use in spaces where collections materials are stored or being used. And just make sure that if you are using it on shared work tables or shelving or things like that, that the surface is completely dry before you set collections materials down. Since these products are liquids, they will cause moisture damage to materials and can also perhaps stain them, discolor them, cause paper to weaken, etc. So again, let's just stay away from using them directly on our collections materials. So a method that I'm getting asked about quite a lot, did I go, oh, I was skipping ahead, sorry. So just to kind of prove a point, I wanted to test out a couple of different things that I know people are are using in various settings, libraries and museums on some book cloth. And this book cloth is was something that we had here at the center, there are three different brands, all of which meet the standard for library binding, which means that it has to be both color fast and water resistant. And the first thing I did was just like scrub it actually quite aggressively with a wet paper towel and I use something like wet not damp. And I was not able to get off any color or have any other problems. Then I tried some bleach free disinfecting wipes. I'm going to not name a brand name, but this is a name that you would associate with bleach. And the active ingredient that is ammonium chloride and that definitely took some color up right away. It also left behind like a filmy foamy residue that I really did not care for. And then I used a 70% solution of alcohol and water, which is what we're using here at the center to clean shared equipment and tables. And that also took color off the cloth quite immediately. And what I think was really interesting to me is that the different cleaning products took up color differently on the different cloth. And basically what that tells me is that there's no one thing that I'm going to be able to find that's going to be safe and work on absolutely everything. And the amount of testing I would need to do just makes the idea of using these things even just like on book covers to be perhaps unrealistic. So another method that I know is being used rather widely and people are really interested in is fogging of disinfectant or the use of like drones or electrostatic sprayers. And I think that this is a really excellent method of dispersing disinfectant quickly and effectively over a large surface area. And I think that's great again for public spaces like lobbies, classrooms, laboratories, things like that. But I would not want to use it where collections materials are stored because they are the same liquid disinfectants that are on that list N, which are really designed generally to be used on hard surfaces, not porous materials like paper or books or even carpeting or upholstery. And the other thing that I think it's important to note is that fogging is only going to apply disinfectant to exposed surfaces. So if you have materials in a stack or even just like hard to reach areas aren't adequately going to be sanitized. And for those reasons right now, the EPA and the CDC are both still recommending just wipe and surfaces down the good old fashioned way over fogging. They're not prohibiting fogging of course, but until there's more research done that shows that this is really effective, it's not their preferred method. Again, I do think that this is really useful in like public spaces and classrooms. So something else that has been getting a lot of attention is the use of ultraviolet light or UV for disinfection. And first, I just want to talk a little bit about UV. So there are three different types of UV, UVA, UVB, and UVC. UVC is the most effective for disinfection, but direct exposure can burn your skin or your eyes. And UVC lamps can sometimes generate ozone and ozone is not just that for the environment and something that we consider a pollutant for collections materials, but it's something that we also know is damaging to the respiratory and cardiovascular and central nervous system. So not good. UVB. Dermatologists say that the B stands for burning. So this is the wavelength that really penetrates deep into your skin and your eyes. It really increases your risk of developing skin cancer and or cataracts. And then there's UVA and the A is for aging. So this is what gives you wrinkles if you spend too much time out in the sun. It is also according to the FDA, 1000 times less effective than UVC for disinfection. So all that to say not all UV lamps are created equal. You need to know what you're buying, what you're using, and that I think a lot of the lamps that are being sold for consumer use, like I see a lot of these gadgets to disinfect your phone or like UV lights you can have on your key chain. I think a lot of those are probably going to be not strong enough to work very well and or the potential for you to accidentally expose yourself or overexpose yourself to UV and harm, you know, which is harmful is high. So the FDA has a great website where they explain all of this, which I would encourage you to take a look at. And then we also know that UV is damaging to collections materials, which is a great example of what is happening in this photo that this is a book that had been opened to that top page on exhibit for a period of time. It was getting both artificial and natural light. And over time it really caused that page that was getting a lot of light exposure to discolor, to become yellow, and it actually feels quite dry and brittle compared to the rest of the volume. Just like with fogging, UV is not effective if things are stacked and it's not so again only exposed surfaces. The caveats I want to give to this, I know that a lot of libraries and museums are using UV disinfection vices for things like headsets or audio guides or even like tablets and laptops that you might be lending out. And I think for hygienic reasons, you should absolutely positively definitely still keep doing that. The other place we know that UV is very effective in terms of sanitation is if it's used within an HVAC system. And there is some great research out there and some information about that is included in the most recent realm literature review. So I would encourage you to check that out. But I also realize that making modifications on that scale to your HVAC system is out of reach for a great, great many people. So just a little bit more about UV and how it is definitely very damaging is that all light is damaging, but UV is the most damaging, and all light damage is both cumulative and irreversible. And it can cause again, like we just saw on the previous side, things to darken and discolor, but it can also cause things to fade, advanced aging, embrittlement, and that includes like for paper, for textiles, for plastics as well. So in this slide, you're seeing a picture of a book that's had the opposite problem where it's quite severely faded as the result of light damage. And then again, in collections care, best practices for collections care really talk about eliminating or minimizing as much UV light as possible when we have collections present, whether they're on exhibit or in storage. And I would encourage you to check out any DCC's leaflet on protection from light damage for more information there. So another disinfection method that's been getting a lot of hype lately is heat. And again, best practices for collections materials for long term preservation kind of really worn against extreme fluctuations in temperature and also humidity. And so raising the temperature of your collections materials, I think maybe is perhaps not a great idea. The literature out there shows that it does have to be a more significant increase in temperature. And the suggestion in one article I consulted was between like three and 20 minutes of exposure at 65 degrees Celsius, which is like 150 or so degrees Fahrenheit just for reference. So we do here at any DCC have a lab oven. And so I was able to try this out on a couple different things. So I use some some books, the kind of things that you're more likely to have in a circulating collection, for instance, a paperback and a hardcover. And I baked those at 65 degrees Celsius and then checked on them after three, five and 20 minutes. You can see after three minutes that both both of those volumes did start to warp and distort after five minutes, it's certainly more pronounced and definitely more so at 20. When they cooled down, they did definitely flatten back out by themselves pretty much. But I did notice for the paperback volume, it definitely was quite damaging to the adhesive and the adhesive really kind of gave way. So while I think heat can certainly be effective, again, maybe it is not appropriate for use with the majority of collections materials. So if those are all the things that I don't recommend, what do I recommend? So any DCC really recommends implementing hygiene and quarantine procedures over the disinfection of materials, I would say at a minimum, you should wear a mask and follow other CDC guidance to stop the spread of COVID-19. And the reason I say at a minimum is because your state or your institution may have stricter guidelines in place and you should absolutely positively follow those. And even if your state does not have things like a mass mandate in place, it's still definitely a good idea. Then the other thing to really think about is having really, really good hand hygiene. And I think it's always a good idea COVID or no COVID to wash your hands before handling collections materials. And then perhaps again afterwards as necessary, I really recommend using hand sanitizer only if soap and water are not available. And that's because hand sanitizer does a great job at sanitizing your hands, but it doesn't clean them. It does not remove dirt and oils. Whereas washing your hands with soap and water does both. And of course, when we're handling collections materials, we want our hands to be clean, not just germ free. So hand sanitizer is fine if you don't have access to soap and water, but otherwise I'm always an advocate for hand washing. And then like I mentioned earlier, we want to keep disinfecting shared tables, work stations, equipment, things like that after each use. If you have like soft book supports like cradles or foam that you're using as other supports and exhibit or something like that that you can't adequately disinfect, then I would recommend using a disposable barrier layer over those materials that can be discarded after each use. And that could even be something like butcher's paper or something like that. And then when you can't follow hygiene protocols, or if you suspect materials have been contaminated, I think quarantining is a very, very good idea. So, you know, I know that for in a research setting, so like in a special collections or in a museum or in an archive, materials are used in a really, really different way than they are in a circulating collection. Circulating collections people take home, they, you know, read and use while they're eating in the bathroom. And hopefully, you're not using collections materials that way in a research setting. And so I think some of the concerns that we have in the need to quarantine in a more controlled environment are a bit less. The length of time that you need to quarantine materials for is really going to depend on what the material is and what the circumstances, how you are, basically how you are quarantining in them if they're stacked or they're unstacked. So again, I think go check out the realm website and the research that they have done to help you make some of those decisions. The last thing I want to say about that is that I know that some people feel like quarantining materials, it's just not innovative enough that they're not doing anything and therefore they're doing nothing. On the other hand, there are people who feel like quarantining materials is just like a real nuisance and it's unnecessary and what it's such a burden. And I would just like to politely disagree with both of those statements and or sentiments and say that quarantining materials is something that we know is safe for both people and materials. We know that the virus will, you know, die on its own after a period of time. This is effective. And it's low cost. And it's also in my opinion, a pretty low effort way of mitigating risk for both of your staff, your patrons, your researchers, etc. And if my mouse would work, there we go. Thank you. Okay, so my last point is about extended closures. And so I know that a lot of people have been closed for a long period of time. You might still be closed or you may be working with reduced staff or reduced schedules. And, you know, at the outset of all of this last March, I'm going to say very few people had a disaster plan or a continuity of operations plan that really addressed how to, how, how things would work in an extended closure or maybe just an unexpected closure. And hopefully, as things are slowly, you know, reopening and getting back to normal. But I think it's a great idea to make sure that you have a plan for the future, whether or not you need to close again. Hopefully there is not another pandemic, but there are other reasons you may find yourself unexpectedly closed because of a natural disaster, because of renovations, etc. And I think it's a really good idea to have a plan that addresses, you know, who has access to your building when it is closed and whether or not that includes collections care staff. How are you going to monitor your collections during an extended closure and who's responsible for gathering that data? And again, are they one of the people that has access to the building? Also having a plan that addresses maintaining regular, regular building maintenance. So just because you're closed does not mean that you're building and the building your collections and the building housing your collections stop having ongoing needs. They do. And you want to make sure you're keeping up with your maintenance, cleaning drains, checking on your roof, etc., so that you don't come back from a closure to find a leak and or a mold problem. And then the last thing I want to recommend is having a schedule for regular visits to review collections and collection storage areas during the closure. I think that's always a really great idea. And even if you are able to do a lot of monitoring of your environment, etc., remotely, there are sometimes things that you're going to be able to see in person that your remote monitoring software will not tell you. Maybe it's a small leak. Maybe there's some evidence of pest damage. Maybe just like the HVAC is making a weird noise and you feel like maybe you need to get that checked out. So those are all just some considerations. And I think that is it for me. And so I am happy to open it up to questions not just for myself, but for all of the presenters today. Thanks so much, Bex. One question that came through that that you might have a little insight into is if residual hand sanitizer on hands can damage archival items. So should researchers wear gloves to touch items they normally wouldn't wear gloves for due to the impact of residual hand sanitizer. So there is definitely research that shows that hand sanitizer on your hands can leave a residue behind on materials and that's perhaps going to be visible. We know that with advanced aging we do see darkening of materials or discoloration of materials. So that's another reason I am not a huge fan of hand sanitizer. But I think that we live in extraordinary times and so things are a little different. I think if you would rather that people wear gloves instead or gloves in addition to sanitizing, I think that's absolutely fine. Just need to be mindful of the fact that sometimes it's really hard to to feel things when you're wearing gloves and you're more likely to accidentally cause damage. And I think that's especially true for like turning the pages of a book, especially if it's brittle paper, you're more likely to accidentally tear the page if you're wearing gloves. So there is a delicate balance there. And I think there's maybe not perfect solution that just you need to kind of consider all of those things. The glove thing is super interesting because like I know and I mentioned this on the previous webinars that when I was going to school in the mid-o's, it was gloves, gloves, gloves, gloves, right? Like that's all you were supposed to wear. And now how the practice now is what you guys exactly said. It's clean hands. Like that's the key thing is make sure your hands are clean. So I think that's interesting how that carries over into the stuff for COVID-19 protection. It's just wash your hands. It's like the main thing you got to do is just keep your hands clean for sure. So there's a question that talks about the following examples are pathways that could infect a person with a virus transferred to hand and contaminated finger to touches an eye, right? Where there's receptors get liquid, right? The contaminated finger enters a nose or mouth and virus is inhaled into lungs. And then I assume that if virus incorporated in saliva, it will not have an effect. So that's one that I don't think I know about in terms of virus in saliva. Like I don't know if you can get it from kissing. I assume you can because it's live virus. So but I cannot, I cannot specifically answer that. But the other methods so transferring hands to contaminate, you know, and then touching your face is definitely a concern. They don't have specific information about it. Like that's not, it's very difficult to test because you have to infect somebody, right? In order to do that. So it's a very challenging thing to test, but they are putting that out as a potential pathway for contamination. That's another reason why I think masks, masks are great because they prevent us from touching our face as well. So that's just another argument in favor of those. Someone was mentioning that no, you couldn't get it from kissing because it's a respiratory virus, but it's other breathing and activities that might be going on when, when you're that close to somebody. So not the definite kissing, but it's that proximity and sharing immediate space breathing right next to somebody. Then someone mentioned that their archives were open July through November and just reopened yesterday. In the first opening, they didn't put a disposable barrier on the cradles and I'm assuming those cradles are safe to use now, but they haven't been touched for months. So yep, they've, they've well exceeded any acknowledged quarantine time, but that they should have something covering them going forward. Part of that is dependent on how people are operating through your spaces. So are people wearing masks? Are there mask requirements throughout that then you wouldn't have to worry necessarily about disinfection. But that's, that's another aspect to factor into the decision making about whether or not to cover those items. The other thing I would say is to try and minimize how many people are touching your collections materials and your cradles, you know, in the past, maybe you had an entire class come in to do research and everyone is allowed to touch things. Maybe now you have them look only and have a staff person proctor and turn pages and handle materials on their behalf just to reduce the amount of people touching things is not a bad idea. Well, I encourage other people to go ahead and keep putting questions in for our panelists while we keep talking. I wanted to go back into how I really like how you guys were talking about the difference between public spaces and collection spaces, right? So there's a very big difference between how we prep public spaces as compared to collection spaces. And I don't know if you guys want to talk again or just remind everyone about the difference. And again, I know most of our audience is very understanding about what happens in the collection space. Sometimes it's good to go over it again. So when you have to educate others, to kind of explain the difference. So one of the biggest things that we've certainly heard about is limiting, as you mentioned, the number of people or that Bucks mentioned that are moving through your space, right? Anytime you can reduce that number, it can help with reducing risk because there are fewer people involved. So where I am in Seattle, we can't go into libraries right now, but we can do curbside pickup. So library staff are grabbing books off the shelf and I can pull up and I can get books from the library. But I'm not allowed to browse the collections because it's just too much, too much, too many variables introduced during a meeting in January at the American Library Association. I co-presented with a library director in California who said that they were now allowed to have up to 25% of their space, their capacity, but they still weren't seeing that number. They weren't hitting their maximum because people were being, I think, very cautious about gathering and being in public spaces. So sometimes people are just self-regulating in those cases in their public spaces and where they're choosing to be, even though they were not violating any local guidelines, they were following them strictly, everyone still had to wear a mask. Lots of people are still choosing to limit their exposure to public spaces. Bex or Anna, do you have anything to add to that? I think another topic that I can just kind of so that you know that it's on our radar. We did see some questions about variants. We're also, Anna and Catherine have produced a vaccine roundup that's on the website that's just pulling together some information about questions that are coming up around, can I require staff to be vaccinated? Can I require visitors to be vaccinated? They're things that people are exploring as we navigate these coming changes, right? What does it mean? How might it impact your operations is understanding, you know, at this point, there's optimism that everyone who would like to be and can be vaccinated by the end of May and how might that change? It's not too soon to start having those conversations in your facilities about understanding what might change for your organization when you line it up against local guidelines and expectations. So we do expect more to come out from realm around that topic. I'm getting some guidance from our colleagues at Battelle as well as the realm project steering committee working groups. So I see two questions going back to gloves, which is a favorite topic of all of ours. So one is gloves versus no gloves is interesting. How do you prevent oils and body chemistry from transferring materials? Having been an objects conservator now curator, I'm in the gloves can't do the issues I mentioned. I don't believe clean hands are enough. And then the other one is I'm an archives intern who wears gloves for photo work. Should I wear gloves for book work just because of COVID? So what are your guys thoughts on that? So both great questions. And I think whether or not you need to wear gloves really in general depends on the type of material that you are handling. And so for certain objects for photographic materials, film, most AV materials because they are film base, yes, you should definitely wear gloves. For bounds of materials for books and paper, we generally don't recommend wearing gloves because you are more likely to accidentally cause damage when wearing gloves than not. And so just having clean hands is the recommendation. And if during the course of the day you need to clean your hands multiple times, because sometimes old books can be really dirty, then you should definitely do that. And for photos always yes. But for books, I generally say no. One thing I feel like I should point out too is I used to work at a Native American museum. And when we would have elders come in, there was a resistance to wear gloves sometimes for various reasons. And usually we just had clean hand policy. You know what I mean? Just to be, I don't want to say culturally appropriate, but just be respectful, you know what I mean? So I think that's a question you have to ask yourself as well when you're dealing with that. There's another good question for Bex around a UV disinfector and do these machines actually work? And one of the things we've been talking about as these questions have come through to the realm project around UV machines is they might very well work to kill the virus, but you don't know where that light is hitting. Like if I have a 500 page book and we know that the virus can survive within the pages of the book for days, even when it's closed, you can't disinfect every page. So it works, but will it do what you intend it to? And what level of damage will it cause? Some of the surfaces might be more appropriate for that type of thing, but I think Bex's cautions about what that might potentially mean to the humans who are operating that. And we can't, I can't stress that enough. You know, we talk about this caring for your collections, caring for your resources. You are one of the most powerful resources that your institution has and your safety and your your well-being are also important. So please keep that in mind as you go through and make these decisions about the types of products and services that you want to introduce. In libraries, the recommendation to have different quarantine time. Is there a recommendation to have different quarantine times for different materials? Most things are stacked. What is the impact on quarantine times? That's a great question. We did a study in test four of realm actually went back and looked at the impact of stacking materials and it does impact the the longevity of the virus. It lasts longer. So when you have and stacking for this, it can be any two items touching, right? Vertically, horizontally in a book drop on your shelf, wherever it might be. If you put two items together, the virus is going to take longer to attenuate. So it will take longer to die off naturally. We've seen another question is that we've seen discussions on social media of libraries that are ending quarantine practices. Is there as any reason to think the current environment that quarantine period should change? I think this is one that is constantly evolving. The infection rate in your community should definitely factor into your quarantine periods. When you have a low infection rate in your community, the likelihood of a material coming back that's infected will lower, right? Like this is, we are testing materials that we know have COVID on it because we put it there. You could get 1000 books back and none of them may have COVID on them. Like that is that is just realistic, right? That that may absolutely happen. So as the infection rate changes in your community, that would be a good time to to look at if you want to reduce the quarantine times, if that makes sense. What would you advise about volunteers coming back into a library that is smaller than 1000 square feet where no social distance space is available? So I can't provide specific advice, but what I would say would be good to factor in is what's the maximum allowable number of persons in your building. We all have fire code regulations. So look at that. And then your, if your region has specified limits for capacity, apply that and then determine if you can follow those guidelines with volunteers. I mentioned that a library in California at 25% capacity, they still weren't hitting up against that limit. I think in all this time in the grocery store, I've had one day where I showed up and they were regulating the pacing into the building. So it's it's certainly happening. But if you can follow those guidelines that have been established, I think you're in good shape. Do you have thoughts about how public libraries should manage browsing? Brief contact by patrons with collections materials without a checkout. Again, going back to what's the local requirement, do they need to have masks on? What's your infection rate? You know, putting those factors into place and if it makes sense to allow that at this time, what difference is it going to make? Can you wait two weeks? Can you wait a month before you have to implement that? How much are things going to change in your community? I think as we see the impact of vaccinations, hopefully lowering the rate of infection, the hospitalizations and the spread, I think every two weeks is going to be a really significant milestone. N95 versus the cloth mask, does it matter? So N95 and this is, we've done a little bit of this in the literature reviews, are more effective and certainly essential in high probability areas, hospitals, healthcare, nursing homes, anywhere where you have an extremely vulnerable population, right? This is at the beginning. We talked a lot about preserving those materials for people who are on the front line of providing services. The cloth mask does protect and there has been quite a few studies now showing, you know, how does that, how does it help to help people feel more comfortable with using it and helping to reinforce that? So using some of that science and that is in several of the literature reviews. I still use cloth masks. So yes, it does matter but for most people, the cloth mask from what the literature is sufficient and we want to continue to save those N95 resources for frontline people as needed. So long as you wear your mask correctly? Yes. Yeah, that's the key. Well, and I'll add too, there's the KN95s too, which honestly, like, those are a little bit more popular in, this is a me, this is a total personal thing, it depends on what I'm doing, right? So I have a cloth mask in my car at all times, if I'm stopping and getting gas or doing anything like that, cloth mask goes in. If I'm going for like doctor's appointments or stuff where I'm interior, I tend to upgrade my mask style a little bit when I know I'm gonna be there. So that's, again, that's a personal choice that I've made but I think of it along that line when I do my mask choosing. Yep, I think that's good. If the collections are quarantined and a receptacle made of different material, should we be concerned about the virus lasting longer? So should we quarantine the books for about five instead of three days? So we did test a lot of plastics, maybe round six, round three, I can't remember. And it does survive differently. The nice thing about plastic is that is a non porous material that you can disinfect. So you can run a bleach wipe on that to help accelerate and kill the virus. I wouldn't say that it changes, it's the impact of stacking is more important than what it's, than the fact that it's in a plastic bin. But take advantage of the fact that you can disinfect that material as one approach to helping to manage your space. Does Realm have information to help with planning workspace density? If I'm working with collections, are there recommendations for how far away from the next person I should be? So we still are continuing to promote the CDC information about maintaining physical distancing of six feet. And that is held steady. You know, like I still kind of go far to the side when I'm in the grocery store, like I try to try to keep as much distance as possible whenever possible. And but we do not have specific information about workspace planning, but thinking about how can you work six feet apart from someone? A lot of states still have mask requirements if you are working in a space. So any restaurant that we go to in my city, everyone is wearing masks, aside from the time when they are eating. Same thing in physical buildings. If I were in my office, I would need to wear a mask. Because if there were other people there, if I was there by myself, it would be fine. So definitely look into that local, local requirements. All right. The next one, CDC says that COVID spreading via food packaging and people touching packages at a grocery store, why would library material be any different? And I think that was just missing one of the question or one bit of the statement, which was that food packaging and people touching packages is an unlikely form of spread, right? Which is it's still very true, right? That's CDC. And this is one of the things we expressed at the beginning of the presentation. The primary form of transmission is absolutely believed to be person to person, right? Being in a space with someone not having your mask on is the most likely form of spread. This is no different for library materials. What we can't tell you, so sometimes in the grocery store, those people are now all wearing masks when they're putting things away. We don't know what people are doing with materials when they're at home. Like I said, you could have a thousand books returned and not one of them is going to have any COVID on it. It's absolutely possible. That is a bit of risk assessment on the part of the institution that they need to take and determining what makes the most sense based on what's happening in your community. Library materials are no more likely than other things, but think about how they are used and the spaces in which they exist. Can I just add to that really quickly and say that some of that discussion about transferring through food packaging is specifically around frozen food. And hopefully we are not freezing our books on a regular basis and using them frozen. Or microwaving them. We have heard you do not microwave your materials. Can we address the resiliency of protective enclosures? Is it best to advise staff to handle boxes, folders, and not let the patron user do so? What is the best pathway? I think if you were in a collection where you have that opportunity to bring things to people, the less they are in staff spaces, the more control you have. You can say that you have talked to your staff. Everyone there has agreed. We have a common language about how we are operating in this space. And it is a bit easier, quite frankly, to enforce those rules among your staff than it can be with public. We have certainly heard challenges of people in all walks of life working with the public right now. People who want to resist any rules that are being imposed. So limiting the mix can be one way to mitigate some of those concerns. And it is a matter of whether or not you have the staff and capacity to do that. We realize that that is also a real challenge. You just may not have it in order to do that. So considering if it is something that you can work with. All right. Here we go. As a museum registrar, I handle objects being shipped out for exhibitions to mitigate virus contamination, yes to gloves and work by myself rather than with the usual team. What I do is schedule shippers to pick up on site and pack and freight off site. The issue might be the return of the objects and possibly leave the objects not handled for a period of time before unpacking. I do hope this is a good path to follow. That sounds good. I'm going to put it aside. At the very beginning, every package that arrived, I put it in the basement and just left it there for three days. And then I opened it. I'm probably not following that quite as well as I did at the beginning. But that's certainly one way because you don't know what would happen if it is enclosed. We know it can last for several days. No guarantee. Again, there is no reason to believe it is infected but no reason to not act prudently and quarantine if you have that option. This is one I can honestly say I've never had this question. Can mold and COVID coexist? I don't know. I would assume so. I live in Florida, so everything's mold. Quite literally. I wouldn't be surprised if it couldn't coexist. I think, certainly, potentially, absolutely. But mold really likes warmer temperatures and likes humid environment. It does not dry. Whereas we know that COVID really likes, has a much better time surviving if it's cold and dry. So they have opposites for which they can thrive. But certainly, there is a middle ground where they can overlap. Absolutely. Well, it looks like we did all the questions. So thank you guys for doing all those. I'll point out that in the chat box, you guys will see links to the surveys that we always do with C2C care. Also a link to the main landing page of this website. There's already a handout sitting there that the fabulous folks at realm put together for you all. So I would urge you to go grab that. It's also going to be the website that we're going to put the recording on eventually. So just keep that link if you'd like to. Also send a message out via all the social platforms and all that kind of fun stuff. Do you guys have any final words for our audience today or any other final thoughts? I do quickly just because I saw a question in the chat about using ozone disinfection boxes that I wanted to address. So ozone is an airborne pollutant that we do really want to keep away from collections materials. We know it does cause advanced aging and discoloration and it's just not good for them. And so it's something that we take pains to filter out in our HVAC system or by making sure we don't put copiers right next to where collections are stored. So I would not recommend that. It's also something that is not being recommended. It is not approved for use to kill COVID-19. And so I would say for that reason it's not effective. It's bad for the environment. And again, it's bad for people. So for all of those reasons, I would say no to ozone disinfection methods for killing COVID. And I will just end with sincere thanks. Like the fact that you are a year into this, you guys are still showing up with questions, trying to find out how to do the next right thing. This is a unprecedented, like that is, that was my word of 2020 and I'm keeping it strong in 2021. Level of challenge that our institutions are seeing. And you are a core to the success of these organizations. And we appreciate the time and effort that you put into continuing to support your communities and support your staff, support your colleagues. So thank you. And I'll just add too that like, I think all the things that you guys really highlighted are all things that we already, I don't want to say we already did beforehand, but it's like clean hands, right? When you're dealing with objects, isolation is not a new concept in the collections field. I mean, I know that when we brought stuff in, it was always isolated for a couple of days to make sure there's no pest infestations or anything like that. So again, like these concepts are, some of them are not new. And I think we're already, it'd be good to have them in your institution or look at them anyway. So the fact that you guys gave really pragmatic, realistic things to kind of do within our institutions is incredibly important for all of us right now. So thank you guys again. A huge thank you to you all. A thank you to IMLS, as we are an IMLS supported program. Also to FAIC and to Learning Times for acting for our technical production today. Again, fill out the survey, grab the handout. And if nothing else, we will see you all in April for our next webinar. So thanks again, everyone. Please stay safe. We'll see you soon.