Kudzu-Ops Mailing List: Safe Handling of ILL materials

[John Burger (jburger]

ASERL-ILL and Kudzu-Ops Friends:

 

I have received several questions about safe handling of ILL materials during the COVID outbreak – i.e., should libraries be concerned that COVID could be transmitted through contact with books that were used by a person with the virus.  CDC states the risk from physical surfaces is low, and not suspected to be a primary means of transmission. 

 

I also spotted this:  “We found that viable virus could be detected in aerosols up to 3 hours post aerosolization, up to 4 hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to 2-3 days on plastic and stainless steel. HCoV-19 and SARS-CoV-1 exhibited similar half-lives in aerosols, with median estimates around 2.7 hours.”

 

See cite:  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217v1

 

 

So – In an abundance (perhaps over-abundance) of caution, should our libraries modify their ILL processes to let items sit untouched for 12-24 hours after contact ‘with the outside world’ (e.g., returned by patrons, received from a shipper, etc.)? 

 

As y’all know, I am not a practitioner, just spit-balling this.  I welcome your constructive criticism.

 

 

 

--jeb

 

John Burger, Executive Director

Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL)

c/o Robert W. Woodruff Library

540 Asbury Circle, Suite 316

Atlanta, GA  30322

 

404-727-0137