Everyone knows about the H1N1 (formerly "Swine") influenza virus scare circling the globe. Today, as I was driving to the public library to pay my bi-weekly share to the library general fund (aka, overdues fines), I mused a bit on the responsibility of archivists in regard to vaccinations of all types.
In my first archives job, as a lowly student work study, we had to all make sure our tetanus shots were updated. We handled a lot of metal, for some reason, usually in the form of old, rusty file cabinets with sharp edges that could slice your finger open like the belly of a gutted fish. So we all made sure we were updated. The rules of that archives called for a 5-year update (allowed by medical standards of practice) rather than the customary 10-year update. When I began my first job as a professional archivist six and a half-years ago, I required the same for all my staff, graduate assistants, interns, and volunteers. But today I asked myself: is there anything else that should be done?
I grew up in the American Southwest. Weather conditions there are so dry that one could echo M*A*S*H's Hawkeye in saying it is "so dry it is un-wet." As I was entering the archives field, a big fear in this region of the world was the hantavirus, a family of viruses transmitted through rodent droppings. A Google search turned up a few good hits about a vaccine for this family of viruses, including the U.S. patent number, but it was unclear in reading through a dozen or so of the links as to whether the vaccine is actually available in the United States. If it is, and knowing that in the Southwest the hantavirus is present in rat droppings, and knowing that rat droppings are found in boxes of old papers from our donor's attics, should archivists in the Southwest get the hantavirus vaccine administered to them?
I was once on a plane sitting next to an epidemiologist and she told me that the number of virus types in the world is astronomical in number and we know so little about how each affects humans. This was scary. She said the best places for viruses to live are in porous surfaces such as textiles and unfinished, untreated wood. I asked her, "and paper, too"? and she replied, "yes, especially paper." The good doctor went on to tell me that viruses can live in a dormant state for centuries, perhaps longer, and that paper kept in hot, dry places (or, she said, in relation to some viruses, cool, wet places) is a perfect place for viruses to hide. She did not give me examples of particular viruses that hide in paper, but isn't this a scary thought - that we archivists risk getting a virus each time we open a box of old papers? Now, to be fair, this doctor also told me that most viruses we come into contact with are harmless to humans and our bodies develop immunities to some of them that can help us down the road. But, really, should we be vaccinated against as many viruses as we can?
As I was driving home from the library (they having gladly taken my money), I asked myself about natural disasters and records recovery. What risks did my friends Lee Leumas, Anne Bolton, and Lisa Lewis, as well as some of my library school classmates, take when they worked on recovering the records from Hurricane Katrina? What are Anne and Lisa risking now that they are working on recovering records damaged in Hurricane Gustav? What viruses were the Cologne Archives recovery workers exposed to? Are any of these harmful? Were any of these people required to stand in line and get vaccinated for all possible viruses they may come into contact with? Has any archivist ever done this?
I have PDF copies of all the articles in the ten English-language archives journals and a detailed look at them revealed zero articles in regard to protecting ourselves from diseases. I'd like to find some, or find someone who had knowledge of viruses (much more than my layman's knowledge, that is) who might want to write an article about this for archivists, in order to educate us on the dangers, if any, of working with papers that might have little viruses living in the pores of the paper.
The H1N1 virus is a public health issue for the world, but is there also a public health issue for archivists from other viruses?
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1 comments:
This is probably already been addressed in the history of the profession. What did libraries do during the pandemic of 1914? If you search old issues of Library Journal/ALA you can read how American libraries dealt with the issues then, spraying books etc
Conservation literature should be full of this information already from libraries.
In addition the Hurricane question, what did all the libraries in NYC do post September 11 th ? THose of us present during that week remember and lived it also. New procedures, new policies, museums checking bags with flashlights became very day to day routine.
Workers who deal with the public every day in reference libraries would have similar answers too from over a whole history of libraries, which include archives too...children's librarians especially from the turn of the century would have information on handwashing, and the inclusion of wash basins in the library more and more... No need to panic !!! just learn from the past as they say or one will relive it.
Libraries these days also have defribillators in public areas for similar reasons.
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