MU Libraries received a $400,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help cover the cost of remediation and replacement of books damaged by an [off-site mold outbreak discovered in February](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/2/12/mold-destroys-600000-library-books/).

The outbreak damaged approximately 600,000 books, about 20 percent of MU’s entire collection.

Director of Libraries James Cogswell said MU had decided to take a different approach to address the outbreak.

The university intends to engage in a partnership with the Washington University in St. Louis and Missouri State University, which will give MU access to replacement copies of federal government documents and inter-library loan access to state documents, according to an MU Libraries [news release](http://library.missouri.edu/announcements/2014/07/09/the-mu-libraries-receive-funding-from-andrew-w-mellon-foundation-for-recovery-of-materials-damaged-by-mold/).

“Subcontracts with these universities through this project will support the cataloguing, retrieving and preparing of relevant materials to share with MU Libraries on an as-needed basis,” according to the release. “The funding also will help MU review the availability of online or print-ready copies of needed replacements through cooperation with membership organizations.”

Donald Waters, senior program officer at the Mellon Foundation, said the foundation made its contribution to support MU’s alternative approach of collaborating with institutions.

“The Foundation made this grant to encourage the imaginative, collaborative approach that the University of Missouri took to create partnerships with other institutions; not just to ensure physical access to lost materials for MU faculty and students, but also to use the opportunity to improve the cataloging of those materials,” Waters said in an email.

Cogswell said in addition to the grant, MU will use $600,000 from a self-insurance fund to cover the rest of the costs.

“We built the self-insurance fund to deal with situations like these,” he said. “I hope we don’t have to deal with this again, but you never know.”

While it is unclear why the outbreak occurred, Cogswell said he believes temperature and humidity spikes in July and August 2013 may have contributed to the damage.

“The only way to ensure we won’t have mold again is to make sure we thoroughly treat it, salvage what we can and toss the rest,” Cogswell said. “I don’t know how this happened … nobody does. Mold will bloom anywhere if it’s under the right atmospheric conditions.”

MU categorized the texts based on what can be saved, replaced, traded for a digital copy, or should be destroyed, and estimated about 500,000 of the damaged books can be saved.

Cogswell said the other 100,000 books, which will be placed in a landfill, are mostly duplicates or copies of documents the university will receive from the partnership.

“Nobody will lack access to any of these books because of the mold,” he said.

A previous estimate, which Cogswell presented to the Faculty Council in February, [projected that only 120,000 books would be salvageable](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/2/27/mu-libraries-gives-update-moldy-books-faculty-coun/).

Cogswell said MU also plans to build an addition to a currently existing storage facility, where the recovered books will be stored. The plan is currently pending the approval of the UM System Board of Curators.

The recovery process is projected to last until late 2015.