Category: Deep Explanations

Getting Rid of Mold in Your Library

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mold in library

Our blog is a library of thoughts, but we also have book libraries and have worked in public libraries around Canada. Especially with book collections that are old and moldering, it’s important to deal with a mold problem right away. The last thing you want is mold behind the walls to reach your shelves and ruin your books. So, with experience in our belts, the writers at c-umc.info would like to share their tips on what to do if you find mold growing in your library, with a focus on preventing damage to your books. This works for public libraries as well as private collections. So let’s get started.

It’s both true and unfortunate that most libraries are collected in older buildings, and older buildings are more prone to mold due to poorer insulation. Sometimes, the only thing separating your books from the cold and damp is a brick wall. If not for your heaters in the winter, that brick wall would not be enough to keep your books from moldering in the damp cold of winter.

Therefore, we think its prudent to perform a mold inspection in your library every year. Not just for the sake of your books, but for the health of your librarians and readers, or indeed if it’s a private collection for the sake of the owners and dwellers in the home. This is because indoor mold is very bad for your health. Your books will hate exposure to mold, caused by dampness and age, but your lungs will dislike it even more, given prolonged exposure to spores in the air.

Once I’ve seen someone add a moldy book to their vintage collection without getting it properly restored and defoxed by a book binder. It was very sad to see, over the course of just a few months, the mold in the book spreading to other books beside it on the shelf. Think of mold as an ant colony, spreading its colony abroad with tentacles. Because mold never sits still for long.

So now we got the basics explained, you might ask “What should you do when you find mold in your library?”

If the mold is only growing on your books due to lack of care, put them in plastic bags and take them to a professional book binder who knows how to restore them. But, alas, if you find mold growing behind the walls, in the attic or subfloor crawl spaces, and you want to prevent it from spreading to your precious books, all you need to do is simply what any homeowner would do if they found mold in their home–call a professional mold removal company to come in and remediate it.

One such event happened to a private book collector in Victoria BC, a close friend of mine who specializes in medieval manuscripts. He was so upset to find black mold growing behind his book shelves, and gravely feared that it would spread to his collection. He asked me what he should do, and I told him to take his books to a warm and dry place immediately and inspect them for mold. Then, I instructed him to get quotes from mold removal Victoria BC companies. He did just that, and it saved him. After taking all his books to a safe place, and finding that they were fine, the mold remediators came in and got rid of his black mold problem on the walls. They also told him it might be smart to waterproof his walls, for the building was old and air cracks in the walls were allowing moisture to come inside, which was the cause of his mold issue. He listened carefully and followed all given instructions. Now, his library is back to normal, with waterproofed walls and cranked heaters in the winter. His fear of the mold returning is nil, because he got the professional help he needed. Unless you have experience removing mold yourself, I’d suggest you do the same thing and hire professionals, lest you make a mistake and find the mold has spread to your books.

So there we have it. You now know what to do if you find mold growing in your library or book collection, or indeed in other parts of your home. It’s a serious matter to deal with right away, but thank goodness there are professionals out there who can help you.

For the Good of Others

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You might have experienced this already. If not, let me describe it for you. Have you ever tried so hard to make a project successful but no matter what you did it just failed miserably? You might have not figured this out for yourself yet but I know exactly why your project failed and why so many of my own did. It’s because they weren’t designed to be of good to others. Believe it or not, but companies like McDonalds are successful because they have teams of people trying to figure out how they can be of more service to their customers.

One of my latest personal projects wasn’t successful at all and I had to re-educate myself to realize why I wasn’t getting the success I thought I deserved. Well, I didn’t deserve success at all because my project had been, arguably not solely intentionally but so nonetheless, to use others to serve myself instead of using myself to serve others.

This has been my biggest thought for August of 2021, so far, that many failures in life can be directly attributed to our own personal failure to be a source of good for others. So I just want to remind you that if your project isn’t going as planned, to ask yourself if you have the right intentions. Why are you doing what you’re doing? Is it to help others or to help yourself? The answer to that question will have a humungous impact on the results of your project.

3 Simple Ways to Help Your Local Community

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help your local community

Here are 3 ways to help your local community. By doing these 3 things, which aren’t too difficult, you’ll be improving the lives of those around you, and your own life as well.

Way #1 – Host a Block Part, Frequently

Host a block BBQ party every two months, so that all your neighbors have a chance to meet each other. You’d be surprised how long people can live next door to each other without ever chatting. When neighbors know each other, it makes watering the lawn all that much more enjoyable as you get to wave hello and put smiles on people’s faces. The best way to get your neighbors in contact is to print off an invitation letter and slip them in the mail box of everyone on your block. Hopefully, more than a few of them will show up to your BBQ and then you can let the connections flow.

Way #2 – Clean the Exterior of Your House

Keep the exterior of your house in clean condition, as this creates a ripple effect across your community as other homeowners nearby compare their mildew-covered paneling to your freshly pressure-washed façade. This is called the broken window effect. If one window is broken on your street, just wait and eventually another one will pop up. Scientists studied this phenomenon with graffiti in the New York subway. They found that after vigorously combating graffiti for long enough, it eventually stopped showing up altogether. You may or may not have moss on your roof or salt on your windows depending on where you live, but by calling exterior home cleaning companies like this one https://www.google.com/maps?cid=13805652943928513512 (click link to see) to pressure wash your driveway and siding, you’ll notice the houses around yours gradually becoming cleaner as well. It’s science!

Way #3 – Neuter Your Pets and Take Them to Designated Parks

However convenient it is to walk your dog around the block and let him or her pee on things as they pass, let alone not pick up their poop, it creates much unmentioned strife in your community. Most neighbors won’t come out and say it if they’re polite, but of course they don’t want your dog pissing in their bushes every morning at 7:30 AM. Dog pee is very bad for lawns, and once one dog starts being on a spot suddenly all the dogs that are walked down that street will pee there and the grass will begin to die. Also, not neutering your cats and letting them roam astray is what causes those vile-sounding cat fights in the middle of the night. I get so mad at neighbors who have more than one un-neutered cat because the sound of them fighting at night keeps me awake. Help your community by taking your dog to the park – it should only take an extra fraction of an hour to do this – so that they aren’t peeing all over your neighborhood.

Thank you.

Why Small Businesses Grow Faster Than Others

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small businesses

This weekend wasn’t very eventful, if you consider thinking uneventful. But after watching several documentaries on success stories of small businesses I had to wonder for hours on my porch why some small businesses grow faster than others. We’re not talking about large companies or major corporations here, just small businesses like coffee shops with five employees or mobile mechanics with twelve employees. Why do some of these small businesses grow so fast compared to others? Well today I’ll be attempting to explain the conclusion I came to when I was thinking for hours on the porch this weekend.

To make it easier for me to wrap together concisely for others to understand, I developed three reasons why some small businesses seem to have better luck than others, though we’ll soon learn luck or chance has nothing to do with it. But first, a small disclaimer: I’ve never owned a small business before. So keep that in mind. It’s always best to remember that this isn’t a peer-reviewed article either. Thank you.

My 5 Reasons

  1. They hire the right people. But what does “the right people mean?” For an analogy, I’ll use an appliance repair company. Imagine that you have a new business and are finally ready to hire your first few employees. Would the right person be someone you can train to fix a fridge? Maybe the answer is “yes” if they’re dedicated and loyal. But for faster growth it would be best to hire a highly experienced appliance technician. At a company called The Appliance Repair Pro which does appliance repair Victoria, BC, services, they’ve done just this. They’re one of the fastest growing small businesses on Vancouver Island because they took the short cut of paying a little more initially to hire experts from the outset rather then save money by hiring unexperienced workers to train. Of course, if you can find a worker to train who will in the long run become a loyal employee for many years, this could help growth in the future, but not right away. It’s also a risk of investment to train unexperienced workers because people you train could end up working for your competition.
  2. Good marketing. For an analogy of what good marketing would look like, it’s easier to explain if we look at local food products. In every city there are mothers making jams to sell at fairs and farmers selling their beefs and cheeses at the markets. But which ones sell more are often a result of word of mouth and returning customers, but a good marketing campaign combined with novelty can create a momentum that never stops and this is why small local brands end up becoming national brands sold in grocery stores mere years later. A good marketing campaign could use humor that only locals would understand, or using local wildlife in their branding. But either way, it might be safe to say that any marketing campaign is better than none at all. I’ve heard of a grandmother who had been selling her homemade bread at the market for over 30 years who was suddenly put out of business because a young lady started selling her bread at the same market. The one difference was the grandmother relied on a few loyal customers while the young lady took out a loan for a major local ad campaign in her town.
  3. Quality. Last but perhaps most important, quality is what ensures your customers come back a second time and tell their friends about your product or service. If you’re a small business who doesn’t put any effort into being competitive when it comes to quality, then it may be very difficult for you to compete with those who make quality their number one priority. Imagine being a customer of the abovementioned appliance repair company and you’re very pleased with the services you received. Then, when you’re neighbor needs an oven repair and asks you for a recommendation, what are you going to say? Are you going to recommend the company that just gave you quality service or another one you’ve never used before? When you provide quality it stays in the memory of those you serve and this results in faster growth as word of mouth speeds the process of becoming a reputable business in your area. Perhaps this is most important for restaurants, as people will give bad reviews and never return to restaurants who make mistakes with their food preparation.

Like I said above in my disclaimer, I’ve never owned a small businesses, but I’m fairly sure every small business owner who received great success in their local area will agree these three factors above are a major reason why they surpassed their competition. Thanks for reading. If you have anything to add to this please get in contact with us and we’ll be happy to update our post.

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