Plywood walls and a temporary corridor. It might not be elegant, but it works.

After more than a month out of action, Tauranga City Library's learning centre resumed business today in the wake of a toxic black mould outbreak at Tauranga City Council's Willow Street premises.

Tauranga City Library information team leader Leslie Goodliffe and manager Jill Best at the reopened learning centre. Photo: Bruce Barnard.

Since December, council has been undertaking a full-scale survey of the building to establish the full extent of the mould, or Stachybotrys, following complaints of sickness by staff. More than 500 staff have now been relocated from the building as a result.

But with the learning centre given the green light after no mould was detected despite being affected by the first-floor closure, one team member with a smile on her face is Tauranga City Library manager Jill Best.

'We are delighted to have it back,” says Jill, 'and the librarians have their information desk back now, so they don't have to sit on the steps like they have for the last month.

'The other thing that room does is provide computers for people to hire and print. We have had no option to do that either, so we have been sending people to one or two other places round town.”

On Christmas Eve library staff were given three hours' notice of closure before the whole library wing was shut, with no formal classes held since.

With the new décor of plywood and a temporary corridor to reach the learning centre in place, classes resume on February 13 including the most popular of basic computing and MS Office, particularly for people wanting to return to the workforce or upskill.

Jill says to cope with the demand of having the centre operational again, staff are doubling the length of each class to two hours to allow more time for practice and extra skills. There will also be more classes offering more options on days and times.

New classes will be offered on Twitter, Facebook and blogging.

The rest of the room remains, including the library's non-fiction collection, which is off limits for an unknown length of time while further investigation is done to find the source of the mould and fix it.

'We don't know whether it will be two weeks or six months depending on the result of that assessment,” adds Jill.

Operation Clean project manager Terry Wynyard says to date there has been more than 500 staff movements since the black mould was first discovered along with other contaminants deemed not as harmful.

'At the current time we are working toward 220 staff in the Westpac Building [Devonport Road] and I think we are up to 68 staff in the Star building [Durham Street],” says Terry.

All staff except the communications, legal and democracy and strategic and corporate planning teams have been relocated, but they would have indirectly been affected by having to accommodate other staff.”

Surveyors are part way through surveying the building to identify where the water was leaking in, and will be finished the process sometime in March

'At the end of March we will have all the reports back from the weather tightness point of view,” says Terry. 'That will tell us the full extent of that work that needs to be done.”