Anders Thulin wrote:
Francis A. Miniter wrote:

The mould is the first order of priority. I have on occasion set a book
on a table near a south or west facing window (both is best) upright
with the pages fanned out and let the sun work on it for a number of
weeks, changing the exposed pages every couple of days. This will both
dry out any remaining dampness and also will kill some, if not all, of
the mould. It also gets rid of the smell. How long should this go on?
I have given books this treatment for two months at times.

But as the object of the exercise presumably is to kill *all* the mold,
not just that part that is visible, how do you verify that you have indeed
succeeded? If you don't, you're just adding a probably mold-carrier to
your other books.

The traditional treatment is with Thymol and a heat lamp in an air-tight box,
but otherwise much the same: fan out leaves, let the Thymol gas work on the book.
But even then, some kind of verification seems to be required before the book
is allowed to be returned to the shelves.



Interesting. I was not aware of Thymol. As a result of
your post, I did a little research which led me to this
article in the Abbey Newsletter, a Stanford University
publication devoted to preservation of various media:

http://cool-palimpsest.stanford.edu/.../an21-308.html

The researchers note that the use of Thymol does result in
the degradation of the paper support, though they do not
know the particular process. They recommend against its
use. As an alternative, they recommend exposure to
sunlight, as I had noted.

--
Francis A. Miniter

Oscuramente
libros, laminas, llaves
siguen mi suerte.

Jorge Luis Borges, La Cifra Haiku, 6