Notes from conference on pest management

I have transcribed my notes from the Technology & Preservation
conference on managing pests and mold in cultural collections that took
place here in Boston on October 22 and 23.  The conference was well
organized and managed, and provided a wide-ranging look at management
strategies for biological hazards to collections (bugs, mold, and
beasties).  There was an important emphasis on prevention and
non-chemical warfare (e.g. *housekeeping*, building maintenance,
temperature, moisture, trapping, natural antagonists, and anoxic
environments), with some excellent presentations on structuring programs
and providing sound environmental control.  Several new chemical
approaches, lures and biocides, were covered.

For anybody who's been fortunate enough to keep up with IPM developments
most of the conference will serve as a review, but there were helpful
hints scattered throughout.  My favorite is the tip for bat control:
identify the communal exit hole for a bat colony (by watching at dusk
when the colony goes out to feed); cover it with plastic screen, but
don't fasten the screening at the bottom; over a couple of nights,
virtually all the colony will be able to exit, crawling down under the
loose net, but bats won't be able to get back in through their normal
route--bingo, bat control. Presumably you'd close up all other obvious
re-entry routes before barring the habitual gateway.  This was one
example of a point several speakers reiterated--the more you know about
the natural habits and life cycle of the pest, the more effectively you
can combat it.

At any rate, the notes are on CoOL.

    **** Moderator's comments: The document is available in Conservation
    OnLine. Use a WWW client to connect to
    http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/ where you will find a link to it on
    the welcome page, or Gopher to palimpsest.stanford.edu and select
    Browse by subject/Pest control Many thanks to Karen for providing
    this wonderfully useful material.

Karen Motylewski
Northeast Document Conservation Center
100 Brickstone Square
Andover, MA 01810
508-470-1010
Fax: 508-475-6021
Use KM in subject field

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 8:36
                Distributed: Thursday, November 10, 1994
                        Message Id: cdl-8-36-002
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