Detecting mold

In the summer of 1995 we had an outbreak of mold which infected a
rather large part of our book collections. We have been fighting it
since. We were able to stop the outbreak through various strategies.

Our situation now could be described as a sort of truce, the mold is
still there but we don't see any growth. In this situation every
change is tricky. At this moment one of the infected areas is
scheduled for restructuring. In the next couple of years we will
probably see a lot more of this activity, since we plan to move the
entire collection to a new facility. So we need to monitor the
collection on a regular basis. Therefore I am looking for a very
simple way of detecting mold-infection.

I have read about a bio-counter, which regretfully does not register
mold because of the lack of ATP in mold. Does anyone of you know
about a device that does the job cost-effectively on the spot? I
have to add we do not have facilities for breeding samples, and it
takes time and money to keep sending samples to the institute that
does.

Geert  Maas
Co-ordinator Conservering
+31 30 253 6584
Fax: +31 30 253 9292

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 10:83
                  Distributed: Tuesday, March 25, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-10-83-010
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