Mold on books

Alice Smith Duncan <alsmith [at] telenet__net> writes

>My collections manager, who is very part time but has a self-taught
>interest in books, disagrees that we should remove these book from
>their shelves in the house to a dryer external location. Her
>argument is that moving them will be more injurious than leaving
>them there; the house is unheated in the winter and will freeze
>solid for at least a month, thus killing the mold. My argument is
>that if the books are themselves damp through, as evidenced by the
>ink corrosion, and the mold is there, and we have a serious case of
>unmitigated humidity in the rooms, freezing and thawing and
>refreezing and thawing will only exacerbate the damage already
>sustained.

You cannot even begin to think you will freeze mold spores this next
winter. Moving the books to drier locations at this juncture is your
only recourse, since the moisture problems have not yet been solved.
I have just returned from a large mold remediation job and have
taught this subject to many interested in conservation of library
materials.  It sounds as if your situation is dire, but not
impossible to correct.

Thomas A. Parker, PhD
610-444-2277


                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 19:11
                  Distributed: Friday, August 26, 2005
                       Message Id: cdl-19-11-007
                                  ***