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I can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. I suspect you’ll
especially enjoy the last paragraph. Lisa L. Fox, From: http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2192942.0.experts_seek_cure_for_books.php
Experts seek cure for
books
Despite
fears the internet could kill off the printed word, death by natural causes may
be a greater threat to our literary heritage and Scottish scientists are
searching for the cure. A
researcher from Helped
along by a team of scientists who are bottling the atmosphere of the British
Library in small test tubes, Jim Levicki, a postdoctorate researcher at the
university's department of pure and applied chemistry, is working to isolate
these chemical markers of degradation - the smell of which will be familiar to
anyone who has inhaled the musty air of old bookshops. He said:
"The problem is that libraries have massive collections of old books,
historical documents or newspapers, and very little is known about how they
break down over time. People want to preserve them but there is very little
known about the science of how they decay. "We're
starting from the bottom up to find out exactly what happens to books when they
age. We lose part of our history and cultural heritage through the decay of
these things. Look at what happened when the library of Levicki
has designed a unique machine - bearing a gold panel dedicating it to his
engineer grandfather, James Stuart - in which a book is left for 48 hours, to
give off its odours. The chemicals that make up the smells are then distilled,
isolated and examined using a mass spectrometer. When the
results are finalised, it is hoped a portable chemical "nose" will be
designed that could, for example, sit on the end of the robot arms that fetch
books from the British Library's archive or be placed along the shelves to warn
of the signs of degradation. Some
previous methods of maintaining books have been almost comical in their
ineptitude. Librarians last century tried to dip books in baths of chemicals or
even laminate them, failing to realise the plastic only lasts around 20 years
before it starts to resemble yellowed sticky tape. Compounding
the problem is that many of the industrial processes devised to satisfy the
enormous demand for books from the 19th to 20th century were flawed. Many
modern tomes are printed on acidic paper, hastening their own demise. Magazines
and newspapers are even more fallible, with some newspaper archives in such
disrepair that their odour of acetic acid - used as vinegar - is as
"overpowering as a chip shop". As a written record, these can be as
important as books. Lisa L. Fox, |