Hungary's oldest library is fighting to save books from a beetle infestation | Hacker News Reader

Hungary's oldest library is fighting to save books from a beetle infestation

npr.org

195 pointssmollett30 comments

Controlling humidity could be the simplest option. RH <50% makes it really hard for anything living to propagate in an otherwise "dry" space.

That works great for your basement but what's the impact of low humidity on ancient books?

You definitely wouldn't want to go all the way to zero. 30-50% RH is generally the sweet spot for archival purposes.

The library also talks about having a huge mold problem, so it would likely be positive.

When opening this I didn’t expect such an advanced level of insect infestation described in the library, so the entire collection is classified as infected and must be treated all at the same time. They have to remove about 100,000 handbound books and i guess bc of the age of some of these books the best treatment is oxygen deprivation but “the abbey hopes all the beetles will be destroyed” after 6 weeks is not a promising statement

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44552362

I wish there was a tracker showing all the unscanned and untranslated books in the world. I was astonished to discover that less than 10% of Neo-Latin books have been translated (ie, most of everything published, from the renaissance to modern period)

Although preserving the original copy is important too, I believe many of the risks could be mitigated if those books were scanned (or are they?).

Reminds me of this: https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/366053/at-his-peak-pablo...

I'm surprised that they use such a tame method for eradication. I expected the use of huge loads of insecticides.

You could spray insecticides and kill some percentage while damaging the books further.

Or you put them in a sealed environment with no oxygen, killing every single one of these beetles.

I'm not sure that the more lethal option is "tame".

How about stuffing the books in a freezer? Apparently this can kill both bugs and their eggs, although I'm not sure it works on the particular kind of bugs in these books:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItBullshit/comments/orpifq/isitbu...

Also there exist "ultra low" freezers which can bring temperature waay lower than the regular -20 Celsius. Like -80 or something. I doubt any bug or egg can survive such environment, although the books should suffer no harm.

I do not doubt that freezing them would kill the bugs. I would be worried that unless it is very carefully managed it might damage the books though. In particular i would worry that moisture from the air would freeze on the books and as they are thawed they would get water damaged. Or that moisture trapped inside the bindings would form ice crystals and physically damage the books as they form.

None of these are concern with the hypoxic treatment they choose. Plus the nitrogen atmosphere treatment is so much simpler on the practical level. Instead of bringing in freezers and powering them for the whole duration of the treatment all you need is some crates, plastic bags and nitrogen bottles. Makes it much easier to bring the treatment where the books are, thus you avoid all kind of complications with transporting the books.

Well, it's an idea. Perhaps de-humidifying the books first...

The hypoxic approach needs to last at least until eggs hatch, otherwise you're back to square one. And I'm not so sure if a plastic bag can hold tight for long without leaking (nitrogen out, air in).

Most insect eggs require external oxygen exchange. Low oxygen treatment against beetles is a common method used for stored grains.

De-humidifying the books however could also damage them so I believe their solution is probably the best for this purpose.

One potential problem might be that they have to treat the entire collection of 400,000 books at the same time (which makes sense because otherwise you risk rotating the beetles through the collection). So they'd have to find such an ultra-low temp freezer that was large enough to hold 400k books.

Also, although I assume this is a very rare ability among insects and probably not applicable to the "drugstore beetle" from this article, check out this insane fly species I found while looking for freeze tolerant insects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypedilum_vanderplanki It (or its larvae, anyway) can survive temperatures as low as 3K!

> One potential problem might be that they have to treat the entire collection of 400,000 books at the same time (which makes sense because otherwise you risk rotating the beetles through the collection). So they'd have to find such an ultra-low temp freezer that was large enough to hold 400k books.

They don't have to treat them all in the same place. They could use more than one freezer.

Well, I thought of adding high volatile insecticides to the bags.

I'm dealing with a carpet beetle infestation at my house which is eating my furniture (natural fibres and horse hair).

Insecticides will damage the natural fibers. The risk is that they damage the books more than the beetles would.

Insecticide or desiccants directly on the books, for example the natural adhesives, could cause the adhesive to crack, destroying the book.

I wish I could do this sealed nitrogen process. At the moment, it's spraying cedar wood with lavender and sticking into the less accessible places where the beetles are likely burrowing, and vaccuuming regularly.

You should try diatomaceous earth, it gets rid of anything with an exoskeleton and is even food safe. Just don’t breathe it in or get it in your eyes. It takes a while to settle from the air if you use a bellows type applicator.

Thanks. This is the next step, but I was told not to use it indoors. Maybe that isn't correct.

Any Hungarians here?

Igen!

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