[HN Gopher] Hungary's oldest library fighting to save 100k books...
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Hungary's oldest library fighting to save 100k books from a beetle
infestation
Author : rntn
Score : 62 points
Date : 2025-07-13 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nbcnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nbcnews.com)
| Amezarak wrote:
| Reading the article, it sounds like maybe they don't have air
| conditioning? They talk about how the warming climate is
| increasing their breeding cycles, and they've mostly dealt with
| mild problems in the past. How hard would it be to retrofit here?
| It seems like a easy fix to a lot of their problems. I assume
| there's some reason it's not done.
| ajb wrote:
| I would guess simply cost. Air conditioning has a high energy
| cost, especially if your building isn't air tight, which many
| old buildings are not. In the UK companies can be tight fisted
| about air conditioning even though they could afford it; an
| abbey in Hungary may not have enough revenue to pay for it.
|
| Having said that I wonder if they also have a damp issue,
| insects need some degree of moisture if they are eating stuff
| like paper.
| Amezarak wrote:
| They definitely have a damp issue, there's a typo in my post
| - they've had a lot of mold problems. That's the other reason
| it seems to me they need AC posthaste even if the not
| aesthetic.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| https://apnews.com/article/hungary-library-abbey-beetle-infe... <
| original source, so you don't need to read shit like: "Workers
| are racing to save 100,000 books from a rare beetle infestation
| inside Hungary's 1,000-year-old Pannonhalma Archabbey, a UNESCO
| World Hertiage site."
|
| (The beetles are probably one of the most common minor pests you
| can find in a pantry:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugstore_beetle )
| GCA10 wrote:
| I've visited that library. It's a high-ceiling architectural joy,
| but unless you're deeply, deeply into repetitive religious tracts
| of 600 years ago, most of the collection is more of a curiosity
| than a valuable resource to modern scholars.
|
| To answer @Amerzarak's question, the abbey is in a rural setting
| without an immediate surrounding community of researchers or
| urban resources. So, yes, no air-conditioning. The floors are
| polished; the ticket-takers are friendly, and the guides have a
| handful of stories that they tell well. For aesthetics, it would
| be nice if they can preserve everything. But in terms of
| scholarly impact, this wouldn't be on my list of the world's
| 1,000 historic collections most worth preserving in their
| entirety.
| Amezarak wrote:
| They have electricity though right? Then they're not too rural
| to have AC?
| rzzzt wrote:
| You can't slap a window unit on World Heritage sites:
| https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/758
| GCA10 wrote:
| Ah, if you've got the budget (and stature) of the U.S.
| Library of Congress, you can probably figure out how install
| all the necessary ductwork in a giant, multi-chambered old
| building that wasn't built with AC in mind. (Fun article is
| here about how they do it: https://www.aoc.gov/explore-
| capitol-campus/blog/librarys-hva...)
|
| But it's worth browsing pictures of the abbey to get a sense
| of how challenging this would be.
| https://www.comece.eu/christian-artworks-benedictine-
| archabb... Most books reside in giant, wall-flush bookcases
| with no natural ventilation. Establishing decent airflow --
| without accidentally ruining structural walls or turning the
| bookcases into perforated messes -- seems very hard.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > [...] _install all the necessary ductwork in a giant,
| multi-chambered old building that wasn 't built with AC in
| mind._
|
| You do not need to run ducts, just piping for (say) mini-
| splits.
| deepsun wrote:
| Only US is obsessed with ductwork. Most of the world
| prefers mini-splits.
| dmortin wrote:
| > but unless you're deeply, deeply into repetitive religious
| tracts of 600 years ago, most of the collection is more of a
| curiosity than a valuable resource to modern scholars.
|
| It's an abbey, so they are probably into religious tracts and
| it has cultural and sentimental value to them. E.g. if it has a
| Bible from the 13th century then it's worth preserving even if
| it's just the usual stuff.
| palmotea wrote:
| > I've visited that library. It's a high-ceiling architectural
| joy, but unless you're deeply, deeply into repetitive religious
| tracts of 600 years ago, most of the collection is more of a
| curiosity than a valuable resource to modern scholars.
|
| You know, there are modern scholars that study that stuff, both
| directly and as a resource for studying other areas.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Books could be sent through medical device gamma radiation
| conveyer belts to kill off the bugs. Eg the Institute of Isotopes
| in Budapest or the BGS facility in Germany for higher volume.
| perihelions wrote:
| Is that validated for books? Old paper is chemically and
| mechanically fragile; it's not obvious that gamma/ionizing
| radiation is harmless to it.
|
| Ultraviolet light is well known to be damaging,
|
| https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/2...
| ( _" Protection from Light Damage"_)
|
| https://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/light.html ( _" Limiting
| Light Damage"_)
|
| [late edit]: And if you search the literature, gamma
| irradiation is known to affect the texture of certain fruits--
| and if you ask _why_ , one of the studied mechanisms is that
| fruits' cellulose polymers--which paper is also made of!--are
| easily broken by gamma rays:
|
| https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1002/pol.1957.12026114...
| ( _" Effect of gamma-radiation on cellulose"_ (1957))
|
| > _" Cellulose is degraded at gamma-radiation dosages equal to
| or below those required for softening plant tissues such as
| apples, carrots, and beets. Therefore it seems probable that
| the degradation of this cell wall constituent is a major factor
| in the radiation-induced softening of plant tissues."_
|
| The effect on thin, old paper should presumably be the worst,
| no?
|
| [edit]: And this paper says the lethal gamma dose for one
| species (different one) of pestilential beetle is 1,000 gray,
| or 100 krad. That's a bit higher than the _threshold_ doses for
| cellulose damage, from the other paper: 34-64 krad. Stressing
| that I have no clue know how those numbers translate to paper
| integrity.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43739-x ( _" The
| lethal and sterile doses of gamma radiation on the museums
| pest, varied carpet beetle,_ Anthrenus verbasci _(Coleoptera:
| Dermestidae)_ )
| mousethatroared wrote:
| You're right but, usually, life is more fragile than
| chemistry for no other reason that life is built on
| chemistry. There are animals with exceptional capacity to
| survive radiation, but they accomplish this by redundancy and
| quick repair.
|
| So it comes down to picking the dose that doesn't kill your
| but does kills what would other wise kill you... radiation
| cancer therapy.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, the plan is to suffocate the books, which can hurt
| the beetles (since they're alive) but can't do anything to
| the books (since they aren't).
|
| The only obvious advantage of irradiating them would be
| that it will kill eggs; if the eggs will still hatch in an
| oxygen-free environment, there's no advantage and plenty of
| downside.
| tguvot wrote:
| or to fumigate entire building
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I wish there was a central way to track the books that have never
| been scanned or translated-- just to show the work we have to do.
| My guess is that the majority of Neo-Latin works are unscanned
| and untranslated.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Even among the scanned books there are tons of untranslated
| ones. I've collected a few that I'd like to do editions of with
| commentaries and translations--they're all on the same topic,
| which up until a few years ago nobody thought existed (in fact,
| someone's book on a related topic denied that these existed,
| because the author didn't know about them). I found them all
| initially through scans on Google Books.
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