[HN Gopher] Hungary's oldest library is fighting to save books f...
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Hungary's oldest library is fighting to save books from a beetle
infestation
Author : smollett
Score : 190 points
Date : 2025-07-16 15:25 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44552362
| EGreg wrote:
| Reminds me of this:
| https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/366053/at-his-peak-pablo...
| funnym0nk3y wrote:
| I'm surprised that they use such a tame method for eradication. I
| expected the use of huge loads of insecticides.
| chmod775 wrote:
| 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".
| MichaelRo wrote:
| 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.
| krisoft wrote:
| 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.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| 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).
| tokai wrote:
| Most insect eggs require external oxygen exchange. Low
| oxygen treatment against beetles is a common method used
| for stored grains.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| De-humidifying the books however could also damage them
| so I believe their solution is probably the best for this
| purpose.
| staplung wrote:
| 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!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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.
| funnym0nk3y wrote:
| Well, I thought of adding high volatile insecticides to the
| bags.
| pedalpete wrote:
| 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.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Controlling humidity could be the simplest option. RH <50% makes
| it really hard for anything living to propagate in an otherwise
| "dry" space.
| exhilaration wrote:
| That works great for your basement but what's the impact of low
| humidity on ancient books?
| bob1029 wrote:
| You definitely wouldn't want to go all the way to zero.
| 30-50% RH is generally the sweet spot for archival purposes.
| Amezarak wrote:
| The library also talks about having a huge mold problem, so
| it would likely be positive.
| Iryna77 wrote:
| 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
| maxloh wrote:
| 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?).
| mdavid626 wrote:
| Any Hungarians here?
| aronhegedus wrote:
| Igen!
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| 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)
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