Threat to the borrowing of older books

Interlending & Document Supply

ISSN: 0264-1615

Article publication date: 1 March 2003

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Citation

(2003), "Threat to the borrowing of older books", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 31 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2003.12231aab.039

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2003, MCB UP Limited


Threat to the borrowing of older books

Threat to the borrowing of older books

Iron gall ink is the latest enemy of the book. "Open an old book and the disconnected letters can fall into your lap, the paper a lace doily with a mass of letter shaped holes". While a solution (literally) has been found, the scale of the treatment is of course the ever present problem.

A bibliographic irony is that Miscellany's copy of Fahrenheit 451 – the temperature at which paper burns, by Ray Bradbury, bought in 1956 already has embrittled to a dark brown 25 per cent of the page area!

Source: New Scientist, 14 September 2002.

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