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Category: Collections Care

Close-up view of two hands carefully at work on an aged, yellowing manuscript with handwriting

Take that you filthy red rot!

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

Libraries are beautiful, filthy places. The dirt you encounter here is more than just the dust you would expect in any building, it is the dust of decay. It is the whisper of tired books becoming brittle and disintegrating, microfilm breathing its last gasp, newspapers shriveling into nothingness, leather dissolving into powder. Of all of these ingredients, red rot is probably the most pervasive dust you would come across.