Tag: dust problem

The Nemesis of Book Collectors - Dust

Speck by Speck, Dust Piles Up
By MICHAEL TORTORELLO, The New York Times
Source: Post-Gazette.com

Book Collecting Nemesis - Dust

Book Collecting Nemesis - Dust

THE world has a dust problem. There is more of it than there used to be. Apparently, the amount of airborne dust doubled in the 20th century, according to a recent scientific paper in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

The claim sounds outlandish. The amount of dust in the world -- like the amount of sin or acne -- must be a constant. The finding was somewhat surprising even to Natalie Mahowald, the lead researcher on the study and an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Cornell University.

Although she was working with inchoate historical data, Dr. Mahowald said, "Nobody has come up to me and said, 'I don't believe you.' " Climate change seems to be one source for all the new dust. Human land use is another. Anyone looking for a scapegoat -- and that's all of us, isn't it? -- can start with the droughts and desertification in North Africa, she said...

THE term "dustjacket" is typically written as one word, said Bryan A. Garner, editor in chief of "Black's Law Dictionary" and author of "Garner's Modern American Usage." He would know. The 52-year-old keeps a personal library of 31,000 volumes -- or 31,100 if you count the titles he has bought in the last two weeks.

In recent years, Mr. Garner has begun wrapping his dustjackets in their own clear Mylar dustjackets. This precaution would seem to be the equivalent of washing soap with soap. So far, some 20,000 of his books have been Mylared. "I'm typically one who is reluctant to make proper nouns into verbs," he said. "But this is certainly a very convenient one, and we do it."

Mr. Garner stores most of his collection at the offices of his company, LawProse, including dictionaries and grammar books that date from 1491. A mere 4,500 volumes reside with him and his wife, Karolyne Garner, at their French Country Revival-style home in north Dallas.

The most effective dust management starts before a book ever reaches the shelf. "When I buy a book, I will carefully open it and slam it shut several times," he said. "Sometimes these big balloons of dust will cascade to the floor." This is where dust belongs, he said, down at vacuum level. Next, "you sort of riffle the pages." Finally, he will run a dry paintbrush along the edges.

As protocols go, it's a good one, Mr. Garner said. Yet at the same time he is dusting his books, many thousands of them are actually turning to dust. Acid paper, which was ubiquitous between 1870 and 1970, "tends to self-destruct," he said.

There can be a gloom to antiquarian book collecting -- the authors are dead, we are dying -- and the dust doesn't help. Mr. Garner likes to place musty books of questionable provenance in the sun to cure. And he opens the windows and airs out the house every fortnight, preferably after a good rain has knocked down the dust outside.

He discovered this advice in Cheryl Mendelson's "Home Comforts," he said, "which is my favorite book on housekeeping."

Mr. Garner hesitated for a moment, as if picturing the book on the shelf. "It's been a long time since I read it," he said. "Mine is probably gathering a little bit of dust."


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This article goes into a lot of detail about dust and is interesting. I suggest you read it in full...