Hungary's oldest library is fighting to save books from a beetle infestation (npr.org)

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44552362

Reminds me of this: https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/366053/at-his-peak-pablo...

I'm surprised that they use such a tame method for eradication. I expected the use of huge loads of insecticides.

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Controlling humidity could be the simplest option. RH <50% makes it really hard for anything living to propagate in an otherwise "dry" space.

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

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?).

Any Hungarians here?

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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)