Book Care Tips for Humid Climates

Video Transcript

Hi! I'm Jennifer Kimball and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to show you how to organize and maintain your book collection. We talked about earthquake safety with our books, but what about if you have another problem, such as a very humid climate that you live in. If you live in the deep south, or also if you live in an area prone to flooding. There are a couple of things that you can do to keep your books safe in either of those instances. If you live in an area where you have to worry about flooding continuously, then you either want to have higher bookcases where you don't have books on the bottom couple of shelves, or you have them on upper floors of your house or apartment if that's possible. The other thing that you can do to help in an instance of a really humid climate is you want to have a dehumidifier in your library around your books. This can also help with human health, but you want to be very careful. If your books get too damp, even if you don't notice it, and this can take years, you're going to get mildew in the pages. You can get mold growing on them. It's really important to make sure that your books are not kept in a super humid environment. If you have a choice, books which have paper with at least 25% cotton in them are going to last longer and be able to be dried than books which are primarily made of wood pulp. If you have mass-market paper backs, those are made of wood pulp and there's nothing you can do. If you're colleting books and you have a more expensive collection, you're getting first editions, then those books are frequently made with a higher cotton content in the paper so they're going to survive better. If your book does get wet, even if it's just from dropping water on it, then you can always dry it out. You want to make sure that it's laid out flat. You're going to have some warping of the pages regardless, but if you have it in a less humid area, then a lot of times your books are going to be just fine. Provided they're dried, quickly, carefully, and you don't put them back in the same environment.

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