Comment by babymetal
3 days ago
I opened a bookshop after a long run in tech to try to slow down, and one of the pleasant surprises was the joy in accepting used book donations. I re-donate most of them, but have found some wonderful bookmarks and inscriptions in many. The words matter most, of course, but the tangible evidence of people decades or centuries ago is something that speaks to me profoundly. One inscription in a tiny book of prayers mentioned a friend passing it on after it had been placed under her deceased infant sister's chin, which was both morbid and moving. Autographs of spooks like J. Edgar Hoover conjure up other feelings. One other comment: the very old books will probably be around for a few centuries more after the newer ones have turned to dust.
> One other comment: the very old books will probably be around for a few centuries more after the newer ones have turned to dust.
Future historians will curse the 19th and 20th centuries for switching to acidic paper. Thankfully more and more books are printed on acid free paper via ISO 9706.
From my experience this seems to be an American thing. I have US-printed books that I bought brand new about 15 years ago that look 100 years old today. On the other hand the Brazil- or France-printed books are still good as new. The paper color they use in Brazil is also very different (white as opposed to yellowish brown).
This isn't every US book though, seems to be mostly the fiction kind. The tech books I have are US-printed and are holding up perfectly.
But yeah the acidic paper thing is real and a big problem. The book I’m currently reading has these rust-like vertical streaks covering every single page. I don’t know how to recover or preserve them.
To preserve acidic paper books, you might have luck with archival-grade boxes made of "buffered" material. The buffer is an alkaline material that's supposed to neutralize the acid in the paper.
what are you using for ecommerce? i need feedback on my app for booksellers if you're interested in trying it out: https://www.bookhead.net/. i'm also working on a squarespace plugin to sync a store's inventory from basil onto their website.