Paper Conservation: Decisions & Compromises

Microorganisms in Books – First Results of the EU Project “Men and Books”
Katja Sterflinger | Patricia Engel
Department of Biotechnology, Vienna Institute of Bio Technology (VIBT),
University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria;
European Research Centre for Book and Paper Conservation-Restoration, Horn, Austria
Fig. 1: Book contaminated by darkly pigmented fungal mycelium and
damaged by insects.
investigate possible remains of ethylene oxide
that might still have an impact on the microbial
community and protect the books against microbial
attack but might also be health threatening
for the reader of those volumes. 76 books,
44 manuscripts and 32 prints were selected for
the project. They represent an essential corpus
in terms of their information value. For microbiological
analysis 20 samples were taken from
various materials in 10 different books including
textiles, different paper types, cardboard, leather
and parchment (Table 1). Samples were taken for
cultivation of fungi onto media and for genomic
analysis in order to be able to detect both the
viable and non-viable fungal community (being
aware that the former ethylene oxide treatment
might inhibit the PCR-amplification of the DNA).
Materials and Methods
Introduction
The EU project “Men and Books” deals with
bound volumes of the Archives of the Protestant
Parish of the Holy Trinity in Swidnica, where
12.000 individual items are stored. This archive
is one of the most valuable for the history of
Protestantism in Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia and
Austria. Due to the climate, many of the books
were attacked by microorganisms – mainly fungi.
During the 1990s the books in Swidnica were
fumigated with ethylene oxide. In conservation
literature the use of ethylene oxide for book-disinfection
is discussed highly controversially 1 (see
also Meyer & Petersen, 2006) and it still remains
an open question whether or not ethylene oxide
is a good choice for book-fumigation. Without
doubt fungi in archives are dangerous for both,
men and books. However, some of the methods
for disinfection are threatening both, books and
humans. Therefore it was the aim of the study (a)
to analyse if there is an active fungal community
on the ethylene oxide treated books and (b) to
Isolation of fungi from books
Considering the high cultural and artistic value
of the books, only non-invasive techniques were
used for sampling: Porous membranes of different
materials (nylon, polycarbonate or cellulose
nitrate) with a natural electrostatic charge were
used to collect fungal aerial hyphae, conidia
spores and fruiting structures, together with
a few damaged fibres or small flakes from the
substrata. Membranes were smoothly attached to
the materials´ surfaces for several seconds, removed
and directly applied to cultural medium
(2% MEA, DG 18) or stored in a sterile tube for
DNA extraction and further molecular analysis.
Plates were incubated at 22°C for 7 days. Fungal
cultures were purified by several transfers onto
fresh medium.
Measurement of ethylene oxide concentrations
from books
For the selection of books several parameters
were relevant: (1) moment of fumigation (2) material
composition, (3) age of the book, (4) size of
ICOM-CC Graphic Documents Working Group Interim Meeting | Vienna 17 – 19 April 2013
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