hey /lit/, so I came across an abandoned house with hundreds of books in it, there was junk piling up to about a foot in each room, I couldn't even see the floor, but I grabbed these books to maybe keep from all that.



Problem is, they seem to be growing some sort of mold, and they smell of mildewy water damage. I've wiped them down with isopropyl alcohol so far, and I'm planning on putting them into the sunlight to possibly get rid of the smell.



Is there anything I can do to make sure they're safe around my other books? or that I could at least get rid of the moldy stuff on them? or will I just have to trash them?



more pics soon

Yeah, it’s deffo mould as evidenced by the little blue points all over the pages. You’ll probably have to fumigate them somehow seeing as wetting the pages would likely ruin them based on how fragile they look. That modern library Kant is so phat though, I’m jealous.

You are obligated to go back to the house and take pictures of the other books, lest you go blind and have to rely on abridged LibriVox audiobooks for the rest of your life!

I've heard freezing books may also help get rid of stuff like this, so I'll try whatever I can to get them cleaned up.



Might head back to the place for more soon, it seemed like the owner had a book related business of some sort, but the place was totally trashed besides all the shelves of books everywhere. Tons of modern library and even a stack of those franklin library editions were just tossed around in all the junk

I definitely will head back and post up some pics here maybe in a week or so. I'm even considering setting up some type of excavation group in the Pittsburgh / western PA area to go in to save some of the books, or whatever else was in there.



There were also pictures all over the bedroom with photos of the guy, I'm assuming, but also lots of nude photos of an older woman. There were also lots of playboys mags stacked on the bed

I found the place on google earth, you can see the house plus some of the trailers and cars that are outside, all of them are pretty much wrecked.

 

There's an old porsche, I think a pontiac fiero, and a bunch of american barges. Inside the biggest trailer (halved by a fallen tree) are even more books.

older pic of the inside that my friend took, those shelves are still pretty much full

>>21992674 (OP)

It'll be fine, just make sure they stay dry. Could bake them at very low temps for extended periods.

might try that, thank you

>>21992674 (OP)

I suggest plastic wrap, but before that make sure it's completely dry and try to use brushes like a dry, new, toothbrush to clean the pages and the book edges, this is to remove spores and whatnot.
