Tens of thousands of ancient books are being pulled from the shelves of a medieval abbey in Hungary in an effort to save them from a beetle infestation that could wipe out centuries of history. The 1,000-year-old Pannonhalma Archabbey is a sprawling Benedictine monastery that's one of Hungary’s oldest centers of learning. Restoration workers are removing about 100,000 hand-bound books from their shelves and carefully placing them in crates, the start of a disinfection process that aims to kill the tiny beetles burrowed into them. While the drugstore beetle is often found among dried foodstuffs like grains, flour and spices, they're also attracted to the gelatin and starch-based adhesives found in books. The pests were found in a section of the library housing around a quarter of the abbey’s 400,000 volumes. This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the entire collection is classified as infected and must be treated all at the same time. The library has never encountered such a degree of infestation before. The abbey, which was founded in 996, houses the country’s oldest collection of books, as well as many of its earliest and most important written records. To kill the beetles, the crates of books are being placed into tall, hermetically sealed plastic sacks from which all oxygen is removed. After six weeks in the pure nitrogen environment, the abbey hopes all the beetles will be destroyed. Before being re-shelved, each book will be individually inspected and vacuumed. Any book damaged by the pests will be set aside for later restoration work.
