Library mushrooms don't know what they're doing

We live on water,

from crumbs of air.

“Mushrooms”, Sylvia Plath

 

There would have to be a defense first.
 

Fungi do not know what they are doing. Or rather, they are perfect workers in their trade but they do not distinguish between what, under a human eye, is right and what is wrong.
 

This conception goes like this: it is good that the hunger of fungi and bacteria devour the islands of garbage that now invade the world, it is good that they work in the programmed infection of cheese and that they grow in the mountains if they are hallucinogenic or edible, but not by mistake are they accepted on the skin, on the damp walls and much less in the books that keep our history. But they know nothing of this, when it comes to fungi and bacteria we must understand their greedy and gluttonous nature that does not differentiate and that is devastating, feeding itself.  
 

In the National Library of Colombia they know that, they understand that, as Guadalupe Nettel says in the story “Fungi”, “To live with a parasite is to accept the occupation.  Any parasite, no matter how harmless it may be, has an uncontainable need to move forward”. This is why the Conservation Group created eight years ago, on the top floor of the National Library, a microbiology laboratory that accompanies the conservation processes of the bibliographic pieces and also performs the task of pointillism: it takes the microorganisms that are in the environment and the objects that inhabit the Library and classifies, studies and researches them in order to find scientific and industrial potential. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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There are few examples of libraries in the world that have such a laboratory; even in the largest and most robust libraries there is no space dedicated to identifying the organisms that attack their most precious assets. Libraries usually apply lethal products to universes they do not know. This is why the microbiology members of this laboratory are rockstars in their field, because they not only use processes in which they select the best control product to eliminate a fungus or bacteria, but they also study and deliver a diagnosis of each book and each space to understand the organisms that are doing everything to inhabit them. 
 

Luz Stella Villalba Corredor is a bacteriologist with an MSc. in Environmental Microbiology with almost twenty years of experience in microbiology applied to conservation in institutions such as the Archive of Bogotá, the General Archive of the Nation and the Institute of Anthropology and History. She is the leader of the laboratory. She works with microbiologist Eliana Pachón and chemist with experience in cultural heritage Darío Alberto Rodríguez in the first space one encounters when arriving at the National Library's Conservation Center. It is a place on the top floor of the National Library, smaller than you might think, accessible only by an elevator that requires an operator. There is an incubator, microscopes, fume hoods, washing basins and a refrigerator where the entire collection is archived. Most of the space is white and gray and does not smell of anything - neither alcohol, nor wet, nor bleach, nor old - the touches of color are given by the fungal and bacterial cultures that are on a table in petri dishes and, of course, the books or files that are working at the time. Even though the cultures are showy, the fungi in the books are usually brown and beige in color as spots or freckles. Under the microscope they appear blue due to the staining to be able to observe them. 
 

Since they began this process at the National Library in 2010, they have identified and archived more than four hundred microorganisms (including fungi, bacteria and yeasts) of different genera that they have recovered from books and the environment of the Library. Important books such as La biblia del oso, published in 1569, have passed through their magnifying glass, but the main work is done with the old collection and collections such as the José Celestino Mutis Collection, the General Pineda Collection, the Jorge Isaacs Collection, the José María Vergara y Vergara Collection, and the Rufino José Cuervo Collection, among others. From the moment a bibliographic material arrives, regardless of its relevance or condition, a methodical process begins in which the book is subjected to an absolute and meticulous scrutiny by scientists that can last from 8 to 10 days and where they determine the level of biodeterioration, take samples and formulate the best product to leave the book out of danger. 
 

There are three common ways for microorganisms to reach a place: by air, by transports such as mites and by water currents. Most commonly, they move through the air and are deposited in a place by gravity. Once on the paper, the first to attack are usually fungi, as they produce cellulases, which feed on cellulose, the material from which the paper is made. The fungi arrive and take out their arsenal of enzymes and begin to degrade as if they were hundreds of microscopic scissors, making the paper smaller and there appear bacteria and yeasts, secondary colonizers, which eat everything that the fungus has already degraded. Many times the last ones to arrive (bacteria and yeasts) inhibit the fungus to keep everything and sometimes they work in synergy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

The first step in the process of identifying these fungi, bacteria or yeasts is to go to the sanitation area, where a diagnosis is made. There, wearing gloves and masks, they look for indicators of biodeterioration: brown or yellow stains, or frayed paper, or the common fungal patches on the inner lids. If the specimen is found to have active biodeterioration, it is isolated, samples are taken, cultures are taken and the agents that are impacting it, whether fungi or bacteria, are identified. In other libraries it is common to apply a couple of products to control biodeterioration, that is, they prescribe ibuprofen for all ailments, but at the Nacional Library, after identifying what is ailing the material, they prescribe silver salts, alcohol, quaternary ammoniums, azoles or isothiazolinones, depending on the type of fungus, bacteria or yeast. 
 

Once the best product for the treatment is chosen, the punctual sanitation is done by applying it manually with cotton and a quality control to check that nothing else grows, that the appropriate limits were set to stop the invasion. But the process does not stop there. The microbiology laboratory is only one part of the Conservation Center and once it is free of fungi, bacteria or yeasts, the book must undergo restoration. There they put the missing parts to the covers with cloth (leather is no longer restored because over time it decomposes and begins to stain the book), and repair the pages with the paper with which the book is built or Japanese paper because it does not oxidize or deteriorate as it is made entirely of cellulose. There are books and documents that come out of the process cured, with barely visible repairs and with each fiber clean, but there are others with less luck that lose information, because the fungi affect places where there is a record, in this case the information cannot be recovered because altering it causes the loss of its patrimonial value. And there are extreme cases when the biological deterioration is advanced and has degraded the material to such an extent that it must be discarded as hazardous waste. 
 

In addition to the fungi that are directly on the archives, the laboratory is in charge of monitoring the air quality in each area of the Library, the organisms that inhabit the environment and the concentration of dust. Another factor they are constantly checking is the temperature, which, together with the roughness of the material, is one of the main conditions for fungus or bacteria to settle in, grow and feed. Books work just like human skin: if temperatures are high, books get damp, and if they are too low, they dry out. 
 

With all the research and monitoring they do in both fields - on the material and in the environment - they have identified the organisms that most attack the Library's collections and the most pertinent ways to combat them. Fungi of genera such as Penicillium, Aspergillus and Cladosporium and bacteria of the genus Bacillus and yeasts such as Rhodotorula are the most common organisms found on the support. In the environment the diversity is greater and it is common to find dematiaceous fungi, which produce pigments like the melanins that we humans have and that help protect them from ultraviolet rays, stress and dryness. This type of fungi, for example, produce antibiotics or repellent agents that once isolated may have applicability in the pharmaceutical and food industry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Just like the pigmentates, many fungi, bacteria and yeasts that inhabit the National Library have qualities that can be used at the scientific and industrial level, and finding these types of qualities in the microorganisms is a large part of the work of Luz Stella and her team: “We investigate the strain to see the potential risk they have for the collections, but also to see the enzymatic potential of each microorganism, and to see the power of degradation that the enzymes have. Once we isolate this information we can see if it has applicability". For example, there are fungi that produce enzymes that can be used to develop detergents, and they can even be useful for biorestoration, which is using the same microorganisms to regenerate materials that have been affected. 
 

Currently, the laboratory is making a catalog of all the microorganisms they have identified in order to make academic alliances that can enhance the knowledge they are generating. The idea is to take the processes of prevention, research and restoration to all regional institutions and to articulate the processes so that the impact of time and the environment on books and documents is less and less. What they want is to reproduce the methods they use so as not to destroy anything that lives in the libraries without knowing what it is and, of course, to preserve as much material as possible. 
 

Another of the laboratory's interests is to make people understand that these organisms are eating books because it is their turn, because their function is to degrade, and without them we would be full of garbage. That is why it is important, says Luz Stella, to understand the difference between biodeterioration and biodegradation. Fungi play a substantial environmental role as primary degraders in the universe. If they did not exist, we would be surrounded by garbage. But they do not know the difference between what is or is not heritage, and that is why when they impact movable and immovable property of historical or objectual relevance, it is called biodeterioration. And this is how many times, and especially in a library that keeps in its walls our history, the greatest enemy is not the passage of time, nor oblivion, but the fungi that do not know what they do.

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A Spanish version of this article was published in Bacánika in 2018.

Illustrations Cristian Escobar