Slow fire

File:Book suffering from slow fire.jpg

A book printed in 1920 on acid paper that is disintegrating.

A slow fire is a term used in library and information science to describe paper embrittlement resulting from acid decay. The term is taken from the title of Terry Sanders's 1987 film Slow Fires: On the preservation of the human record.

Solutions to this problem include the use of acid-free paper stocks, format shifting brittle books by microfilming, photocopying or digitization, and a variety of deacidification techniques.

See also

• Acidic paper
• Acid-free paper
• Double Fold
• Wood-pulp paper
• Preservation (library and archive)

External links

• International Journal of Library Science
• Extinguishing slow fires: cooperative preservation efforts
• Slow fires: on the preservation of the human record
• Slow fires at IMDB