Hygenic libraries (again)

 I've written before about Hygenic Libraries.

Today's cataloguing exercise up at the Athenaeum brought to light another hygenic library label

this time from a library in St Kilda.

Again, there's no real information on what the procedure used was, but a little digging suggests that the books were either wiped down with formaldehyde solution, or, for a slightly more sophisticated (and less risky to the library staff) fumigated by being placed in a  chamber with formaldehyde vapour, perhaps like this 1930's example of a fumigation cabinet

Libraries and archives centres still carry out periodic fumigation to control silverfish and and the like - for example, when I worked at ANU, I had an office on the top floor of the Menzies library, and every Christmas shutdown they warned us that the building was closed as they were fumigating the books...

but the advent of antibiotics, widespread vaccination and better public health means that in public libraries  books are not normally sterilised between loans, although during the recent Covid pandemic libraries that kept lending books did sometimes use UV sterilisation boxes.

Formalin is a pretty powerful sterilisation agent and is still sometimes used in laboratory situations, but is not usually used on museum specimens.