This article is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Carla Helfferich is a science writer at the institute. You settle into a comfy chair, open the book and suddenly have a lapful of brittle paper shards. Northern climates are hard on books, as librarians can testify.
Low sun angles means that light can reach and attack books on shelves well back from windows.
Northern peculiarities don't help, but the self-destruction of old pages goes on everywhere. The problem is that the paper is polluting itself. For nearly 2,000 years, ever since the Chinese first invented it, paper was based mainly on fabrics. After about 1850, as more people clamored for more to read, business boomed for papermakers. They looked for cheaper and more plentiful sources of fiber, and they found it in wood.