What We Put In Books

Datalogger inside book

I love finding things inside books. We even have a category on Preservation Underground called “What We Find In Books.” Photographs, notes, flowers, printers waste…they all tell a story. But what if we put something inside a book intentionally?

We wanted to conduct an experiment that would compare the environment inside a book compared to the the environment of the stacks. Luckily we have a discarded book that already has a small hole cut out for a datalogger. I made the hole bigger to accommodate an Onset HOBO dataloggers. While this book now has less of a cellulosic load and may not compare exactly to other “whole” books, I think it will give us some interesting data.

The book is quietly gathering temperature and humidity data every 15 minutes. We will report our findings at a later date. Until then, happy environmental monitoring!