Chromatography Conserves Cellulose Creations

"Look on my works, ye mighty and despair," wrote Shelley in his poem about ancient pharaoh Ozymandias, whose works crumbled to ruin in time. Ozymandias made monuments, but many of our culturally relevant artifacts from this millennium are made of paper. Gutenberg Bibles, original copies of the U.S. Constitution, and even the original of Shelley's poem are all printed on delicate, degradable paper. A Florida State University chemist is working with the Library of Congress and using multidetector size-exclusion chromatography to study how the cellulose in paper degrades. The goal is to preserve the library's vast trove of books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, and pamphlets, many of which are irreplaceable.

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