Past and future scenarios of conservation conditions of paper collections in three historic libraries in Italy

The conservation of paper collections in historic libraries depends on the environmental stress over time. In fact, chemical deterioration is among the major threats of paper collections deterioration as cellulose hydrolysis is greatly dependent on air temperature. The indoor climate within historic buildings without air conditioning systems is the result of the interaction between the building envelope and the outdoor climate. The indoor/outdoor climate measurements collected in three historic libraries located in Milan, Udine and Rome (Italy) were used to assess the buffering effect of their building envelopes. In addition, the climate induced chemical risk for paper collections was studied through a dose-response function based on cellulose hydrolysis. The indoor climate conditions in the historic libraries in recent past, near and far future were simulated using the ERA5-Land dataset provided by Copernicus Climate Change Service. Hence, the damage risk for paper collections associated to the indoor climate scenarios was compared to the one induced by the current indoor conditions, allowing to investigate the effects of the possible future climate change on library conservation.