A slow fire is a term used in library and information science to describe paper embrittlement resulting from acid decay. The term is taken from the title of Terry Sanders' 1987 film Slow Fires: On the preservation of the human record.
Solutions to this problem include the use of acid-free paper stocks, reformatting brittle books by microfilming, photocopying or digitization, and a variety of deacidification techniques.
Famous quotes containing the words slow and/or fire:
“John, Jake or Charley, hopping the slow freight
—Memphis to Tallahassee—riding the rods,
Blind fists of nothing, humpty-dumpty clods.”
—Hart Crane (1899–1932)
“Where the world ends
The mind is made unchanging, for it finds
Miracle, ecstasy, the impossible hope,
The flagstone under all, the fire of fires,
The roots of the world.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)