Slow fire

{{Expand German|date=January 2020}}

{{short description|Paper embrittlement of a book or document}}

File:Book suffering from slow fire.jpg

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's 1987 film Slow Fires: On the preservation of the human record.{{Cite web |last=Vassot |first=Chloe |date=2019-10-17 |title=The Little-Known ‘Slow Fire’ That’s Destroying All Our Books |url=https://lithub.com/the-little-known-slow-fire-thats-destroying-all-our-books/ |access-date=2025-06-03 |website=Literary Hub |language=en-US}}

Solutions to this problem include the use of acid-free paper stocks, format shifting brittle books by microfilming, photocopying or digitization, and a variety of deacidification techniques.