Bedbugs Hitch a Ride on Library Books ON THE HUNT A bedbug-sniffing dog at a library in Wichita, Kan. READING in bed, once considered a relatively safe pastime, is now seen by some as a riskier proposition. That's because bedbugs have discovered a new way to hitchhike in and out of beds: library books. It turns out that tiny bedbugs and their eggs can hide in the spines of hardcover books. The bugs crawl out at night to feed, find a new home in a headboard, and soon readers are enjoying not only plot twists but post-bite welts. As libraries are scrambling to deal with the problem, so are some book borrowers. Not wanting to spread the misery, considerate patrons sometimes call ahead to discuss with librarians how best to return lent materials from their bedbug-infested homes. Usually, a meeting is arranged so the patron can hand off the offending books or DVDs in Ziploc bags to an employee outside the library. John Furman, the owner of Boot-a-Pest, a team of bedbug exterminators based on Long Island, said he has had hundreds of clients buy a portable heater called PackTite to kill bedbug life, baking any used or borrowed book as a preventive measure before taking it to bed. But others have stopped borrowing books altogether. Each month, Angelica McAdoo, a jewelry designer, and her children used to bring home a stack of books from the Los Angeles Central Library - until Mrs. McAdoo heard that the library had had a bedbug scare in September. She had already battled bedbugs in her two-bedroom apartment in East Hollywood and hired an exterminator, who sprayed the perimeter of her bookshelves with pesticide, among other precautions. For now, she is buying books at Target and is ambivalent about borrowing library books again. "I will not step foot in a library ever again - right now," she said. To reassure skittish patrons like Mrs. McAdoo, libraries are training circulation staff members to look for carcasses and live insects. Some employees treat suspect books with heat before re-shelving them, to kill bedbugs, which are about the size of an apple seed when fully grown. Others vacuum the crevices of couches, and some furniture is being reupholstered with vinyl or leatherette to make it less hospitable to insects. As Michael Potter, a professor of entomology at University of Kentucky in Lexington, noted: "There's no question in past few years there are more and more reports of bedbugs showing up in libraries." Pest-control experts say the bugs are increasingly moving from homes, dorms and other lodging to settings like retail stores, offices and libraries, migrating not only in book spines, but also on patrons or their belongings. And some librarians are not only confronting the public relations challenges in their communities, but trying to get ahead of the problem rather than hiding its existence. Forty-eight hours after a patron complained of being bitten by a bedbug in a lounge chair at a library in Wichita, Kan., Cynthia Berner Harris, the library's director, brought in a bedbug-sniffing dog to pinpoint problem areas. Later, she heat-treated all of the furniture in public areas, in addition to removing the infested chairs. She also bagged up hundreds of books, including the oeuvres of Twain and Updike, because they were close to where the dog suspected bedbugs. They were decontaminated for two weeks in some 45 bags with a vapor pesticide. "We wanted to go that one step beyond for our assurance," Ms. Berner Harris said, and "to tell our citizens we'd done our due diligence." Recently, 70 or so employees of the nine libraries in Wichita gathered for a "bedbug boot camp," where Michele Vance, marketing director of Schendel Pest Services, showed them how to identify bedbug excrement, which resembles dots made by a black felt-tip pen. She also explained how quickly bedbugs multiply, and how they can live for months without biting humans. Vigilance at circulation desks is key, she added: "If you notice any signs - the stains, the skins, the bugs themselves - notify your supervisor!" EVEN before seeing a bedbug at the public library in Islip, N.Y., Mary Schubart, the library's director, took action, after reading about their alarming resurgence. She hired a bedbug-sniffing dog to make quarterly visits, and put what are known as "insect inceptor" cups under furniture legs. As Ms. Schubart joked, "Nothing says "Welcome" like a bedbug cup under every chair."