I learned to fix stuff
Through a creative reorganizing of the desk schedule, I was able to attend a NMRLS workshop on Basic Book Repair yesterday. I wanted to take this class while I was at Simmons, but the class fills up quickly (I think the archives concentrators get dibs, too), so I never got a chance to. Honestly, I’m glad I got to take it this way, because it was free, and way more fun.
Gregor Trinkaus-Randall, who is on staff at the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, came in to teach the class (which was taught, lucky me, at Reading Public Library). After a quick tour of the University Products catalog and a brief overview of the bare minimum tools you need for a basic book repair kit (microspatula, bone folder, cork-backed straight edge, really sharp cutting edge, neutral pH glue, document tape), we dug right in.
Interesting things I learned about supplies include:
- Apparently, Elmer’s glue is the work of the devil. It’s way too acidic for books, and can cause damage in the long run. Best to invest in a neutral pH adhesive.
- You may think scotch tape is OK, but it’s not. Scotch tape dries over time, discolors, and the adhesives are also, like the devil glue, to acidic. Even for magazines, document tape is better (although, really, you could use the “magic tape” found in tech services in a pinch for magazines, though you shouldn’t use it on books at all, really.)
- Microspatulas are the most adorable things ever. And they’re useful.
- If you use clear covers on your books (the kind you use to cover the jackets), don’t use vinyl. Mylar or some polyacetate blend is best, since vinyl, over time, breaks down into bad things including hydrochloric acid, which is officially bad for books.
Things we weren’t allowed to use:
- Scissors: If you’ve got a sharp cutting edge, a straight edge, and a cutting board, you should use those instead. You get better, even cuts that way.
- Rubber bands: If you really need to hold something together, cotton tape is best. Rubber bands can add variable amounts of tension that can fluctuate between not doing the job and harming the book, not to mention you could get popped in the eye with a dry rubber band that snaps or something like that.
The supply list for the class recommended that we all bring books in various states of disrepair (I mostly grabbed deacquisitioned Reading books off of the victim cart at the front of the room). For any task where we didn’t have a book with a specific injury, we made one. This was particularly difficult for some people in the room. I thought it was pretty cool.
We used knitting needles and glue to repair loose spine hinges, document tape and japanese tissue to repair tears and torn out pages, glue, microspatulas, and bulldog clips to repair “bunged-up” book corners (that’s official lingo, you know), and even buckram cloth to repair a spine. I kept all of my test subjects, and brought home my spine fix, a large print copy of Danielle Steele’s Message from Nam.
The class was lots of fun. I sew, and I’ve always been a creatively crafty gal, so there was very little learning curve for me as long as the steps made sense. I really liked that Gregor emphasized that you should use the book to measure things instead of using rulers, since the book really gave you all the information you needed. And he made us all feel like we could do it. I’m totally going to put together a mending kit of the basics for my home library, and make the purchase list for Reading of the bare-bones supplies.
Aside from the actual hands-on, Gregor share lot’s of other information. One note that might be of interest to reference purchasers is that while you may think that a hardcover book has a longer shelf life than a softcover book, they are both bound the same way, so the bindings have the same shelf life. From experience, I know that a hardcover reference book lives better on the shelf, since it does less of that weird bending and stands upright better, but at the same time, hardcover reference books can cost way more than their paperback counterparts, if they’re even available. His advice: buy the paperback, and send it to a rebindering for a hardcover. The rebindering will do what’s called a “double fan glue” on it, which makes the book more durable, then they’ll add a better hard cover to it than the publisher would. From what I can tell, it would only really work well if you had a bulk order, but it could be less expensive in the long run in terms of the initial purchase cost and the future repair costs. You know, when you’re not replacing them every few years anyway. Interesting advice.
The other bit he mentioned was a documentary called “SLOW FIRES: On the Preservation of the Human Record” by Terry Sanders and Freida Lee. I wasn’t entirely paying attention (I was trying to remove the excess glue from a spine tab without getting it all over the book), but he mentioned something about books “burning from the inside” due to high levels of sulphuric acid used in book making (or as a by-product of deterioration of materials, or something). I’ll be putting this movie on my request list.
If you can, take one of these classes, no matter where you work in the library. It’s nice to know how to make the simple fixes, and you might learn other random, interesting stuff.
Tags: work
