Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Salvaging damaged books can be very time consuming, especially if they don’t dry flat. Today Caitlin Moore demonstrated how to flatten a book. First you lightly mist a page, using a mister that sprays a very fine mist, interleave with a blank piece of paper every few pages, put a board over the book, and put a weight on the board. One must make sure that the board is slightly larger than the book.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
An important part of preparing for disasters is to practice and experiment before a disaster. An excellent drill is to get books wet in clean tap water and then air dry them. Get a broad range of books wet and see what happens as they dry. A couple of the books that we worked on at OceanTeacher Academy got so wet and heavy that the text block started to tear away from the cover. When that happens, it’s best to separate the text from the cover and dry separately.
Another book had pages that started to stick together. Using a simple beveled kitchen tool with rounded corners was used to separate the pages. The tool was gently inserted between the pages and then gently wiggled to separate the pages.
Sometimes a word was lost when a tiny piece of the page stuck to the other page. With just a word lost here and there, it was still easy to read the text. However, an important consideration is to think about how long one should spend on a book. Is the book worth spending 2-3 hours, separating each page? Or can it easily be replaced?
Since we are simulating a disaster, we are using tools easily at hand and not tools from a conservation lab
Monday, May 23, 2011
I am, once again, teaching a Disaster Planning and Recovery course at the OceanTeacher Academy in Ostend, Belgium. Today we learned about air drying books which can be very tedious and time consuming. 
Each book needs to have plain paper inserted between the covers and every few pages to wick up the water. Once the paper is wet, the paper needs to be changed for dry paper to continue to wick up the water to hasten the drying of the pages in the books.
We also learned that we needed to look at our building inside and out to see if there is anything that could become a disaster. Librarian Jan Haspeslagh gave us a tour of his library and pointed out things that are problems for his library. In particular, this library has drain spouts that are disconnected.
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Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Susan Hansen has seen and fixed a lot of books in her tenure in Book Repair, but every once in a while one stands out.
Recently, a 1958 copy of “The Silver Spoon Mystery” by Dorothy Sterling came to Susan, and she knew she could make it more stable, as well as more visually appealing. In fact, she had to.
This book was held together by royal blue duct tape, and the title was hand written on the tape in thick black permanent marker. To say these are Preservation “no-nos” is an understatement.
To stabilize the book, Susan did a reback treatment to replace the spine. During this process, Susan carefully removed the duct tape, and was pleasantly surprised to find the original spine. She removed it, and carefully scraped away the large amount of tape residue. Susan completed the reback by reattaching the original spine cloth to the volume, making the book appear much more like it would have when first published.
It’s all in a day’s work in Book Repair, but Susan’s effort has given “The Silver Spoon Mystery” a longer shelf life.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Priscilla Spitler has donated three workshop sample bindings to the University of Iowa Libraries Bookbinding Model Collection. These models present Priscilla’s superior skills of artistry and craft and provide instructional models equivalent to other workshop sets by Bill Anthony and Robert Espinosa also in the collection.
The first model demonstrates a full leather, sewn board, fine edition binding on a Franz Kafka text published by Press Intermezzo, Austin, 1997. This unique sample binding features a reveal of the uncovered upper board with the unattached board leather that exemplifies expert hand paring. The second model presents another sewn board variation with acrylic paste paper and line decoration throughout. It is sewn on a concertina guard to enable additional collage. The third model presents a lapped component cover, case construction binding with goatskin spine.
Together this set of workshop samples provides physical inspiration and enables detailed observation by students. Here is the evidence of the work of a great, fine binder.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Binding a 10,000 page book is no small task! You can’t get your hands around all 10,000 pages at once so the book needs to be assembled into smaller units and then bound together using a specially constructed press to hold everything in place, nicely squared up, until the book text block is dry. Then there is the special challenge of making and attaching a book cover. The binding and cover must be strong and flexible so that the book can be opened and read. Finally, the book must be supported while reading, which can be done by using blocks to support the “shorter” side and adjusted as the reader turns the page. It generally takes about 3 hours to bind a 200-page book. This book took 24 hours spread over 4 days with a ½ day devoted to making a special press.
The text below describes the process that Bill Voss used. Feel free to skip the explanation and go straight to the slide show below at the end of the blog!
After research and consultation with others, Bill decided to use what we call a “perfect” binding, which is done by fanning the spine of a text block of loose sheets, applying PVA glue and then fanning the other way and applying more glue.
Since a two foot thick text block can’t be fanned all at once, Bill broke the text into 20 sections of five chapters (500 pages) each and glued them separately. A special press was constructed which would allow the sections to be jogged and hammered square to each other while under pressure. This press consists of a three sided box and press boards constructed from melamine particle board so as to accommodate the dimensions of the sections, which are a standard 8 ½ x 11”. After each section was glued up it was placed vertically between boards and pressed with clamps.
When all the sections were dry, kerfs (narrow channels) were sawn into them so that two sunken cords could be glued into the spine across its width to further strengthen the binding. All 20 sections were then assembled together in the press and clamped tightly while the cords and subsequent linings (kozo, cotton acrylic cloth, paper) were applied to the spine. Finally a large case was constructed and attached to the text block.
The finished binding is somewhat unwieldy, but can still be carried and opened to any point by a single person and can be supported while open by the simple expediency of placing a sufficient number of boards under one of the covers while the other cover rests on the table.
Kudos to Bill Voss, Bu Wilson and Dave Morice (Dr Alphabet) for working together to create, publish and bind the “Poetry City Marathon”.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Gary Frost, Conservator, University of Iowa Libraries, has been given the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2010 by the Guild of Book Workers. The Guild, founded in 1906, is focused on service to the hand bookbinding community. Frost joins other Awards recipients Bernard Middleton, Hedi Kyle, Don Etherington and Michael Wilcox. He is cited for contributions to conservation education and bookbinding studies. The Award will be presented this week during the “Standards of Excellence Seminar” in Tucson, Arizona, October 14-16.
The GBW article citing Gary’s achievments notes that Gary was a “key player during the pivotal period in the ’70s when the bookbinding field turned its attention from the traditional focus on the decoration of the book to the new fascination with the structure of the book.” The article talks about Gary’s fine drawings detailing book structures and his thought-provoking website http://futureofthebook.com/. The article concludes that “Gary is a rare bird who over four decades has become a monumental personality in the book world.” For entire article see http://guildofbookworkers.org/about/awards.php
What the article doesn’t note is Gary’s tendency to make up words when he can’t find one to describe something. Those of us who work with Gary have caught on to his unique use of words and have even started using some of his words and phrases. So much so that when we write something for public consumption, we have someone else read the text for “Garyisms” so we can re-write into plain English!
Congratulations, Gary, it’s an honor to have worked with you these past 10 years.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
One of the projects that we’ve just begun to address has been waiting two years. The Czech Slovak library has roughly 7500 books that were frozen post flood. They estimate that 20 % of the books are damaged beyond repair and will need to be replaced. Nancy and I went up to meet with Dave Muhlena to get an idea of the range of material and extent of the damage to the books. We took a random sample of 19 books which I brought back to the lab to work on. This children’s book was in such bad shape I thought it would be a good example. These images are of the book in it’s post flood condition before it’s been worked on.
To flatten this book I humidified it, interleaved with 10 pt. card and put it in the press overnight. The moisture relaxed the paper and the card interleaving absorbed the excess. The pressure of the press reshaped the warped pages to lie flat again. I lined the pastedowns and endsheets with paste and thin japanese paper so I could reattach them to the text block. I made new endpapers and a new case for the cover and reattached the cover image to the front of the book. This was the result:
Friday, April 16, 2010
This is the fourth class that we have taught for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. It’s a lot of fun introducing students to the joys (and trials) of working in a conservation lab. All the material is pre-cut for the class participants ready for them to assemble. Well, almost ready to assemble. They still have to cut the cloth down to size, miter the corners, attach the cloth and pastedown, and make a hinge. Bill Voss has made jigs of various sizes to assist with spacing of hinge strips and mitering. The album has a fold-in hinge so that the posts are hidden.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
This banner from the African American Museum was signed by Jesse Jackson. The signature and surrounding illustration were sprayed with some sort of fixative which didn’t end up being very sound. The large part of the banner was fine but the areas with the fixative were detached and curling up away from the image, taking with it the signature and image.
After consulting with Gary we decided the best course of treatment would be using diluted lascaux adhesive. I applied this with a tiny brush and tacked down all the small curling flags. It was very time consuming but for the most part successful. The image and signature remain intact.
