Monday, March 22, 2010

This afternoon, Brian Baird, Vice President for Library Services, Bridgeport National Bindery, presented an overview of print on demand operations from the factory floor including an early review of the PUR (new adhesive) technology. It appears that high speed copier books are now approaching a large portion of the print acquisitions. Academic and university presses have shifted to POD and a whole range of publishers, large and small are using the technology. The shift does not necessarily pose concern from the preservation perspective….but it is worthy of attention. There is indication that the library binding streams will be converted to POD methods. At issue is continuing improved performance for print books, especially those wrong grain and paperback bound coming from POD production. Brian is also tracking the self-publishing industries such as LuLu, Amazon BookSurge and Lightning Source and described the current photo book craze.