Repair
Manual Home
Introduction
Guiding Principles
Setting up the Area
Toolbox
Parts of a book
Practical Guidelines
Identifying Repairable Materials
Glossary
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Self-Closing Wrapper
Cleaning
Torn pages
Tip in a Page
Hinge Repair
Corner Repair
Sewing a Single Signature
Spine Repair
Air Dry Method
Hinge Tightening
Guiding Principles of Simple Book Repair
Reversibility: Any treatment applied to a book should be reversible, that is it can be undone easily at a later date. If only the equipment, supplies, and techniques outlined in this manual are used, reversibility should not be a problem. In reality, only enclosure of the book (as in boxing) is truly reversible.
Do No Harm: This is a corollary to reversibility. If a repair seems difficult or you think you do not have the skill to complete the repair, set the book aside.
Expediency: Almost any non-brittle book can be repaired, given enough time and the proper equipment. Simple book repair implies that the repair will not take hours or days of staff time. As you become more comfortable with simple book repair, the decision to repair in-house versus sending the book to a commercial bindery will be easier to make.
Requirements:
- The order of pages must be preserved regardless of the repair or reformat.
- Books must have a protective cover to the pages.