Circulating collection repairs Imidazole

I've got two completely unrelated questions here.

The first has to do with a circulating collections repair--new spines
for cloth cases.  The case is otherwise OK, endsheets intact, super
intact -- just torn or weakened cloth in the hinge, or torn cloth at
head/tail.  We've been doing this repair as described in the Morrow/Dyal
book, which is to say, we don't clean the spine of the old super and
glue, we just make a new cloth spine (and mount the old one when its
possible).  Now I've got one of the second year Columbia students,
Ursula Wille, working for me here, and she has told me that at
Wisconsin, they did remove the super and completely cleaned the spines,
put a new muslin lining across and onto the outside of the boards, then
a paper lining, and then attached the new cloth spine.  Well, this seems
to me to make what would otherwise be a 10-15 minute repair into a 40
minute repair, and I'm curious to know:   are other menderies doing
this?  Do they feel it is cost effective?  (and if so, how much are they
paying their technicians?)  Do people out there have any opinions one
way or another on this?

The other question is from Ursula and her fellow student, Emily Ramos so
I'll just put her on...  As part of our ongoing research project on the
treatment of water-damaged leather bindings, we have been reading about
the use of imidazole as a humectant and buffer in conjunction with a
lubricant for leather.  We would like to find out if anyone has read
about or used imidazole on bookbinding leather, and what your
experiences were.

Best, Miranda Martin, Teachers College, NYC

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 4:41
                Distributed: Wednesday, January 30, 1991
                        Message Id: cdl-4-41-003
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