Circulating collection repairs

Well, since I worked at both UW and SIU-Carbondale where both kinds of
repairs (rebacking and mount spine) were practiced and since I have had
long discussions with both sets of practitioners (Dyal and Wille to name
a few), I think I will offer my thoughts.  Rebacking and cleaning the
backbone of all old material leads to a very long lasting and strong
repair. The quick and dirty mount spine is not as strong or probably as
long lasting, but it is easy to teach and quickly done.  For most
material in large libraries the issue is too keep the book parts
together on the shelf.  The repaired materials are probably not going to
get heavy use in the future, they mainly have to be intact and be able
to sit on the shelf.  So the facts of superior strength and long lasting
qualities of the reback are of less importance.  And in most large
libraries you have thousands of torn spines to fix.  So for most such
repairs I think the mount spine is a preferable technique because it is
quick, cheap, and easily taught to the lowest paid staff.  For materials
which are very thick or will be used the classic reback is of course
best.  The issue of volume is very important as well.  The reback which
requires a clean spine even when done in batch process takes 3 or 4
times longer.  So the production count is very low compared to the mount
spine.  And in most lib.s that is the deciding factor between the two
techniques.

Also, the technique in the Morrow/Dyal edition can be easily
improved upon to get a better fit of the new spine over the
backbone.  I have seen several different tech. for improving the
fit done by building the new spine on the boards and the
backbone instead of building it off the book and then pasting it
to the boards.  You can easily improve the fit by trying
different methods of your own devising.  Sorry for all the
typing mistakes, I don't yet know how to use a unix editor or
how to upload from a word processing program.


    **** Moderator's comments:   Sally wrote in the following day to
    add: Upon later reflection on what I had to say about the repairs,
    the approach is a totally librarian one, not one from the single
    item treatment perspective.  Maybe you should preface my
    comments with my apologies to the tender sensibilities of
    conservators for offending with my collections point of view.

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 4:42
                 Distributed: Tuesday, February 5, 1991
                        Message Id: cdl-4-42-002
                                  ***