Preserving leather bindings

We are in the midst of a project converting all our periodicals from
alphabetical order by title to LC call numbers.  One of the results
of this is that we are having to go through our entire collection
and bind items that were in magafile boxes, and put call number
labels on things that were previously bound.  As we are going
through the collection, we are finding a substantial number of
leather bindings that have deteriorated to the point that the call
number labels can not be put on.

My question is:  would there be an economical way to
preserve/restore the spines of these volumes?  Many of them have
brittle paper, which means that they can not be re-bound.  In this
case, the bindings themselves are not valuable to us; only the
material inside.  So far, we have withdrawn some things, put others
in archival boxes, and bought microform for others.  Does anyone
have any other ideas?  We have limited staff and financial
resources. Thanks,

Jenni Boone
Library Associate
Acquisitions and Collection Development
Southwest Missouri State University
Springfield, MO 65804
417-836-4544

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 10:2
                   Distributed: Monday, June 24, 1996
                        Message Id: cdl-10-2-016
                                  ***