Establishing a book repair program

    **** Moderator's comments: Please respond directly to the author.

The following is posted on behalf of E.R.


    I am trying to argue for in-house book repair for a small
    library.  This is not to even say I am arguing for
    "preservation" to be performed in house.  I am speaking more of
    the level of basic book repair as instructed by Jane Greenfield
    in "Basic Book Repair with Jane Greenfield".  This is to control
    my start-up costs to a much higher degree (essentially scale
    down my proposal from one of arguing for a full-fledged
    Preservation Department.

    Given this, I have enough documentation to support my position
    that such book repair be done in-house versus outsourced, but I
    cannot seem to find any information on how much doing repair at
    all saves money or circulation cycles versus letting a book go
    to the point that it needs replacement. For example, I was given
    a figure by David at the SIS library that a soft cover book that
    is bound in mylar can circulate 40 times usually without repair
    as opposed to circulation 10 times when the soft-bound book is
    left "untreated".  Are there any figures I can cite that are
    general figures for the purposes of configuring a budget... for
    example, the average book can circulate 15 times until needing
    repair.  If minor repairs are completed on the monograph, it can
    circulate 35 times without replacement (I realize these figures
    hold no bearing to reality, but this is the type of structure of
    data I am seeking.)  Is there anything that you may be aware of
    that I can go to as a resource, either an in-house library
    document or otherwise?

    Eulalia (a humble novice to the budget proposal format)

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 13:32
                Distributed: Thursday, December 2, 1999
                       Message Id: cdl-13-32-024
                                  ***