Deferred Binding

[abbeypub@xxxxxxxxx (Abbey Publications)]

With reference to Sherry Byrne's and Richard Frieder's comments on deferred
binding, I would like to give an example of a library where it was (and
still is, probably) used successfully.  At Brigham Young University in the
1980s, we had a good bindery prep section, and Kathy, who headed it, would
go to the carts of books that had just been received, and pull from them
the books she knew would not see heavy use, or that were bound well enough
for the expected usage.  They would be cataloged, get call numbers and go
straight to the stacks.  The others would be bound as a matter of policy.

Kathy could anticipate what kind of paperback books would get heavy use,
because from time to time she would go through the stacks and pull the
books that were in poor shape, and send them for binding.  We could not set
a policy that all paperbound books would be bound, or that none would be
bound, because the system depended on the judgment of an experienced
person.  I suppose a working policy could have been set up so that the task
of pulling books from those carts could be delegated, but it took her so
little time that it would hardly have been worth the while to formulate a
policy.  She used to give examples of the sort that got heavy use, but the
list was never complete:  computer manuals, undergraduate textbooks and
assigned reading were some of her examples.

Paperbacks for light reading were kept in a special lounge and the binding
(or non-binding) policy for them was entirely separate, since they were
easily and cheaply replaceable if they wore out.

In the 1970s I visited the inhouse bindery of the Newberry Library, where
they would rebind every single paperback, no matter how good the original
binding was, and no matter how esoteric the subject was.  I felt bad that
they were wasting so much money on a procedure that was often unnecessary,
and I had to bite my tongue to keep from expressing my opinion, because
nobody had actually asked me for it.  I was a binder at that time, so my
opinion was not biased as a result of ignorance.

I feel that preservation money is so scarce that it should not be spent on
procedures that cannot be justified as cost-effective.  In that category I
would also put routine oiling of leather books.

Ellen McCrady