RE: Preservation of sheet music

[Alice Carli <apma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Like Mr. Helmer in Oregon, we at Sibley Music Library pam-bind all of our
single-signature sheet music, place parts and single sheets in pockets, and add extra
labels to items with pockets to alert circulation staff to check for them.
We DO use the preglued strips on commercial pam-binders, but we don't glue the music
in directly. Se remove the staples, sew the pamphlet into a cover cut from light,
acid-free paper that is reinforced with tape along the fold, then glue that cover into
the binder. That way, we can buy and use the cheaper binders, but the binding is fully
reversible and the music doesn't crack along the tape edge (otherwise it would, as
older bindings here do indeed prove). The tape reinforcement of the cover also helps,
since it is usually the outermost sheet of paper in a folio that tears along the fold
first, under heavy use (unless there's a page with a particularly difficlut passage to
play...). One lesson we did learn years ago was NOT to tape-reinforce the innermost
sheet of the folio; these don't tend to tear in use, and do tend to break along the
edges of the tape as they age. We do have multiple-signature items library-bound, with
the directions that they be sewn through the fold only; single-sheet bindings we have
double-fanned.

Alice Carli
Conservator
Sibley Music Library
Eastman School of Music
University of Rochester