Book Repair ROCKS!

OK it’s official: I love books, not just reading them, but the physical books themselves. They call that a bibliophile but you can just call me a book lover.

I took one of the most interesting classes this summer quarter – Book Repair – and I had the best time. We met all Saturday for 8 weeks at the campus, which is about an hour’s drive from my house. There were 10 students, so we got to know each other pretty well. We learned about the structure and function of books as well as how different damage happens. We took in our own books (or in the case of several librarians in the class, books from their library) with different damage to repair. We learned so much cool stuff and it felt like arts & crafts each week. We repaired torn pages, loose pages, torn bindings, damaged spines, and we even turned a paperback book into a hardcover book!

Since I’m a bibliophile and take great care of my books, it was sometimes hard to find damaged books to take in for class. So I put out the call to several people to find books needing repairs. I got some real beat up books that unfortunately were beyond my skills. I would love to learn how to repair books that are literally falling apart, but this class was centered on fixing damage before it needed a complete overhaul.

The pictures here are of spine repairs and corner repairs that I did for class. I completely replaced the spine on two books (The Magic of Xanth and The Circle of Braves) and repaired the cover corners as well as the internal spine of Zane Grey’s The Lost Wagon Train. Don’t they look cool!?

All the corners are recovered even though only one was really beaten up. The damaged spine is replaced and everything looks great.

In addition I took Collection Development, where we learned about the decision-making process behind what books a library should add to (or subtract from) its collection. We talked about censorship, finding appropriate materials, policies, and other library-geek details. It was really interesting and something I had never really learned about. I also had Pacific Northwest History, which as an intense bunch of reading and writing, but I learned a lot of interesting stuff about the region.

Added later Sunday: Here are a couple of photos of the book by Brenda that I turned from paperback to hardcover. Pretty special, if I do say so myself...

Coming next (I think): An update on the move to Yelm, including video of the house being installed.