The Subtle Art Of Book Surgery
As it has with everything it seems, 2020 has upended library-life as well. Throughout my almost ten years of service at our town's public library, I have seen a fair bit of change, but nothing to contend with the Covid-19 tornado. That said, even though I now PPE myself and run out items to patrons like a Door Dash food delivery person, there are a few things about my work that has stayed blissfully the same, book surgery being one of them.
There is a mending shelf in the back which we place items on that require a little bit of attention. The vast majority of books needing mending just need to have their spines re-glued, as the old adage "They don't make things like they used to" actually does apply in this case. Books are cheaply and readily mass produced, and their overall composition reflects this fact. Most of the materials in our library, be they an inexpensive juvenile paperback or a $30 cover price hardback from the NYT's best seller list are just not made to handle the perilous realm that is public circulation.
Another common facet of my book surgery duties is repairing torn pages. This is usually accomplished with whatever tape is required for the job, and I have three go-to tapes that I use. My favorite is the polyester binding tape. I liken repairing a binding with some of that glorious tape to putting a groovy pair of tight Saturday Night Fever-style bellbottoms on the wounded book.
Children's books take an especially vigorous beating, and my packing tape and Scotch tape are both utilized quite frequently repairing tears both big and small. Earlier I remedied Where's Waldo's decapitated visage with a careful application of tape, I'm sure he was thankful.
Torn cover pages are quite common, and if the tear is too great or the cover page macerated too greatly by a book drop massacre, then I get out my box cutter and surgically remove the entire cover page. That's probably blasphemy to some people, but often times the book has many more checkouts left in it, and usually it's a kid's book that this happens too. Children don't care about blank cover pages and circulation managers don't want books in circulation that look "meh" thus a nice bit of scalpel-ing pleases both parties.
When it comes to gluing broken bindings back together, I use this lovely plastic adhesive. The glorious petrochemical based glue gives the repaired item enough flex to handle the rigors of a few more circulations. Plastic really is a miracle.
And that brings us to the sad part of this narrative, a book that is un-fixable. Now, I can mend almost any book, but sometimes too much mending isn't cost effective, or really that effective to do at all. When a poorly manufactured paperback is fluttering apart in my hands, I know it's time is up. Those books I mark as done and I ask for a new copy to be ordered if the item circulates heavily. Today a battered copy of The Hunger Games offered itself up as tribute for the last time, I ended its misery by withdrawing it from the system and ordered its replacement Insert moody whistley folk song here.
There are some books that I will always mend, our classics copies come to mind. We have some old hardbound copies of books that I will go the extra mile for. Honestly, the older books are so well made that even at sixty plus years old they are still hanging in there. And often when one needs a little mending care I get a bit excited because then I get to bust out my advanced level book surgical skills, like the needle and thread, fancy mending tape skills. It's a rare occurrence indeed.
Honestly though, most of my book surgery instances are of the gluing and taping variety. About once a month or so when I notice the shelf looks fuller than a Kardashian's pout, I go on a book mending bender and clear out those needing attention. There really is something so satisfying about fixing something rather than tossing it in the trash. I know we live in a time of plenty with readily available things at our disposal, but I have to say it feels so good to make something broken whole again so that it can be enjoyed by a member of my community and then some.
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's still slightly tacky from getting un-necessarily glued iPhone.