I was fortunate to teach a book repair workshop for The Society of North Carolina Archivists (SNCA) on March 6. The workshop was held in the Preservation lab, part of their Special Collections Research Center at North Carolina State University in D. H. Hill Library in Raleigh. I co-taught with my friend and colleague, Robin Harper, who works in the lab. It was great to teach with Robin, and have her ideas, input and back up. What a pleasure. We had 12 participants, who were SNCA members. The space was very nice, open and well lighted. Each person had plenty of room to work, and they seemed engaged and happy to learn the basics of book repair.

We began with tipping in a loose page- the simplest and likely most often used technique. This involves applying a bead of glue in the joint where a page has come loose. Following this, we taught using heat set tissue for repairing tears in paper, or to back a fragile page or dust jacket. this is always fun and little magical. We also demonstrated using Japanese tissue (Sekishu paper) to repair broken joints in a book and for lining spines to re-attach loose boards. The last section we taught was replacing a broken spine piece, and re-inserting it on the book. This is a repair I’ve used for 30 years, and is an ideal repair for cloth bindings.

The last section of the workshop I demonstrated repair techniques. I demonstrated repairing paperback books, adding an new end sheet on a book, and corner repair.

Thank you to NC State Preservation: especially co-teacher, Robin Harper and Preservation Librarian, Jamie Bradway.