Here’s a library riddle.  What do The Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods, Sixth and Fifth Century Pottery from Excavations made at Rhitsona, and A Commentary on Catullus have in common?

Well, until recently, the answer would have been that they are all books in the Blegen Library’s collection that were literally falling apart and thus in danger of not being available for future scholars to consult.  However, since Maria-Anastasia Gkoutsidou joined the library staff, the answer to the riddle is now, “they are all books in the Blegen Library’s collection that have been repaired and saved from further deterioration”.

In addition to her other duties such as processing new materials and maintaining the New Book shelf, Maria also looks after older library books, mending torn pages, replacing detached spines and repairing hinges and corners.  She learned her craft with expert assistance from Asimina Rammou and Antonis Basbanos, professional book conservators from the National Library of Greece.  She also read manuals and viewed videos on the subject of book conservation and applied the skills she acquired to worn and damaged books in the library’s collection.

Maria commonly uses simple but special tools and supplies to mend books.  They include brushes, book glue, binding tape, a scalpel, a micro-spatula, a bone folder, book cloth, waxed paper, Chinese paper and transparent mending tape.  The library also has a tacking iron and book press among other tools to assist with book repair.  The repairs most often required are mending torn pages or tipping in detached pages, hinge repair when the front and back covers of a book are loose or detached, reinforcing worn corners of bindings, and repairing spines.  This last is the repair most often required since spines are easily damaged by improper handling and shelving of books and by photocopying or using a flatbed scanner to reproduce pages of books.

Since joining the Blegen Library staff in January 2011, Maria has saved more than 50 books.  Mending takes time, she told me, and one book may require several days before it is ready to return to the shelf.  While we know that many, many volumes in the collection are in need of mending, she encourages members and readers to tell her about specific titles or even bring the books directly to her and she will see what she can do.  If a volume is damaged beyond Maria’s ability to repair it, the next step would be to send it to the professional book binder that ASCSA’s libraries work with or, in extreme cases, to Ms. Rammou and Mr. Basbanos, the book conservators mentioned above who have been so generous with their time and knowledge of book repair.

However, professional binding or conservation is expensive.  Rebinding a damaged volume frequently costs more than a new book and expert conservation can cost several times that.  Yet, many if not most of the books in the Blegen Library’s collection can no longer be acquired at all so replacing those that are damaged beyond in-house repair is simply not an option.  Funds spent to preserve the collection are funds that cannot be spent to add to the collection since the Blegen Library’s budget, like all library budgets, is finite.

Of course, frequently consulted books will eventually fall apart and need repair or replacement.  I asked Maria what library users can do to help preserve our collection for future generations of scholars.  Here are her tips for minimizing the wear and tear on books:

• Remove a book from the shelf from the middle of the spine and by moving the books on either side to pull it straight off.  Don’t pull a book off the shelf by grabbing the top of the spine.
• Keep books standing vertically on the shelves.  Don’t let them lean or slide over.  Use the bookends.  If a book is too tall for the shelf, don’t shelve it on its spine if the spine is at all curved and don’t shelve it on its foredge if the covers are not well attached.
• Keep books away from open windows and sunlight.  Keep them in, cool, dry places. 
• Read with clean hands.
• Never use “post-its” or “stickies”.  The adhesive damages paper and can mar print.
• Do not lay books open flat on a surface.  Use bookmarks (but not adhesive ones!) instead.
• Avoid photocopying.  Instead use the special book scanner in the Blegen Library.

All of us at the Blegen Library thank you for helping us maintain our book collection!