Subject: Preservation of old manuals

From: [email-masked] (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879)
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 21:13:10 GMT

I have been asked to post something on this topic, and it got a bit longer
than I expected.
=================================CUT======================================

		   An Introduction to Bookbinding
		Particularly aimed at the preservation
			of old DEC handbooks

			  By Douglas Jones
			 [email-masked]
				1992

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
PREPARATION FOR PHOTOCOPYING
PHOTOCOPYING
COLLATING AND FOLDING
MAKING A COVER
PUNCHING THE PAGES
SEWING THE PAGES TO THE COVER
TRIMMING THE PAGES
MAKING DUST JACKETS

INTRODUCTION

after 1966, DEC began printing their logic handbooks and CPU reference
manuals in a paperback format on inexpensive pulp paper.  This had the
merit that the books were inexpensive, but the shelf-life of the books
was not much greater than the market life of the hardware.  For those
of us who are trying to restore old computer systems, it means we have
to use handbooks that are printed on yellow, brittle paper.

I have consulted with people at the University of Iowa Book Conservation
Laboratory, and they say that there is a simple test used to determine
if the paper on which a book has been printed is beyond saving.  Dog-ear
a page; if the dog-ear breaks off at the crease after folding and reverse
folding, the paper is beyond saving.

This does not mean that the book itself is worthless!  It is ripe for
photocopying, and if the the copies are made on archival paper and
properly bound, they will last for centuries with reasonable care.

I wouldn't recommend undertaking this project more than once for any
particular book!  It's lots of work!  Read this whole report before trying
it yourself.  The process I'm describing destroys your copy of the book
in the process of making one or more new copies.  If your copy has
sentimental value, you might not want to do this.  Furthermore, if anyone
else has done the job, you may be able to cut your work in half if they
saved an unbound photocopy that can be re-copied for you.

Finally, this writeup applies to manuals that are bound in book form --
if you've got a looseleaf binder or spiral bound manual, it's all quite
a bit easier; you simply remove the pages from the binder, photocopy them,
punch them and hang them in a new binder.  You'll still want permission
to make a photocopy, and the advice below on archival paper selection still
applies.

PREPARATION FOR PHOTOCOPYING

Once you have concluded that a paperback is beond repair, the first step
in preserving its contents is to complete its destruction.  Slice off the
glued spine of the book, so that the pages come apart as separate sheets.
You can cut the sheets from the spine with an X-acto knife, or you can find
a shop with a paper shear that will cut the spine loose.  Here in Iowa
City, one of the larger copy shops has a shear; they charge $2 a cut, which
isn't a bad price considering the total cost of the project.

Keep the pages in order!  The next step is to tape the pages into pairs for
copying so that the pairs can be folded and sewn into a bound hardback book.
If you examine commercially bound books, you will find that the pages are
organized into "signatures" of 4 to 16 sheets (always a power of two), and
we are about to reconstruct such a signature structure.

Get a supply of white paper tape, "Scotch Brand Post-It Tape" works very
well; it took three rolls to make up DEC's "Introduction to Programming
1973".  Make a jig for taping your pages out of a single sheet of standard
size typing paper.  This is the size paper you will be making the photocopys
on.  Note that two pages, side by side, of the original book are slightly
smaller than the sheet of typing paper.  You will need a margin in the
middle of each copied sheet to sew the binding and similar margins around
the edges are no problem, so draw the following layout diagram on your sheet
of paper:

   ______________________________________________
  |  __________________      __________________  |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |<---------------->|    |                  | |
  | |   Width of one   |    |                  | |
  | |   page cut from  |    |                  | |
  | |   paperback      |    |                  | |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |                  |    |                  | |
  | |__________________|    |__________________| |
  |______________________________________________|

The gap between the outlines of the two pages must be narrower than the white
tape, enough narrower that a strip of tape can get a firm grip on each page
without covering any print.  Note that DEC paperbacks were cheaply made, and
that this means that they frequently had sloppy centering of the printed
material on each page.

Now you are ready to set to work.  Take the stack of original pages, in
order, right side up, and turn over the top 8 sheets, placing them beside
the stack as if they were still bound to a common spine.  Then pick off
the top sheet of the left stack and put it on the left square of your
jig and put the top sheet of the right stack on the right square of your
jig, and tape them together, being careful not to shift their alignment.

Pause to doctor any dirt specks, pencil marks or other marks that might
spoil your photocopy, then flip the pair of taped together pages, tape them
together on the flip side, and doctor that side, if needed, before setting
the pair of pages aside.

Do not turn over pages except when turning blocks of 8 or when flipping
pairs of pages, an operation done once with each pair!  This greatly
simplifies keeping the book in order through this process!

Keep making pairs of pages, where each pair consumes the top page from each
of two piles of pages, until you have exhausted the smaller pile.  At this
point, you will have a pile of 8 pairs of pages.  this is the prototype of
one of the reconstructed signatures of the book.  Having carefully set aside
your a signature, turn another block of 8 pages and repeat the process,
reconstructing the next signature.

In copying DEC's 1973 Introduction to Programming, I found (from occasional
ink smears and other printing defects) that the 8 sheet signatures I
reconstructed were the original signatures as printed for DEC.  The book
was made of 19 such signatures, which comes to 152 double sheets of paper.
In the original printing, each signature was printed on one sheet of
newsprint that was then folded 4 times and cut to size before being glued
into a paperback binding.

PHOTOCOPYING

When talking with a photocopy shop about copying what is obviously a book,
they'll demand permission to make a copy.  I got permission by calling
1-800-DEC-DIRECT; they referred me to the right person, who told me to fax
a request for permission.  They faxed me a letter of permission a week or
two later.  In my letter asking permission, I made it clear that I was
interested in preserving out of print documentation, and I made it clear
that I intended to trade some of my photocopies for other hard to get
documentation.  DEC required that I include a statement that the copies
were made by premission with the DEC copyright notice.

Since you most likely have over 100 sheets of paper that need copying,
check a variety of photocopying houses, looking for a good price.  Your
taped pairs of pages are too fragile to be put through an automatic sheet
feeder, and because they are slightly undersize, they will need to be hand
centered on the glass of the copying machine.  Most photocopying houses
will charge you extra for hand placement of originals.  When I copied DEC's
Introduction to Programming, the handling charge was $0.05 per page, but
some places charge up to $0.25.

You've done a bit of work to make up page pairs, and you'll want the copies
to last, so get them photocopied on archival paper; 25% cotton bond
typically costs a penny or two extra per sheet.  For DEC's 1973
Introduction to Programming, the total cost of paper, copying and
special handling came to $0.20 a two-sided sheet for the first copy and
$0.11 a sheet for all subsequent copies.  That means that my first photocopy
of the entire book cost $30.40, while subsequent copies cost $16.72.  At
these prices, I strongly recommend making extra copies!

You have just destroyed a copy of a book that is out of print, so why not
make a few extra copies; also, keep one copy in unbound form in case you or
anyone else ever want more copies.  The copy will be on good paper, so it
can be put in an automatic sheet feeder, avoiding special handling charges.

To minimize the problems you have with your photocopying house, provide them
with the jig you used to paste up your pages and say you want them centered
exactly as shown by the outlines on that jig.  Then give them the jig and
say they're free to cut out the center of the page and stick it to the
glass of their photocopying machine with post-it tape to help them center
the copy.  If they screw up the centering, you can and should get hard nosed
about it.

Finally, tell them to keep the signatures together!  Make it clear that you
don't want your pages shuffled.  Collating costs a bit extra, so I decided
to do it myself, but I asked them to cleanly separate each signature from
the next in the stack of copies I got, and to keep the sheets in order.
They did.

COLLATING AND FOLDING

When you get your copies back from the photocopy shop, you'll have a box of
paper, and you want to have a box of books.  The steps you need to go
through before binding the books are collating the pages of each signature,
folding the signatures, and collating the signatures.

Collating a signature is easiest if you pay the photocopying shop to do it
for you, since they have collating photocopying machines.  Lacking this,
lay out the 8 piles of paper representing the 8 sheets that make up the
first signature and pick the top page off each pile to make one signature.
Stack them so that the top page in the stack has consecutive page numbers
on top, and so that reading up one side of the pile and down the other, the
page numbers are in order.  You may have to shuffle things a bit before you
get the hang of this, but it's not hard once you get going.

Once you finish collating the first signature of each copy of your book,
set it aside and collate the second signature of each copy.  Keep the
collated signatures for each copy together, stacked in order, so that
you will end up with each book in a separate pile.

If you don't want a hardback book, stop here!  Cut each signature in
half where you would otherwise fold it, then either punch the holes needed
to hang the page in a downsized 3 ring binder or have it punched and spiral
bound.  A sewn binding is more durable, but it's lots of work.

The final step prior to binding each copy of the book is to fold the
signatures that will make up that book.  I do this freehand, rolling the
8-page bunch that makes up one signature until the edges are even, then
holding the edges together with one hand while I crease it with the other.

When you get all the signatures of one copy of the book folded, they won't
stack very well because the creases aren't properly set.  To set the creases,
force the books into a neat stack and clamp them that way overnight.  Lacking
a bookpress, stack an unabridged dictionary or a few volumes of the
encyclopedea on top of the pile of folded signatures.

MAKING A COVER

You've got a decent book now, on archival paper, and you need a cover that
will be reasonably durable.  A full hard-backed case binding is a big
project, so I'll recommend something less, a long-stitched soft-board
binding.  This was recommended to be by the book conservation lab at the
University of Iowa.

The cover is made of cardboard -- specifically acid free two ply museum
board.  Good art-supply stores carry this.  A sheet will make about eight
book covers.

In determining the size of the cover, you have to allow for not only the
thickness of the paper, but the thickness of the thread used to sew the
binding, so now is the time to get the thread.  Traditionally, unbleached
linen thread is the preferred material, but unbleached long-staple cotton
will do almost as well.  The key is that it is a natural fiber comparable
in expected lifetime to the paper and the cover material, and it has very
long fibers, giving it great strength.

The thread should be heavy, heavy enough that you might rate it as fine
cordage as easily as rating it as heavy thread!  Thread diameters of close
to a millimeter (when uncompressed and not under tension) are quite
reasonable.  The thread should compress to about 1/2 millimeter when
successive turns are wrapped tightly around a pencil.

If you have 19 signatures, as in DEC's 1973 Introduction to Programming,
you'll need to add the thickness of 19 threads to the thickness of your
book.  To find this, wrap 19 turns of thread tightly around a pencil and
measure the length of the wrapping.

The museum board has the interesting property that it flexes fairly easily
in one dimension but it is fairly stiff in the other direction.  You want
your cover to flex easily from side to side, since that's the way you tend
to bend the covers of a book when you hold it open to read.  You want the
book to be stiff from top to bottom, since bending in that direction should
never happen.  Taking this into account, cut a rectangle of museum board
with the following dimensions:

   ______________________________________________ _______ __
  |  __________________      _____^____________  |       |  |
  | |                  |    |     |            | |       |  |
  | |                  |    |     |            | |       |  |
  | |                  |    |     |            | |       |  |
  | |                  |    |     |            | |      >|--|<-- Thickness
  | |                  |    |     |            | |       |  |    of the
  | |                  |    |     |            | |       |  |    thread.
  |<-------------------------------------------->|       |  |
  | |   Width and height of one   |            | |       |  |
  | |   unfolded sheet of one of  |            | |       |  |
  | |   your signatures, that is, |            | |<----->|  | -- Thickness
  | |   a sheet of typing paper.  |            | |       |  |    of the
  | |                  |    |     |            | |       |  |    stacked
  | |                  |    |     |            | |       |  |    pages (not
  | |                  |    |     |            | |       |  |    measured
  | |                  |    |     |            | |       |  |    at creased
  | |__________________|    |_____|____________| |       |  |    edge!)
  |_______________________________v______________|_______|__|

                                                 |<-------->|

                                                Planned thickness
                                                of spine of book.

Do not cut the cover oversize.  This cover is intended to cover the pages
of the book in roughly the way a conventional paperback cover does, with
the edges of the cardboard exactly even with the edges of the bound pages.

I did all my cutting with a carpenter's square to guide a large X-acto
knife.  It took two or three scores with the knife to cut all the way
through, and I used a sheet of crummy cardboard as backing so I wouldn't
cut into the table top.

Having cut out a rectangular piece of cardboard, you need to score the
creases where the cover will hinge to wrap around the pages.  I measured
twice, then set my straight-edge along the planned hinge lines and used
a blunt tool (the rounded corner of a smaller metal ruler) to score the
crease.  You don't want to cut or tear the fibers of the board when you
do this, only compress them to guide the crease.

   _________________________________________________________
  |                       |          |                      |
  |                       ||--------||                      |
  |                       |          |                      |
  |                       ||--------||                      |
  |                       |          |                      |
  |                       ||--------||                      |
  |                       |          |                      |
  |                       ||--------||                      |
  |                       |          |                      |
  |                       ||--------||                      |
  |                       |          |                      |
  |                       ||--------||                      |
  |                       |          |                      |
  |                       ||--------||                      |
  |                       |          |                      |
  |                       ||--------||                      |
  |_______________________|__________|______________________|

Before you bend the cover, you need to cut a series of equally spaced
square-ended slits in the cover.  Typically, these should be about an inch
apart, (anywhere from 2 to 3 cm will do) and the end slits should be closer
to the ends (about 1/2 inch or 1.5 cm is nice).  Each slit should be about
1 mm wide, but the precise width is less important than the uniformity.

I cut 8 slits for this purpose, but 7 would be just as good.  The ends of
the slits should come to about 1/2 the thickness of one signature from the
creases that you just scored.

PUNCHING THE PAGES

Paper is hard stuff, and pushing a sewing needle through 8 layers is no
fun, so it is far easier to pre-punch each signature!  To do this, make a
jig out of a scrap of cardboard with a very straight edge.  First, cut a
shallow wide notch in the cardboard.  The depth of the notch should be
about the thickness of 8 sheets of paper.  The width of the notch should
be the height of the finished book.  Then, put the jig parallel to the
length of the spine, so the notch just brackets the cover and carefully
mark where each slot in the spine passes your jig.  Finish the jig by
making a V shaped notch at each mark.  These notches show where each hole
goes in the signatures.

It's a rare day that you can get the slots in your spine perfectly
symmetrical, so mark one end of your jig as up, so that you can punch
all of your signatures the same way.  Always make the up direction
point towards the top of the page, and you'll get an even book as a
result.

Here's you jig, resting against the spine:

     |    __        __        __        __        __
 ____|    ||        ||        ||        ||        ||    |____
|    |____||________||________||________||________||____|    |
|         \/        \/        \/        \/        \/         |
|                                                            |
|                                           UP ------->      |
|____________________________________________________________|
     |                                                  |

The purpose of the V shaped notches is to guide the tip of an awl as you
punch holes in your signatures.  Rest the notched edge of your jig in the
crease of a folded signature, with the back of the fold against a wood block,
and use a good sharp awl to punch holes.  Keep the signature folded fairly
tightly, and the awl will find the center of the crease in the signature and
the center of the notch fairly naturally.

SEWING THE PAGES TO THE COVER

Now, you're ready to sew the book!  The long stitch I used is a fairly
modern modification of an ancient style of stitching; the basic rules
are simple:  Each signature is sewn to the cover in turn, starting at the
front of the book.  The thread runs once, the length of each signature,
alternately inside the fold of the signature and outside the spine of the
cover.  The thread always runs inside the fold of the signature at the
ends of the book.  Except at the ends, the threads of successive signatures
take turns being inside and outside.  Looking at the back of a finished
book with 4 signatures that follows these rules, you'll see something like
this:
          __________________________________________
         |                                          |
Start -->|---|------|      |------|      |------| _-|
         |-_=|      |------|      |------|      |=--|
         |-  |------|      |------|      |------| _-|
End ---->|---|------|------|      |------|      |=--|
         |__________________________________________|

The book is sewn with a single thread, between the indicated points.
Note that it takes a bit of cleverness to sew the ends of the signatures,
since the natural alternation of over and under brings the thread out
somewhat randomly in one or the other orientation.

Note that the thread always passes over the end of each signature and around
the end of the spine.  This helps prevent the pages from tearing out,
because tears almost always begin at the end of the crease.

Before you start sewing, you need to measure out enough thread to sew the
entire book.  For a book with 19 or 20 signatures, wrap the thread 10 times
around the handfull of signatures when they're clenched tightly in the
cover.  Then wrap one or two turns for good luck.  It's better to have a bit
of extra thread than to have to knot the thread in midbook!

Before you start sewing, it helps (but is not strictly necessary) to wax
the thread with beeswax.  To do this, clamp the thread against a block of
beeswax with your thumb and pull it through with your other hand.  The
thread will tend to cut a slot in the wax, so keep changing the angle of
pull to even out the wear on the wax.  Do this two or three times with the
full length of thread before you start sewing.

Here, in some detail, is a cross section of the knotting at the end of a
thread:
                  loose end
     ______   _________\  _________              _______
    /      \ /         \\/         \            /
   | ====== X ========= X ========= \ ======== / =======
    \______/ \_________/             \________/
                        
Try to keep the knot and the loose end on the inside of the book.  A tight
square knot will do well here.  You'll begin by making this knot at one
end of the first signature, then finish sewing the first signature to the
spine.  At the end, you'll face a problem -- how to finish one signature and
start the next.

A note of caution:  The final quality control check happens when you commit
yourself to sewing in a signature!  Once the wrong signature is sewn in or
the right one is sewn in with a missing or inverted page, it's no fun to
undo.  Check what signature you are sewing, and make sure it is all there!

Also, with each signature, check that all the pre-punched holes line up with
the slits in the cover.  If they don't you've probably got the signature
upside down.  If they still don't line up, you've done a bad job punching
the holes, and you'll have to repunch a few.

Here, in some detail is the sewing pattern used to change from one signature
to the next.  If the thread emerges from the end of a signature in the crease
of that signature, go outside the cover and down into the prepunched hole in
the next signature, then out the crease, over the spine, and through the same
hole as you begin sewing the length of the next signature.

If the thread emerges from the end of a signature outside the spine, go
around the end and down the crease, re-using the last hole in the same
signature before going outside, around the end of the next signature, and up
the crease.

In both cases, the above sewing pattern will produce a result that looks like
the following:
                                            //
    |                         =======  and // thread outside back of spine.
    |###---------==========               //
    | //                      -------  thread hidden in fold of signature.
    |//
    |---=========----------   #######  thread outside and hidden along
    |                                  the same line.

Whenever you use the same hole twice, always be sure not to sew the thread
through itself.  Pull the thread that goes through the hole off to one
side, then thread the needle through to the other side of the same hole.

As you reach the end of the book, it will get hard to squeeze the last
signatures in.  You'll have to press hard to move the already bound pages
down the spine to make room for the last signatures, and as you work on
the very last one, you'll have to squeeze the book again each time you
try to get the needle through.  If you measured the spine width correctly,
you'll just barely manage to fit the last signature in -- that's the test
of a perfect fit.

If you run out of thread before you reach the end of the book, follow the
instructions below for tightening the thread before you tie on a new length
of thread!  Otherwise, you'll end up with a knot that you may well have to
pull through a hole in the sewing when you try to tighten the thread
later.

Before you tie the final knot in the book, tighten the thread, working
along the spine from the inital knot towards the end, pulling out any
slack until the thread is uniformly tight throughout the sewing.  I use a
sharp awl (the same one I used to punch the holes in the signatures) to
do this, since it is easy to insert the tip under a tight loop of thread
and pull the slack forward to that loop, tightening the previous loop.
You don't need to pull too hard, but you don't want to leave any slack
in the binding.

Finally, when the sewing is uniformly tight, tie the final knot, and you
have a book!  If the pages aren't in the right order at this point, though
you'll have trouble fixing the order without cutting the thread and
re-sewing!

TRIMMING THE PAGES

You now have a book, but you'll notice that the pages don't come out
even along the "working edge" of the book.  The innermost pages of each
signature stick out farther than the others, and this makes it hard to
thumb through the book.

People who do "art bookbinding" seem to like this irregularity, but for
a book you intend to be read, it's worth trimming the pages to make an
even face.  The easy way to do this is to take the book to a place that
can shear off the edges.  The same shear that works for trimming off the
spine of the original book will also serve to trim the pages of the new
book, so if you can have the book trimmed for only a few dollars, do so.
Tell the people who are trimming the book to square up the edge before
they trim it, and then take off about 1/8 inch or 3 mm.  If you've got
appropriate margins around your photocopies, this shouldn't cut into the
images of the original pages.

Do not try to have the top and bottom trimmed!  No matter how irregular
this is, your thread reaches all the way to both ends of the spine many
times, and trimming the top and bottom would cut it!

You can make a tool to trim your own book out of a wood chisel (1/2 inch
or 15 mm minimum width) and a few blocks of hardwood.  You'll need two
planks about 3/4 inch or 2 cm thick and a few inches longer than the book
to use as clamps.  Clamp the book loosely between these planks, using C
clamps or bolts through the ends of the planks, then square up the
irregular edge of the book by pressing it edge down on a tabletop.  Use
shims about 1/8 inch thick to hold the two planks back from the irregular
edge  (I used thin LEGO bricks).  The edges of the planks define the
plane along which you will trim the book.

Once you have the book squared up, with the squared edge protruding the
right distance from the clamps, tighten the clamps down hard, being careful
not to disturb the squareness of the assembly.

Now, you're ready to plow off the rough edges with your chisel, except
that you need a jig to help hold the flat of the chisel exactly in the
plane of the faces of your plank clamps.  Here's my jig:

                  __________________________________________
                 |     Hardwood Jig                         |
    __________   |             _______________              |
   | chisel   |__|            |__             |             |
   | handle   |__|____________|__\/\/\/\/\/\|_|_____________|
   |__________|       ^    |     ||||||||||||     |
                      |    | jaw |||||||||||| jaw |
         flat of chisel    | of  ||| book |||  of |<-- In retrospect, I
         is held exactly   |clamp|||      |||clamp|    think that this
         in plane of base  |     ||        ||     |    jaw should have
         of jig.           |     |          |     |    been thicker!
         
I held the chisel into my plowing jig with a pair of countersunk wood screws
that grasped the shank of the blade between the handle and flat.  As shown
in the above picture, the chisel looks a bit blunt and it's just starting
to cut into the pages on the left edge of the book.

To cut with this plow, hold the jig at a slight incline and stroke the sharp
edge of the blade gently against the edge of the book, working along the full
length of the book with each stroke.  Better to go too slow than too fast!
If you try to cut quickly, you'll gouge your pages.

It is crucial that your chisel be very sharp, and there must be no bevel at
all on the flat side of the blade!  Careless sharpening will frequently put
a slight bevel on the flat side, and this will make your plowing ride up as
you work across the book instead of allowing you to hold to one plane.

MAKING DUST JACKETS

Your cardboard cover has threads that show on the outside, and it has no
title or cover art!  You can solve both of these problems with a paper
dust cover.  I used 11 by 17 (double the size of the typing paper on
which the book was copied) paper as a dust jacket.

If you're lucky, you'll have an original cover that you can photocopy
onto the dust jacket for cover art, but by the time a book has reached the
point where this kind of project is worth while, this is unlikely.  I
did some cut-and-paste work with photocopies of parts of the body of the
book to reconstruct an approximation of the typography of the original
cover, then photocopied this onto a colored paper dust jacket before
cutting it to shape.

Here's a plan for a good archival
dust jacket:
                                          _ The line of this crease is
                _______   ___   _______  /  critical -- start this fold
               /       \ |   | /       \ |  with the book closed; otherwise
    _________ /_________\|___|/_________\__________    the cover will tend
   |         |           |   |           |         |   to pull the book open.
   |         |           |   |           |         |
   |         |           |   |           |         |
   |         |           |   |           |         |
   |         |           |   |           |         |
   |         |           |   |           |         |<-- fold the end over
   |         |           |   |           |         |    first.
   |         |           |   |           |         |
   |         |           |   |           |         |
   |_________|___________|___|___________|_________|
              \         /|   |\         /
               \_______/ |___| \_______/ <-- fold these flaps over second,
                           ^                 and tape or glue to the folded
                           |                 end flap.
             Flap to fold under (if you are
             jacketing an already jacketed
             book, carefully tuck it into 
             the end of spine). this is the
             first step in folding the book
             cover onto the book.

The 11 by 17 paper I used (the largest size the photocopying shop could
handle) wasn't long enough to fully jacket the insides of the cardboard
book covers, so I used photocopies of the insides of the original cover
as "end papers", gluing them to the dust jacket (but not to the cardboard
cover) with PVA cement after the dust jacket was folded on.  You'll need
to clamp the book shut to keep the paper flat while the glue dries, but
this raises the risk of some glue leaking out and sticking to the rest
of the book.  To prevent this, insert sheets of wax paper between the
sheet you are gluing and the page it shouldn't stick to.

If you intend to use the book much, I recommend wrapping the paper dust
jacket in a mylar jacket -- mylar drafting film is the ideal stuff.  Use
"magic transparent tape" to hold the mylar dust jacket on (it's also made
of mylar), taping the jacket to itself, not to the book.

DO NOT USE VINYL DUST JACKETS!  Vinyl sticks to xerographic copies, pulling
the ink from the paper, and it is slightly acid, speeding the corrosion of
the paper.  Polyethylene is ok.

---

From: [email-masked] (Bob Pasker)
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 21:07:51 GMT

i forwarded this article to my friend who is a preservation librarian
for the reserach libraries group. she said it is quite a good
description of how to preserve manuals.  she also recommended Book-Lab
in austin, TX, who performs archival photocopying for libraries and
will probably take jobs from individuals as well.
-- 
--- bob pasker
---- [email-masked]