Instructional Technology: A Game-Changer for a Hands-On Workshop

In early October, Preservation Services Staff had the pleasure of teaching a pre-conference workshop for the North Carolina School Library Media Association's (NCSLMA) 2018 conference in Winston-Salem, NC. 

NCSLMA Pre-Conference Workshop in Winston-Salem, NC

"Book Repair on a Budget" is a hands-on workshop we developed to teach basic book repair techniques to school media specialists who often have very little time or funding to tackle book repairs, yet have an important need to preserve the life of their collections for as long as possible. After providing the workshop for several groups of Guilford County Schools Media Specialists in March of this year, we were invited to teach an extended version at the NCSLMA conference. (To read more about our partnership with Guilford County Schools Library Media Services, click here.)

Audrey Sage, Preservation Manager,
demonstrating how to reback the spine of a book

In the three-hour workshop, we addressed a variety of book repairs including paper mending, repairing loose covers, and repairing book spines. We focused on treatments that were relatively quick and easy to perform and that required materials media specialists likely have on hand or could acquire inexpensively. 

Lumens DC125 Ladibug Document Camera

Thanks to a Lumens DC125 Ladibug Document Camera (click here for more information), each step of the repairs we taught could easily be viewed by participants from the comfort of their seats. The document camera allowed us to easily alternate between demonstrations and hands-on work with participants to facilitate learning and improve their performance of each repair technique. At times, instructional technology can be a distraction from learning, but in this case it was a positive game-changer.

Suzanne Sawyer, Preservation Technician,
demonstrating how to tip in a loose page

Sawyer demonstrating a book repair with
the aid of a document camera

Participants of the workshop received a bag of sample materials that were used in our demonstrations as well as a link to our libguide, an online resource we have created (click here to view our libguide). It includes our PowerPoint presentations and videos, along with other digital resources about book repair, and a list of vendors for book repair supplies and equipment. It is our hope that the libguide will serve as a manual of sorts for school media specialists to return to for their own reference or as a guide for teaching book repair techniques to older students or library volunteers.