Book Repair On A Budget: A Partnership With Guilford County Schools Library Media Services

Preservation Services Staff were pleased to conduct a series of workshops entitled “Book Repair on a Budget” for the Guilford County Schools (GCS) Media Specialists on January 31 and February 1, 2018. We partnered with Tammy Gruer, the GCS Director of Library Media Services, to design the workshops based on requests from Media Specialists for a hands-on training to aid in extending the life of their school library collections.

Suzanne Sawyer, UNCG Preservation Technician,
teaching GCS Media Specialists about book repair

With the understanding that the Media Specialists are working on a limited budget and with very full schedules, our goal was to focus on treatments that are relatively quick and easy to perform and that require materials already on hand or that can be acquired inexpensively.

Demonstrating a book spine repair

Corner repair

Media Specialists rotated between two sessions on common book repairs. One session covered paper mending and interior hinge repairs and the other addressed spine and cover repairs. 

Textblock in need of a consolidation repair

Demonstrating interior hinge repair

Ms. Gruer provided document cameras for each of our presentations which allowed us to project our demonstrations in process for each step of the treatments. 

Audrey Sage, UNCG Preservation Services Manager,
demonstrating a spine repair with the aid
of a document camera

The document cameras proved to be valuable tools as the Media Specialists had a much better view of the techniques and were able to more easily work along with us at their own work stations. 

GCS Media Specialists learning about
spine and cover repairs

In addition to the workshops, we created a Book Repair LibGuide as a repository for a variety of resources including the presentations we used in the workshops, online videos and manuals, and vendors for book repair supplies. 

Book Repair LibGuide created by Preservation Services

We are grateful to UNCG’s Special Collections & University Archives for providing financial support so that we could also offer a gift bag of sample book repair supplies and tools for the GCS Media Specialists.

It is our hope that GCS Media Specialists will be able to share the LibGuide with parent volunteers or older students that may be able to assist with some of the book repairs. 

We also plan to continue the partnership between our staff and GCS’s Library Media Services so that we might provide ongoing support for extending the life of school library book collections in our community.