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Brittle Books

The Processing of Damaged and Deteriorated Books
The relevant staff of Central Technical Services and the Department of Preservation and Conservation regularly handle books that are found to be damaged and deteriorated. Damaged/deteriorated books are those books which have obvious damage to the binding (torn spine, loose boards, detached leaves, etc) and that also have paper which will not withstand a double corner fold. Books with intact bindings, irrespective of paper condition, are not addressed in this procedure. The following describes the general procedures for processing books identified at the point of use and on entering the acquisitions workflow.

Circulated Books
For Preservation staff, the largest category of damaged/deteriorated books enters the workflow as a consequence of circulation. Damaged books that are returned by readers are sent to Preservation by Access Services staff from all the endowed libraries of the University. Examination in Preservation results in the following decisions by the Book Repair supervisor:
(a) if the book is published prior to 1850, it is brought to the attention of Rare Books staff to ascertain whether or not it will be transferred to Kroch.
(b) if the paper is sound, the book is repaired and returned to the shelf within a 48 hour period
(c) if the paper is brittle, it is given to the Brittle Books Coordinator and reformatted via Olin Photocopy Services and charged to the Brittle Book Replacement account administered by Preservation
(d) Olin Photocopy Services staff return the original and the copy via a return shelf to the Brittle Books Coordinator, who checks for copy accuracy and passes the photocopy to the Commercial Binding Office for binding
(e) when binding is complete, the book is returned to the Brittle Books Coordinator for a final check, then the original is discarded and the bound photocopy passed on to Cataloguing for record revision with a slip marked PHOTOCOPY REPLACEMENT.

Uncatalogued Books
Uncatalogued books that are found later to be damaged enter the workflow because of selection decisions by selectors, often as the result of a gift. As books in this category should not be shelved in damaged condition, it is important that a repair, discard, or reformatting decision be made prior to cataloguing. Books that are found by CTS staff to be damaged should be placed on the Preservation Decision Shelf in the Delivery Services Unit of CTS.

The Book Repair supervisor will examine all books placed on this shelf on a weekly basis, and will:
(a) flag books that have sound paper with a slip marked REPAIR AFTER CATALOGUING and
(b) request that CTS staff return books that are damaged/deteriorated to the selector shelf with a decision clarification slip which should state:

If the selector chooses to reformat via preservation photocopy, he/she will take the book to Olin Photocopy Services and request that a preservation photocopy be made and charged to his/her acquisition account. At this point, if the selector wishes to retain the original, he/she should so indicate via a note in the original book. Olin Photocopy Services staff will pass the book to the Brittle Books Coordinator via the normal return shelf, the copy will be checked for accuracy and the book passed to the Commercial Binding Office for binding. After binding, the Brittle Books Coordinator will discard the original (if the selector has indicated that the original must be kept, it is returned to the selector at this point). The bound photocopy is sent to Delivery Services with a slip marked PHOTOCOPY REPLACEMENT to be worked through the normal routine to Mediation Services.

For more information please write to brittlebooks@cornell.edu.