Randy Silverman and Maria Grandinette, Co-chairs
The Library Collections Conservation Discussion Group held a half-day program entitled Connoisseurship and Preservation of Paperback Books at the annual meeting in Arlington, Virginia. The program was a blend of history and practice. Editor Marc Jaffe of Houghton Mifflin provided us with a personal look at paperback publishing, a field he has been involved in since 1948. Clark Evans, Senior Reference Librarian, Rare Books and Special Collections Division and Colleen Stumbaugh, Digital Conversion Coordinator, Geography and Map Division, both of the Library of Congress, discussed the history and current status of mass-market paperbacks at the Library. Particular emphasis was placed on the obstacles these works have faced in gaining acceptance. The group was captivated by the incredible story of the charismatic V. Valta Parma, the curator who rescued Dime Novels, pulp magazines, and comics, from the storage areas of the Copyright Office and placed them in the Library of Congress' Rare Book Collection. (For details see Clark and Colleen's paper in the BPG Annual.) Peter Waters, who, sadly, was unable to attend the meeting, provided us with his paper that discussed the origins of phased conservation. Peter's daughter in-law, Carmen Waters, described the development of the automated die-cutting machine used to produce Microclimate phased boxes. The structural roots of the paperback were revealed by Gary Frost, Library Conservator, BookLab. Gary suggested the North and Eastern African, third and fourth century codex binding as its prototype, pointing out how many of the features of those early bindings are mirrored in the modern paperback. ("The equitable leaf attachment, head to tail and top to bottom, the attachment of covers as if they were outermost leaves, the flush cover and text size and the unshaped flat-back text are present in the earliest and latest books.") Gary then gave a moving demonstration of the transfer tape binding which he describes as neither a "hardback" or a "paperback" but a direct descendant of the early codex with its boards attached to the text at the gutter edge and its opening motion transmitted directly to the book. Gary also generously provided participants with two hand-outs: Paperback Rebinding at a Library Repair Station and Adoption of the Codex Book, Parable of a New Reading Mode.
The meeting was concluded with two brief and informal presentations, the first by Bob Strauss, of Bookkeeper, Preservation Technologies, who discussed deacidification. The second presentation was by Fritz James, President, Library Binding Service, who described his long-time involvement and commitment to a project to produce a high quality book cloth. Fritz outlined the history of the project and thanked the many conservators in the room who had offered feedback and contributed to its development. We in turn, expressed our gratitude to Fritz for his dedication to the project and to the high standards he has been committed to achieving.
The LCCDG has a commitment to outreach to the broader library and conservation community. In this vein, Maria Grandinette and Randy Silverman presented a paper entitled Issues Relating to the Repair of 19th and 20th Century Books in Research Library Collections at the Institute of Paper Conservation Conference held at the end of March. The conference, entitled Book Conservation: A Review of Current Practice, provided a good venue to discuss the shift in perspective towards non-rare books in research libraries in this country and our resulting shift in practice--both core issues of the Library Collections Conservation Discussion Group.