Strong Book Repair

 

Home

Excerpts from an interview with Bill Strong that appeared in Princeton Town Topics newspaper on 9/19/2007.

When I finish restoring library books that sometimes look as new as when they were acquired, that's very satisfying.

I got started over in Bucks County at the community college when the head of the library introduced volunteer programs. Now I've done well over 16,000 books.

I got some training in a book repair program at Johns Hopkins through a National Endowment of the Humanities program. Then I volunteered at the conservation department at the Princeton University library every Wednesday for an entire school year. Before I knew it, I was offering adult education courses on the subject. Camini College in South Eastern Pennsylvania offered me a fee to talk to librarians. The demand was so great they had twice as many as they expected. Librarians often get drafted to do repairs even though they may lack the fundamental skills and tools — all the necessary and occasional materials: a variety of weights to hold a book in position (I use an old iron and bricks wrapped in paper and cardboard), buckram for spines, brushes for glueing, scissors and blades for cutting, clamps, and a saddle stapler for certain jobs. Without the right materials at your fingertips, it's a tedious job, but once you are set up as I am here in my home studio, it becomes a pleasure.

Here's an example of a rare old book — it's a privilege to have this book in your hand. I always put my initials and the repair date inside the book, so you can see that its been six years since I last worked on this 75-year-old children's cook book. The paper is deteriorating and the whole book has sprung from its boards. I'll remove the rusty staples with a spatula and replace them with fewer new staples. I'll put one-inch invisible book tape over the tears and use a ‘bone' to smooth the tape firmly in place for the full benefit. An Exacto knife removes the excess tape.

Sometimes an old book will have paper tears on every page and it might take me 45 minutes to complete. In this case, I'm going to use 4-inch tape to cover the boards to prevent further damage. It's a great little book. It's had a life of 75 years and now it will have even more. That's a fun thing to do. This little cook book belongs to my wife, who was cooking with our grandchildren. Cook books get a lot of wear and children's library books, especially, suffer a lot of rough usage. I've even had some with chewing gum. I have a fine blade that does the job every time.

Today, I brought two bags with at least 25 books from the library. I'll do about 20 books a week. I have just passed the 800 mark. Here's a library book that needs a plastic cover, one of the simplest and most enjoyable repairs; an easy way to extend the book's life. Apart from a few paper tears — the most common problem — this book is in perfect shape.

One of the worst repairs I've ever come across was a book of poetry in a retirement community in Pennsylvania. The spine had been repaired with the only material at hand: duct tape. When that comes off it takes the whole spine of the book with it. In a case like that, I'll put a whole new spine on using buckram.

In a public library, this work extends the life of the book for another five, ten, or fifteen years. Here's a paperback that has been turned into a hardback by adding boards inside the covers. This is really binding, which I don't generally do. I am a repairer and a restorer. I did, however, work on this 1920 book of poems by Robert Bridges that had been damaged by book mites. Once I made a phase box for a book that needed to be removed from the air. It was a painstaking job for a rare book. Here's a repair to a Dictionary of American History that I worked on at the University. At a university a book is forever. Princeton University stores them in a warehouse across Route 1 for scholars to come along and find new amazing things from the past.

I love books. After college I felt that one of the things I should do was to read the 100 Greatest Books. In college you are exposed to a lot of reading material but you don't have the time to really read. So I did a lot of reading and I've kept track of the books I've read for 55 years since then. When I came home from college, I met Arthur Rushmore who was designing books for Harper & Brothers and had his own printing press, The Golden Hind Press, in Madison, New Jersey. He set the type for all of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poems. He was a great friend.

I've been doing this for 20 years all together. The Princeton Public Library is very appreciative and I'm very comfortable there. The people are just wonderful. I turn in a quarterly report showing the number of books I've restored, and the number of hours I've worked. Since June of 2003, I've restored over 3900 books there.