A Book a Week 2014: Made, Altered, Repaired. Week 23

Week of 9 June

I Swear on a Stack of Bibles!

My Aunt Eleanor in California sent me these Bibles to repair. It was so long ago, I didn't have a before photo (this is "after"):

The red one had only minor repairs and a page tip-in. The top two were rebacks, and the 3rd one I made a whole new case.

This was a rebacking. I wish I had a before picture, because the spine was taped on with clear packing tape. Here's a tip about books: If you care about a physical copy of a book, DO NOT EVER EVER EVER, in other words NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER 

NEVER USE TAPE to hold a book together. NEVER.

I tried removing the icky sticky stuff by covering the spine with methyl cellulose (wallpaper paste) because it loosens paper and glue and helps in "yuck" removal. Tape is made up of 2 parts: sticky stuff and a carrier. Once the tape gets old, the carrier falls off, but the sticky remains.

Then, I scraped and rubbed and spent a half an hour on it. There was still lots of yuck:

So, here's a test: When should you use tape to repair a book?

NEVER!!!

Here's the finished spine label attached onto the newly backed book. It's not my best work, but the spine got kind of ratty not only from being taped, but also from me rubbing so hard to remove the tape.

Here's the book I recased. Again, I'm sorry I don't have "before" pictures. This is a leather bound book, where the edge extended about an inch all around, but they were cracked and brittle and crumbly. I cut off the icky bits and was able to save quiet a bit of the original leather.

I didn't use leather because I didn't want to charge her for fixing the Bibles. Here's the new case process:

The Vault

World Languages Bibles in the St. Olaf College Vault

     I'm thrilled to get to work a bit in the Library Special Collections at St. Olaf College, my alma mater (where I was a Latin major, can you tell?)  Above you see just a few pretty tomes in Norwegian and Africaans. 

     The collection of World Languages Bibles in the St. Olaf College Vault contains 248 full or partial Bibles in many languages, some of which no longer exist (such as Old English). There are Bibles in many Native American languages including Ojibwa, Arawak, and Micmac.

     My goal is to find out and tell the story of how the collection came together. My next step is to get my hands on the book

The Norlie collection of English Bibles / by Olaf Morgan Norlie

because a large number of these Bibles were donated by, and have bookplates designating, O. M. Norlie. So, apparently, Olaf wrote a book about his collection. 

     I'll keep you posted on what I find out.