Balfour Library Conservation project - books that are falling apart!

One of the volunteers' tasks is to tie up books whose spines or boards have detached or are detaching. This keeps the book together on the shelves, in its correct shape, until such time as we can box the whole book in acid-free boxes.

Cotton tying tape is used to keep the books together. Granny knots must be used; they can be easily untied and re-tied by readers. The bows must lie in the direction of the spine, not across it, otherwise the tape gets caught up with other items on the shelves and may untie itself.

A perfect example! The tying is neat and the bows are not visible when the books are shelved. If you knotted at the front or side of the books, as if you were doing up a parcel, the knot would damage the book next to it on the shelf by being squashed against it.

We use black tape as we think it looks better on the books than the usual natural colour tape, which may get dirty or discolour over time.

Who knew that book tying was so important? We had much fun practising this during our training with the conservator; try it yourself and you'll see how difficult it is to get the bows lying along the spine, which is the indication of a proper granny knot! Some of us are apparently natural granny knot tie-ers, some have to really think about it and do these instead of reef knots! (Natural granny knot tie-ers apparently have to keep tying up their shoe-laces...).