The Vespiary Book Binding & Book Conservation

Recently I had the most perfect work day - the morning skies were ringing as only they can up here in the Rockies. I drove north past the Mission Mountains to Pablo and the Salish-Kootenai College to give a workshop about basic preservation techniques at the library there. I have my time teaching in Japan to thank for making me more at ease speaking in front of groups of people. I used to be absolutely petrified of public speaking (and there went my illustrious acting career), but I love talking to folks about topics I’m passionate about. I had a great group of attendees who all had marvellous questions and took to the hands-on part very well: sewing-machine encapsulation, paper mending with heat set tissue, and archival pocket modification.

We had an interesting discussion about viewing text on paper vs. electronically, something that has recently been a topic of discussion in the media. For the record, I think the arguement “books vs. digital” is not valid because the two accomplish different goals. But there have been many studies on the effect of reading different formats on the brain. My Google-fu is failing me right now, but I listened to a radio program that described the whole body process one engages in while reading paper-based text. The hand follows along or gets ready to turn the page, which gives the brain a break in trying to keep its place on the page. The brain reading digital text has to work harder to figure out where it is because it has no corporeal assist. I also remember hearing that time spent reading a web copy of a newspaper vs. the same copy in print format was much less (something like 11 minutes vs 45 minutes).

Again, I think what’s at play here is not necessarily one vs. the other, but how each media lends itself to different end goals. Print encourages more in-depth reading and contemplation, while digital is scannable, malleable and more conducive to communication.

We did talk about the forgotten sophistication of book technology (forgotten because books are so ubiquitous and can be so cheap these days), which has made it part of our lives for centuries. I’ll leave you with the following from Valleywag: