We have these blue flags that our colleagues can use to alert us to damaged books. They are intended to be placed inside the damaged book and, or taped onto a bin if you have a bunch of things to send to the lab. They aren’t supposed to be taped TO the books themselves.
The lesson here is that care and handling training is never done. People forget, they get in a hurry, or they just plain don’t think things through. I’m sure the person that taped this flag to these books didn’t intend harm, they just didn’t think that tape could harm book covers.
Maybe this was a new student assistant and we haven’t caught them yet with our indoctrination care and handling training. To the Bat Mobile! We have work to do!!
We can always tell when there has been student turnover in other library departments, because things like this start to happen! The official motto of preservation departments everywhere should be “always vigilant.”