Preservation Week: Maintaining the Circulating Collection

It’s Preservation Week! In an effort to raise awareness of the need for preservation of all kinds, every day this week we will highlight one of the many ways our staff support collections at Duke University Libraries. Our first stop is the circulating collection.

Today Senior Conservation Technician Mary Yordy is working on a mesmerizing book in need of some help.

This visual album about Barneys New York shows a common problem with modern art books: the flimsy case construction of the binding just doesn’t stand up to the weight of the textblock. While it is down here in the lab, Mary will repair the rear hinge of the book, rejoining the text to the binding and allowing it to function again for many more circulations.

The publisher of this item really went all out with the endpapers and “chameleon” metallic edge treatment!