General Collections Conservation staff make repair decisions based on the least amount of intervention that results in a strong, useable book. Treatment decisions take into account past use, degree of damage, uniqueness or significance of binding and degree of embrittlement.

Minor repairs include:

• Hinge tightening for books which are intact but have loose covers. If not caught in time, a bookwith loose hinges will become a book with a separate cover, requiring a far more extensive repair.
  
  
• Paper mends for torn pages.
  
  
• Tip-ins to reattach loose pages.
  
  

Intermediate repairs include:

• Rebacks for books with torn or missing spines, but which are otherwise sound. When possible, the cover cloth from the old spine is glued to the new spine to save its informational value. When this is not possible, an acid free paper label is created with the title and author's last name.
  
  
• Recasing into the old cover when the textblock has separated from the cover and the cover is still sound. This repair is often used to save a cover with significant information on it, in conjuction with rebacking if the cover spine is damaged.
  
  
• Recasing into a new cover when the cover is not significant and is too badly damaged to justify the effort to save it. An acid free paper label is created with the title and author's last name.

Major repairs include complete disbinding and resewing prior to the item being recased either in its old case or in a new one.

General Collections Conservation Repair Manual

Sending Volumes for Repair to General Collections Conservation