Book Mending Tip of the Month

This month I will show you a fast and easy way to mend books with ragged edges. You can use this method for the edges of the book or the sides.

The book I have here has both corners and sides needing some touching up.

Lifting the cover up, you will find the board is made up of several layers of paper. Run your thump up as if you are flipping pages in a book. As you do that, take your paint brush with some glue on it and feather it back and forth brushing in between the pages.

Now lay your brush down, working with both hands, pinch the corner ends together also working the cover trying to make the material come together.

With the sides, just brush them lightly with glue and again pinch material together trying to make the cover ends meet, as much as you can.

When the glue is dry, the corner(s) and/or side(s) become hard. This will reinforce these areas.

Give it a try, the more you do it the better you will be.

Are We Ever Not at Work?

It can be hard to find a good balance between your work life and your professional life. It's unrealistic, if not downright silly, to think that we can divide our lives into neat categories that don't overlap, or that we're always just focused on one thing.

For us library folks, though, I think there's an added dimension to the work/other life split. Are we every really not at work? We love libraries, reading, inquiry, and intellectual freedom, and we're always willing to talk about them. That's great. We're ambassadors to the wider world.

My job has an unusual focus. I primarily work with Oregon government documents. Many people think that means dry, technical reports full and statistics, and that's certainly part of it. But government documents are all over the place. I've picked up many at events like the state fair, and even even got a Tourism Commission document from the hotel during our EOLA road trip in October.

I imagine that others have stories about how their library specialties and personal life overlap. So please share!