Why restoration and preservation is so important
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All books are important. Whether they were published yesterday or 400
years ago.
The problem is, when does a book become valuable? How old does it have to be before it is worthy of preserving for future generations? Too easily, we tend to think of market value as being the important factor. But it isn't. Not at all! What's worse, is to fall into the trap of finding a 100 year old book that doesn't yet command a high market value, (say £40.00) and then because it is in very poor condition, not having it restored because the cost of restoration (say £80.00) "isn't worth it". Don't worry. We all fall into that trap. The problem is, when does a book become valuable enough to have it restored? Catch 22. Leave it, and in 50 years time the restoration job will cost lots more to be done. It's a matter of the philosophy of whether or not it should be done now. It all boils down not to value, or market value, but whether or not you can afford to have it done. |
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If we were to consider market value, then we would fall into the same
trap that book dealers do.
A book needs re-covering. But it's market value isn't high. Therefore have it rebound as cheaply as possible. Cheaply as possible equals crude. The two books illustrated here have a current market value of about £45.00 each. They are "only" little books, and they are "only" 160 years old. |
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So why spend £55.00 having them re-covered and rebound properly?
The book illustrated above (the left hand one of the pair) is an 1841 Pigot's Directory of Leicestershire & Rutland. A book dealer had had it rebound down to a price. Blue cardboard boards, with bare cardboard on its edges, a cloth spine so rough that there was no way that it could hold lettering for the title. The title was printed onto another piece of dark red cloth stuck onto the front. Crude. The book deserved better than that! For goodness sake. It is 160 years old! So we had it done. And here it is. |
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So now we have a very sound book that is worthy of being preserved. So now what? Where does it go to? That's where we start having the real problems. Here at Archive CD Books we give away books such as this (after they have been restored) to museums, record offices, and libraries. It feels good to be able to do that. However, we now have a difficult decision to make. It's the "find a good home for a puppy dog" syndrome. On the one hand, we want the book to be really well looked after and preserved, but on the other hand, a book is, after all, for reading! If a book such as this is placed on open library shelves, then it will soon become damaged, especially if it has heavy use. I have seen such books in libraries. Not only do they need rebinding again and again, but the actual paper becomes so brittle due to constant handling and flicking though the pages that the paper itself breaks up into thousands of little pieces. It is destroyed. Fortunately, we do have a solution. We supply a facsimile copy of the book on CD in digital form. People can read that and flick through its pages forever without damaging it. When CDs are no longer used as a means of storing digital data, then the data can be transferred to some other medium. Thousands of people could access it and view it. But the book itself can now be preserved. If it is preserved, then it will be there in 500 years time. And some historian, genealogist or student will pick it up, carefully open it, and be able to see it. He won't know that you or I made that possible, and actually, that doesn't really matter.
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What matters is that the book was preserved.
The book that you see here was reconstructed from seventeen separate pieces purchased form many different book dealers, each piece (one county) costing between £35 and £45 each. None of them had a cover. They were just loose pages. That's a total purchase cost of around £680.00 To have it rebound and re-covered to the condition you see here cost a further £250.00 - that now makes it "worth" £930.00. But it's real value cannot be measured in terms of cost or market value! We shall give it away as a gift. That's what the Archive CD Books Project is all about. It is our responsibility to see that the restored book will go to a place where it will still be there in 500 years time. With that in mind, I find myself being more and more fussy about finding the new home for this once sad and neglected puppy.
Rod Neep |
Copyright ©2001 Rod Neep - Archive CD Books. All rights
reserved
E-mail :
enquiries@archivecdbooks.org