A PSA regarding Scotch Tape
I have been thinking about writing an informational notice about this for a couple of weeks. Roughly since we set up a special box at work for books that get to visit one of our paper conservators. See, she's all excited about Scotch tape, and what varying methods can be applied to removing it's well intentioned crusties from our library books.
So here's the thing: Scotch tape, for all its availability and seemingly invisible repairing action, is not archival. After a time it will yellow and crackle and/or leave a crunchy residue on the pages. If you apply it to torn books of your own, that tear won't stay invisible for too long. If you apply it to library books, chances are good that at some point a repair drone like me or a paper-wrangling bad-ass like Deb will spend her work day removing it... often by peeling or carefully scraping it up, little bit by little bit.
We got a real beauty from the engineering department the other day. I don't know what happened to this poor book (wood-chipper?) but the student who borrowed it decided to help us out by rebuilding most of it with about half a roll of Scotch tape. To be fair, it was an impressive feat of engineering, but definitely lax on the material science. Luckily the tape was fresh enough that it came off without too much damage to the paper.
So that's all: If you have rips and tears that are really bad, just suck it up and tell your librarian. We have the right kind of tape! Just don't fix it yourself with scotch or (shudder) masking tape. Incidentally, post-its will screw up your paper eventually too, so if you're doing research, use them temporarily. So will eating onion bagels while using your library book as a lap tray. Sometimes I think these things are obvious, but every day is full of surprises!
Carry on and keep reading!!!
So here's the thing: Scotch tape, for all its availability and seemingly invisible repairing action, is not archival. After a time it will yellow and crackle and/or leave a crunchy residue on the pages. If you apply it to torn books of your own, that tear won't stay invisible for too long. If you apply it to library books, chances are good that at some point a repair drone like me or a paper-wrangling bad-ass like Deb will spend her work day removing it... often by peeling or carefully scraping it up, little bit by little bit.
We got a real beauty from the engineering department the other day. I don't know what happened to this poor book (wood-chipper?) but the student who borrowed it decided to help us out by rebuilding most of it with about half a roll of Scotch tape. To be fair, it was an impressive feat of engineering, but definitely lax on the material science. Luckily the tape was fresh enough that it came off without too much damage to the paper.
So that's all: If you have rips and tears that are really bad, just suck it up and tell your librarian. We have the right kind of tape! Just don't fix it yourself with scotch or (shudder) masking tape. Incidentally, post-its will screw up your paper eventually too, so if you're doing research, use them temporarily. So will eating onion bagels while using your library book as a lap tray. Sometimes I think these things are obvious, but every day is full of surprises!
Carry on and keep reading!!!