Having
purchased books from a punter (or having had them dumped anonymously upon us),
the task of cleaning them is the next phase. “Cleaning” in this case is a catch-all
term which covers a range of activity, including evaluation and repair.
Customers rarely see what happens between books arriving at the shop and then
being picked up off the shelf, so this will be a little insight into the working
life of booksellers. Most of the time we try to be like ducks – calm composure
on the surface and furious activity below the water. Here then, are a couple of
likely candidates for addition to our stock which will be our subjects for the
current exercise:
These
two volumes have been randomly selected from a boxload of battered tomes which
was offloaded on us by someone moving house. At first glance, there’s little of
promise: the Forsyth has some cachet, but it’s a later offering and his earlier
stuff is much more sought-after. The hardcover volume is less promising still,
but good horror is hard to find so an inspection is warranted. Let’s start with
the Forsyth:
Straight
away, there’s something dodgy going on: it’s easy to see that the text block
(the body of the book) doesn’t lie compactly together. At the very least, these
trade-format potboilers should retain a nice tight shape; here there’s an
issue.
Investigating,
it’s soon discovered that several of the pages are loose. In fact, a single page
towards the back of the book has come free and half of one gathering from near the
top of the text block. This means that we are now faced with the prospect of
repair as well as cleaning. The loose gathering is an easy mend with some glue;
the single page is a tricky fix. We have to begin weighing up whether or not
this is going to be worth the effort.
There’s
also a chip to the head of the spine; this can be fixed with a touch of glue as
well, so we’ll do it all in one session.
Gluing
is pretty easy; the biggest issue is not getting glue everywhere and
inadvertently sticking the book together.
Once
the glue is dry – usually after being left overnight – the book is ready to be
cleaned. First, it gets a brushing: using a good brush – a shaving brush or
heavy paintbrush works well – we brush any loose dust off the covers, text block
edges and from the gutters inside the covers. While doing this we check for any
items stuck between the pages, old bookmarks and less welcome items:
occasionally you can get lucky and find cash; not often, but it happens. As well, we inspect for underlining, marginalia and inscriptions,
such as the previous owners’ names: all these things will affect the price we
place on the book.
Once
that’s done we wipe the covers with a cleaning agent. We use eucalyptus oil,
but there are other options too: occasionally just a lightly water-moistened
tissue is sufficient. This is the usual result:
How
clean do you think your books are now?
In
the final analysis, the book looks much better than it did when we first took
it in. Still it’s got a lot of spottiness to its pages, along with the rest of
the damage (which, even with the best gluing in the world, is not a permanent
fix). At best, this book will go out to the “Specials” table in front of the
shop with a nominal $5 sticker attached. That’s not bad for a book which cost
us nothing, but it’s still a considerable investment in time and effort, especially
when you consider that it came in a box with another 40 or 50 volumes.
Let’s
turn to the hardcover…
First
thing to notice is that this is a library book. That means that we’ll expect to
see a bunch of pencil marks, labels and ink stamps on the inside and outside of
the volume. If we’re lucky, some of those stamps will be “Cancelled” stamps,
indicating that the book was retired from the stacks and sold off at a library
sale. In this instance, that’s precisely the case: if the book wasn’t cancelled, the onus falls on us
to contact the library and return it to them. A lot of bookdealers don’t follow
these things up, it’s true, but some of us prefer not to traffic in stolen
goods.
First
piece of business is to remove the old plastic wrap from the dustwrapper. That
plastic will have kept the ‘wrapper relatively clean, but it’s probably some
cheap stuff that will exude vapours over time and affect the boards and paper,
so off it comes. This is where we hit a snag: some enthusiastic librarian has
taped the plastic directly onto the dustwrapper, and then taped the ‘wrapper
onto the boards – there’s an especially dark and burn-y place in Hell for this
sinner. For now, we’ll have to break out the scalpel and try to remove all that
tape without messing up the fabric of the book too much.
Once
the plastic’s off, you can see how much crud was caked onto it.
The
dustwrapper gets a quick dusting off and is checked for rips and tears. That
ugly library sticker to the front panel is a bit of an eyesore, but trying to
remove it will probably create an even more unsightly mess. We’ll just leave it
for now.
Now
we can see that the book is really quite the worse for wear. The binding is
rolled, meaning that it no longer lies flat in a tight pile with the boards
exactly parallel to each other. In extreme cases, the damage extends to the
endpapers, which are essential for holding the text block inside the casing and
we can see that this has happened here. Once again, we’re faced with having to
repair the book.
(For
those who are interested, bindings get rolled when you place a book face down
and opened, rather than using a bookmark like a normal person.)
For
now, we go through the book brushing off dust and checking for other types of
wear and abuse, also noting how extensive the library marking has been: if it’s
relatively light, this can be noted in a description and a few extra dollars
added to the price. In this instance, I find one of my favourite bits of
damage: the boot mark to the endpaper, showing that someone left this book
opened up on the floor at some point, allowing some troglodyte to walk on it.
It
is the evil nature of tape to leave horrible stains to the cloth which
comprises the boards. Cloth cannot be cleaned using eucalyptus oil and a damp
rag is also relatively useless. There is a purpose-made cleaning solution
designed to thwart tape and other marks, but it’s horribly expensive and often
hard to find. If this was a better book, I’d think about using it, but not on
this occasion.
Now
we glue the endpapers back into place and leave the book overnight to dry.
*****
Next
day, we give the dustwrapper a once-over with eucalyptus oil and remove the
last of the scunge. The plastic helped a little in keeping the book clean, but
not that much.
At
this stage we could go the extra mile and put the dustwrapper in some fresh
polypropylene wrap, but we’re not going to do that: this book is too damaged
even for the “Specials” table; sadly, it’s going straight into the recycling
bin. Obviously, in the normal run of things, I wouldn’t have wasted as much
time on this book as I have, but this exercise is just for demonstration purposes.
*****
And
that’s about it. It might not look too involved, but keep in mind that we mostly
deal with stacks of books, not just one or two. For these two volunteers, this
is the end of the road; for other books which we’re going to try and sell off
the shelves, the next step is to describe the books in a database catalogue, photograph
them and then upload these details to the internet. With all this work for a very modest return, you can start to see why
sometimes bookshop staff can seem a little testy…
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