Elizabeth Young

Book Conservationist at UT’s Hodges Library and Vicky Palmer, Student Assistant

The John Hodges Library on the University of Tennessee campus is used by students, professors and staff who fill its rooms at all hours, perusing its catalogs for research, writing papers, studying for tests and simply taking a break from the classroom. The library holds more than 2.5 million volumes of books on topics ranging from ancient history to gardening.

Many of these books are rare, historic or in need of repair. To maintain their use for current and future library users, Hodges’ preservation department mends books so the library can lend them.

Elizabeth Young has been the conservation technician in the preservation department for six years, overseeing the repair of library books that have been damaged by age, misuse or regular wear and tear, a task requiring extensive training, patience and attention to detail. Vicki Palmer is Young's student assistant.

Do you see a lot of damaged books?

EY: If books are damaged in any way they usually end up in the lab. I have seen books that have gotten wet. There was a cooking book which was burned from the eye of a stove. A dog-training book which was chewed up by the dog, and other books have been duct taped together. I attempt to repair these mishaps, but if the book is damaged beyond repair I will order a replacement.

Vicki, what does your job entail?

VP: Making pockets for CDs in the back of books, doing spine replacements and in-sheet replacements. I also do sew-ins. I actually learned how to sew in order to do this. Anything that has staples in it needs to be sewn into a pamphlet binder.

What are the different kinds of repair you do?

EY: We mend manuscripts with Japanese tissue, pamphlet binding, encapsulating maps and manuscripts, making phase boxes for brittle books, spine replacements, in-sheet replacements, and making pockets in books.

VP: For maps and manuscripts to be encapsulated you have the document laid out, and then you pull out the Mylar and outline both sides of the document. Using double sided tape the document is sealed within the Mylar. Encapsulating in this fashion allows the document to be taken out, unlike laminated documents which are permanent.

What are brittle books?

EY: Brittle means that they are very fragile. We have different stages of brittle books.  We still want to keep these in the collection but we want to at least stop the brittleness from going any farther.  We can’t reverse anything that has happened but we can slow it down some.

[The different stages of brittle classification are] borderline brittle, brittle, very brittle, fragile, and crumbling. We do a brittle test to determine which category a book is in. The test consists of folding the corner of a page back and forth, and after four times, if you would still have to pull fairly hard for the piece to come off that would classify the book as borderline brittle. If the corner comes off with a slight pull it would be brittle. If it doesn’t take any pulling it would be very brittle. Fragile books are where it doesn’t take much for the pages to be damaged. A book that is in the crumbling stage is one that is crumbling apart.

How do you slow the deterioration of these books?

EY: If the book is in the borderline category I can make repairs to the book. If the book falls into any of the other categories there is very little that I can do as far as repairs and that’s when they either have to be placed in a phase box or a preservation copy is made out of it. We make the phase boxes for the books to keep the light and dust off of them. This will not stop the deterioration but it will at least slow it down.

VP: Phase boxes are special-made boxes for brittle books to be kept in for protection. They are made out of barrier board. The barrier board is put under a crimper which allows us to fold it and fit it around the book.