Field Trip #1 - U of M Bindery

Out first Field Trip to the U of M Bindery was interesting. First of all it was not in a part of town that I expected. For some unknown reason I thought that the bindery would be right in the middle of the U's campus, near the library. However after going there and learning about the different things that the bindery does it makes sense. If you serve so many facilities it doesn't make sense to stay close to only one of them. I was pretty surprised at some of the machines. I especially found the hand sewing processing startling. The machines that they were using were so far from modern they looked somewhat out of place. However, some of the other machines were actually more dangerous than I thought. Just looking at some of the stuff that was around was somewhat scary. When our guide showed how they trim pages, I was a little shocked. I understand that there are A LOT of safety features on those machines but then he was saying that they change the blades themseleves! That seems far from safe. Also the whole process of trimming pages makes me wonder how many times a book could be re-bound before it is impossible to do anything with. Or is that when you turn to some place like the Minnesota historical society to preserve the item?

 I don't know why but I origionally thoguht that a book bindery would be like a well- run shop. In fact it was more like a factory. I was also surprised at how their numbers had gone down. I found it interesting that they used to have people basically at every station working on something and would get as many students as they could and now they have people that jump from one area to another in order to have enough to do and only a few students. But it was also interesting that the Google Books project the U is working on is adding work for the bindery! I would not have thought that by scanning books you would need to rebind them, but I was happy to hear that the bindery would be able to compensate for that need. I really was really surprised at how quickly the books and periodicals could be re-bound, but I was surprised that paper played such a role in how the binding went. When our guide was talking about magazine paper versus normal paper I had realized that the texture of paper and how saturated with ink it was could cause that much of a difference!

I asked if theft was a problem, as it seems that books could go missing. Especially since we have learned how the unpacking process is where books are most vulnerable to theft when they are delivered to the library. While he said it wasn't an issue, I wonder if is more of one at larger facilities and at actual publishing houses? I wonder a publishing house has an insurance policy like the bindery does.