Blog #4

"REPAIR OF CIRCULATING MATERIALS

When a damaged book is returned to the circulation desk it is directed to the conservation area where it is quickly examined. First it is evaluated to determine whether or not it is of interest to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection; if so, it is offered to that collection. If it is not rare, but has brittle paper it is sent to the Brittle Books program for reformatting. If it is not brittle or rare it will be repaired and returned to the stacks within 48 hours. Enclosures may be made for materials with unusual formats or for books that are being transferred to the Library Annex."

http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/operations/bookconservation.html

"Circulated Books

For Preservation staff, the largest category of damaged/deteriorated books enters the workflow as a consequence of circulation. Damaged books that are returned by readers are sent to Preservation by Access Services staff from all the endowed libraries of the University. Examination in Preservation results in the following decisions by the Book Repair supervisor:
(a) if the book is published prior to 1850, it is brought to the attention of Rare Books staff to ascertain whether or not it will be transferred to Kroch.
(b) if the paper is sound, the book is repaired and returned to the shelf within a 48 hour period
(c) if the paper is brittle, it is given to the Brittle Books Coordinator and reformatted via Olin Photocopy Services and charged to the Brittle Book Replacement account administered by Preservation
(d) Olin Photocopy Services staff return the original and the copy via a return shelf to the Brittle Books Coordinator, who checks for copy accuracy and passes the photocopy to the Commercial Binding Office for binding
(e) when binding is complete, the book is returned to the Brittle Books Coordinator for a final check, then the original is discarded and the bound photocopy passed on to Cataloguing for record revision with a slip marked PHOTOCOPY REPLACEMENT."

http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/operations/brittlebooks.html

The above describes part of the workflow at Cornell University libraries and how they prioritize and determine treatment for their books. To me it seems a very straightforward approach to evaluating books with clear action steps laid out. It seems though that digitization and microfilming are kept separate from book repair with different priorities and projects, and all brittle books are replaced with photocopies. I wonder if it wouldn't be better to save a digital image of the book at the same time or combine their efforts in some other way to create better efficiency.