Book Handling: Spine Damage Prevention

The Preservation department at Minnesota State University, Mankato’s Memorial Library actively receives and seeks out damaged books within the collections every day. Many damaged books that we work with have causes due to typical wear and tear but there are also numerous items in the collections whose damages are entirely preventable…which is why we need your help! This series will cover things our patrons and staff can do to help prolong the life of books so they can keep doing what they do best, be accessed and read by all!

Let us begin with one of our primary culprits of preventable issues: Spine Damage. 

Books with torn, cracked or broken spines come in more often than any other problem. You may be wondering why this is:

Imagine finding the perfect book for your current project, research paper or leisurely reading. Or imagine being a staff member who is assisting a patron with book retrieval. Think about how you pull a book off a shelf. Did you mentally just pull the book by the top of the spine? If yes, you are not alone. Most people do this. Unfortunately, the deceptive little tab on the top of a book’s spine is not very strong. In fact, it will break off completely if pulled on too many times (or even just once!).

The good news is that you can change this destructive habit and still access books easily.

Here’s what you can do:

The general rule of thumb is “Push, Don’t Pull.” What does that mean?

Grasp your book by the center instead of the top of the spine.
Photo courtesy of pixabay.com

In order to save the spine from damage, you can start by pushing in the books on both sides of the desired book. Once you have done so, you can easily grasp the desired book around the center so you are holding onto either side of the book covers rather than the spine. Then you can pull the book off the shelf without causing any damage. Success!

This is one small, simple change will save many books without decreasing their value or cost us money repairing such an avoidable defect so we can keep mending the items that need it most instead!

Do you know another way to prevent spine damage? Comment below!

Jamie Dalbey is a Preservation and Government Documents Technician at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Learn more about Preservation here.