Video: Books Most Likely Water Damaged

Learn what types of books can get damaged when drying wet books with expert book care tips from a bibliophile in this free online book related video clip.

Video Transcript

One thing to consider before you start drying your book, is what type of book do you have. Obviously there are many different types of bindings and paper content for your various books, so this is important to keep in mind before you start drying them. Particularly important is whether or not it is actually worth saving your book. You have an old mass market paperback, where the paper pages are already oxidized, and they are getting kind of old and the binding is falling apart chances are this is a lost cause. If you want to replace it, it is not going to be that expensive; if you do it through an online purveyor or even at your local bookstore and I would recommend probably tossing it. The pages are just going to stick together and you are never going to have it look anywhere close to what it did originally. Next you might have a variety of hardback books; you could have older books with one type of paper. If it is a mass produced hardback it might have either a higher content of cotton in the paper which means that the pages are going to dry well or it might have a higher paper pulp content which means you might end up having to discard it along with those mass market paperbacks. This is up to you and you can always try and dry it for awhile before deciding whether to toss it or not. Newer paperbacks that are in good condition are probably good candidates for drying particularly if only the edges are wet and it is not wet all the way through. The most important thing to remember for your book is if you have a nice hardback with super shinny glossy pages. In order for the pages to get the gloss that they have, they are coated in a particular type of clay, once this gets wet it can stick together permanently if allowed to dry that way. So it is very, very important if you have clay coated shinny pages, also in such things as high fashion glossy magazines, this has to be dealt with very quickly and precisely, otherwise the entire book is going to end up turning into this one huge lump of clay.

Books Most Likely Water Damaged

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