In Tuesday’s class we talked a little more about a books history. It was really fascinating to learn about the different places each book has been and how it ended up in our special collections department. I particularly found it interesting that the Dickens set, which was beautifully bound, contained the original covers and spines within the books, or at least within A Christmas Carol. It made me wonder if that is something that many people do when they replace original binding.
From what Diane Shaw said, it doesn’t seem like it’s common to keep a book’s original binding when they are getting rebound. I loved that that particular volume did keep the original binding, though. In doing so, the binder helped preserve the original work with the new bindings while also preserving the original binding in protective plastic coverings.
It was really neat to see the original cover and binding within the book itself, as opposed to on the outside. Although Diane Shaw was not particulary happy about this, as the value of the book set most likely dropped because of this, I think it is a nice way of preserving the older cover, giving it a chance to last longer than it would had it been kept on the outside.