Keeping Binding 'In The Fold'

Only a handful of organizations operate in-house book binding facilities. IPG recently took a look inside.

by Cindy Waeltermann

In a time when technology advances focus on simplifying and speeding up printing and binding processes, it's ironic that the best method for binding a book is sometimes no different than it was in the 14th century—with a needle and thread.

"It's pretty labor intensive," observes Marc Flechsig, manager of the University of Minnesota's bindery. His book binding operation does about 5 percent of its binding by hand, he says, following criteria set by the Library Binding Institute. Basically, if a book is thicker than 2˝ and over five pounds, and includes multiple folded signatures, it gets hand sewn.

But this doesn't tell the whole story. Ninety-five percent of the time, the University of Minnesota's bindery uses an array of gluing and oversewing machines to bind books—lots of books.

"We take pretty much anything," says Flechsig. "Sometimes people want family histories bound, or physicians sometimes want journal articles bound. We take it."

An Uncommon Service

Though many universities and other organizations ran book binderies in the past, most deserted them when commercial binderies became common. Today, the University of Minnesota is one of only a handful of organizations that maintain in-house book binderies.

To justify having a book bindery, an organization must produce large volumes of publications. For example, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints produces more than 5 million copies of the Book of Mormon each year at its Salt Lake City Printing Center—just one of many publications the in-plant produces. As a result, the Church chooses to maintain an in-house book bindery.

"With the amount of publications produced at our facility, we do the majority of our bindery work in-house," says Craig Sedgwick, plant manager. "We only farm out about 20 percent of our entire workload per year."

The Church of Jesus Christ of LDS Printing Center, which has printed and bound religious materials for 152 years, produces thousands of publications annually, including the Book of Mormon, the Bible and various scriptures.

"All of our binding is automated," says Sedgwick. "We have the capability to do perfect, spiral, saddle stitching, guilding and thumb indexing in-house."

The bindery can also do hard bound edition binding. After book blocks are sewn on automated sewing machines, they go to an automated book line, where they are trimmed, glued and cased into a hard cover. The bindery produces about a half million hard bound books a year, including such items as the Book of Mormon, lesson manuals, specialty books and hymn books.

With equipment such as Muller-Martini 0300 and 0400 model saddle-stitchers, and Kolbus perfect binders, LDS can bind the majority of its products in-house.

The Church has always strived to be self-sufficient, Sedgwick says, which is why an in-house book bindery was a necessity.

"We can definitely control our own destiny when it comes to printing, by doing virtually all binding in-house," he adds. Cost savings and quality are other issues cited by the Church for maintaining an in-house book bindery.

A Government Bindery

Another large in-plant—in fact, the largest one of all, according to the IPG Top 50—is the U.S. Government Printing Office, in Washington, D.C. With an annual printing volume of 4.3 billion units (8-1⁄2x11˝ paper, one side, one color), the GPO also has an in-house book bindery. It can perform adhesive binding, sewing, case binding, and sidewire, in-line and saddle stitching, among other bindery services.

"We not only bind printed materials in mass production, but we also do restoration and library binding," says John Crawford, the GPO's superintendent of bindery operations. The GPO provides the U.S. Congress and federal agencies with services via both day and night shift employees.

"Commercial plants usually have separate plants for different types of bindery operations," notes Jim Williams, assistant superintendent of bindery operations. "We do it all here."

The GPO handles restoration work for Congress and the White House, along with everyday government functions.

"We perform to a higher degree of urgency than a typical commercial printer," says Williams.

With such enormous annual volumes, the GPO has state-of-the-art binding equipment on hand, such as McCain inserters, Harris computerized binders, a Sheridan adhesive binder, Sheridan in-line side stitchers, and Smyth sewing machines. Although the majority of bindery work is done with more technologically advanced equipment, hand stitching is still a part of GPO operations, although in very small amounts.

GPO's bindery also offers book repair, indexing, foil embossing, computerized cutting and in-line ink-jet printing, not to mention a colorful, decorative and protective process called marbling. Marbling preserves pages by putting a coating on the end of each page. Currently, four GPO employees are qualified to do marbling by hand.

While the GPO's bindery does have modern equipment, some of its gear is over 40 years old.

"It lasts because we have extensive preventive maintenance," says Crawford.

The GPO started its bindery mostly due to issues of quality, turnaround time, control and national security.

"In the long run, it is less expensive to do projects in-house because quality is not compromised," says Crawford. Congress also requires many specialized services, and in-house book and library binding services were found to be a necessity for the GPO.

Library Binding Finds Its Niche

While binding printed material is one form of bindery work, a more specialized form is library binding. Universities, large libraries and even the Library of Congress must adhere to the strict standards put forth by the American National Standard Institute. (A pdf file of these standards can be found on the Library Binding Institute's Web site: www.lbibinders.org). Library binderies not only bind library materials like periodicals and journals, they repair or rebind worn books and book covers and even recreate books that are worn beyond repair.

The University of California-Berkeley operates one such library bindery. Part of the university's Printing Services department, the bindery has 50 employees in two facilities and handles approximately 240,000 volumes annually. The Oakland Bindery serves UC's four northern campuses and the Culver City bindery, near Los Angeles, handles the five southern campuses.

UC's bindery, however, doesn't bind typical printed material. It handles a great deal of repair work. Library books that are old, but still useful, are sent there for repair. That repair can include replacing the old binding by oversewing, ultrabinding or double fan adhesive binding by hand.

"Each book is different," says Dave Martinelli, manager of Library Book Binderies. "That's why we're different."

While printers generally bind one item in large quantities, UC's workload varies.

"We have to evaluate each book to see how we're going to approach it. It's interesting and very challenging," says Martinelli, who has more than 26 years of experience in the industry.

About half of UC's journal binding is done by double fan adhesive binding using an internally plasticized polyvinyl acetate adhesive to bond the pages together, ensuring both flexibility and durability. Each book is clamped down, and the text block is fanned to expose 1⁄32˝ along the spine of the book. Glue is then applied, which covers each side of each page, creating an internal bond that provides stronger binding. This yields a product that can handle a great deal of use, such as a book in a large university library.

Because each book is different, Martinelli says, about 60 percent of the processes books go through are done by hand.

UC's bindery handles a huge volume of work due to the size of UC's library system, which is second only to the Library of Congress, according to George Craig, director of UC-Berkeley Printing Services.

So why did the university decide to bring specialized book and library binding in-house? University librarians requested it back in the late 1940s, Martinelli says, because they were dissatisfied with the quality and service provided by commercial binders.

"The library wanted control over turnaround times, which sometimes ran to eight weeks," he says.

Complicated bindery jobs can now be done in-house within a two- to three-week time frame, he notes.

"There's a fairly significant demand for these services," adds Craig. "That's the only reason we can justify having that service in-house."

The University of Minnesota's bindery operation is much like that of UC's.

"We do about 85 percent double fan adhesive, 10 percent machine sewing, and about 5 percent hand sewing," says Mark Flechsig, manager. Unlike at the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Minnesota's bindery is not overseen by Printing Services. Still, it handles the same type of work, binding journals and periodicals and repairing old and damaged books.

"Printers think of us as repair binders or remanufacturers," says Flechsig, "We actually have a specific niche as technical library binders."

Flechsig's bindery operations consist of Potdevin glue machines, cutters, wringer rollers and oversewing machines. With 12 full-time (equivalent) employees, the bindery handles a approximately 60,000 volumes annually. Besides the library's book binding needs, it also takes in outside work.

Though most universities got rid of their in-house book binderies years ago, UM has held fast to its operation.

"The rationale was for more control," says Flechsig, "We wanted to be self-sufficient."

Not An Easy Job

Both UC and UM report their share of troubles with some of their bindery work, particularly with books that were printed within the last decade. One of the biggest problems, according to Flechsig, is that of gutter margin.

"Printers try to get as much yield as they can out of paper, which leaves less and less inner gutter margin," he says. While a smaller inner gutter will work for a first manufacture of a book, when the book is damaged and the pages along the spine must be roughed so that a book can be rebound, gutter space is inadequate.

Other difficulties include aging of paper. Printers have sometimes used paper that was high in residual acid content, which eventually caused the paper to yellow and crack.

"These books are generally candidates for preservation photocopying," says Dave Martinelli of UC. This involves photocopying books and rebinding them for continued library use.

Finding skilled help has been difficult, according to these managers. On-the-job-training provides the majority of today's bindery workers with their knowledge. The GPO offers an apprenticeship program where new hires are trained on the job for two years, and then graduate from the program. Apprentice programs open approximately every two years, as needed.

Book binding has become an art over the years, kept alive by organizations like these that have elected to maintain internal book binding operations. Though they handle the binding in different ways, in the end their efforts ensure that books will be around to be read by future generations.