Dime Novels 2
October 3, 2006
I contacted Andrea Reithmayer at the U of R (See 6/12/2006 and 6/15/2006) with my question on preservation of the dime novels that are being donated. Here is her reply:
We have a large collection of dime novels ourselves. The textblocks are nearly always quite brittle, often bound with staples which makes ‘reading’ them difficult. Ours are stored in phase boxes.
I think some mass deacidification projects have been done somewhere on dime novels (not here!) and I have a vague memory of some institution that discarded all the textblocks and kept only the covers (not here!).
Anyhow, short of mass deacidification, the only thing really to be done is protect them from light, dust/dirt, temp & humidity changes.
She also shared her online exhibit on 19th Century publisher’s bindings the is both beautiful and informative.
