BibliophileBullpen

I spent yesterday propping up my title of ‘Eraser Queen of North America’. I went to pick up a lovely 60lb box of specialty erasers and lo and behold the company makes TWO more erasers – so of COURSE I have to have them too . . . nothing exceeds like excess.

As a rule general surface cleaning of overall discoloration and dirt makes a substantial improvement in appearance of a book. After removing specific marks like writing and smudges, cleaning an entire surface can be off-putting, as too much work for not enough return.

I never had much use for the lowly art gum eraser until now. There are many different types of erasing powders out there, but one of the best and cheapest ones, is simply ground up gum eraser. In 1984 Cathleen A. Baker wrote a bit on grating your own art gum erasers using a vegetable grater, instead of buying it from specialty vendors, you can control the grain size and you needn’t ever worry about running out.

The issue with grinding your own document cleaning powder is to find a balance in the size of the grains: too small and it will become embedded in the paper grain, too large and it doesn’t do the job properly. From the bookseller’s point of view, laziness is all – buying the product in a container or more likely in a cotton bag, is usually the first choice. But not having to buy it at all?

I have begun keeping an art gum eraser and a mini food grater in a dish on my desk . . . .this eliminates the entire chore of bulk grinding, as well as cleaning up AFTER the bulk grinding.

Migraine day – I wasn’t up for editing a complicated repair video.
Here are examples of lined and unlined dust jacket covers.
There are many types of each available, including some where the lining is open in the center. And if you are using 2 or 3 mil thick covers, you have to crease it several times with the bone folder, sometimes scoring it with the pointed end.

I will try to come up with an example of the double creased kind.
There is no sound, migraine remember? and now that I have figured out how to put on titles, you may see more subtitling.

Short answer is no: “Books aren’t alive, they don’t breathe.”
Long answer is no: “Books don’t breathe, they SUCK.”

Generally books are made of paper and cardboard – and these materials are highly desiccated (go look it up, I’ll wait.) So, from the moment a book is born its main goal is to absorb as many moisture molecules as it can. Specifically from the air at hand, but if a book is kept near water it will take those evaporating molecules too. That’s why books kept in Seattle and in bathrooms go all mildewy, not to mention books in the bathrooms of Seattle. Many of us working with these sponges end up with dry cracked fingers – and god forbid one works in a warehouse of the buggers in cardboard boxes, you may never breathe right again. Think of books like wine, you are always trying to find a consistent and balanced level of heat and moisture. When and where it is hot and humid you find yourself installing a dehumidifier and when it is overly and prolongedly (hey it’s my language i can make up words if i want to) dry you plug in the humidifier. If you find yourself indecisive you can find machines that do both. Boy, don’t I wish I invented THAT!

So to answer the question, you put dust jacket protectors (and THAT’S what they are called. . . they aren’t called ‘Brodarts’ ever.) on to protect the books from dirty fingered customers, transit damage, shelf rubbing, edge wear, dust, moisture, klutzy employees and spraying cats (is that last one just me?)

Things are a tad topsy-turvey, its been in the high 60s (15c) here. Which for January is record breaking, I haven’t had the heat on for 3 days. We are so going to pay for this later. If New England doesn’t get enough moisture in the winter then our summers are hot and dry and never really green enough. I am getting nowhere on 2 projects, going to sleep at 4am or 5am and waking up 5 or 6 hours later. I suppose I would get further if I didn’t stop to snack every time I got bored.

Anyway enough about me, I want to talk about YOU. Yes YOU Mr and Ms Bookseller and all the ships at sea. If I teach you this one little thing before I die, I will probably come back as something more than an insect:

Not all IMAGE FILES are the same. If you already know this fine, go get a snack, if not pay freaking attention. (yes, I AM dumbing this down to a NEED to know level -there are many more factoids to learn if you really get off on this sort of stuff) Digital images are THREE dimensional, they have height and width and depth. The depth is pixels per inch – or pixels per centimetre if you aren’t from around these parts. Image files used for printing need MORE pixels per inch and are larger files than images files meant to be seen backlighted on a computer screen. The average JPG file that you see on the internet is 72 pix, for a decent 4×6 snap shot you need at least 300pix – preferably more. You can look at a lovely 300 pix image on a screen and it’s LARGE and detailed – but if you try to PRINT a 72pix image it looks like crap. It looks like crap because there is not enough detail.

The figure on the left would be a 4″x6″ 72pixel JPG image, seen on a screen it is lighted from behind and looks good enough to the naked eye. The image on the right represents the same 4″x6″ image from a digital camera with 300pix. Obviously one is a bigger file than the other. You can easily make a 72pix version of the 300pix image for use on a website. but you can not inflate a 72pix image to 300 without losing a LOT of detail and clarity, the information simply ISN’T there. If you have a logo for your business on your webpage, that image file is almost never suitable for printing, (you can sometimes get away with a business card.)

Logos and line art are generally GIF files, which are restricted to 256 colors and take up a lot less room than a JPG of the same image. Photographs online are usually JPGs or PNGs, which are larger images but not restricted in color palette. Good images exclusively for printing are quite often TIF files. If you ever see one of Dover’s Clip art discs, they offer images in JPG and TIF.

What does this mean to YOU? when you are having printed matter created: letterheads, envelopes, invoices, t-shirts etc . . . give the maker the largest, best, most appropriate images files you have. And if you ONLY have 72pix JPG images from your website don’t expect it to look like a 500pix TIF image. When you are choosing your logos or images and manipulating them FOR your website, KEEP TRACK of the original files. Burn them to a CD or a flash drive and SAVE them somewhere just as you would your business license or your birth certificate. You may never have that image printed on anything tangible but you can always recreate your online images in any size you need. And digital image files DO go astray on your hard drive just like everything else : you forget where you saved something, or you haven’t accessed a file in many years and it gets ‘cleaned’, or simply you could have an accident and loose all your data files. Your logo is YOU, you have to keep track of YOU and present the best YOU you can.

Here endeth the lesson.

I spent the day cleaning up my own messes. Normally I keep a very clean PC, but after a while even I have to dig around inside and sort through all the slush piles. (if you are a MAC person you may have to skip through some of this.) My PC was running sluggish and I had been collecting and saving a lot of stuff lately. So I figured it was time for a little basic housekeeping.

After years of visiting other booksellers and rooting around in their hard drives, I can reasonably say that how someone keeps their physical desktop is a reflection of what their hard drives look like. Back in 1980 we didn’t have Microsoft Explorer or even File Manager, our computers ran on DOS and with what amounted to blank area to keep our files. We got accustomed to keeping our files and data very organized. We developed systems for grouping and rules of thumb for naming, that make it easier to store and find things. If you didn’t you lost it and had to type the whole thing in all over again – and boy didn’t THAT suck.

When I started my last day job I was greeted by 2 computers with insides that resembled a bunch of bankers box filled haphazardly with papers and file folders. Which was exactly the same thing that covered every flat office surface at that job. When you needed to find something inside the PC you had to run a slow search on the ENTIRE hard drive. When you wanted to find something on the desktop you had to sift through every pile of paper.

This is what my My Documents folder looks like – from that you can guess what all my hard drives and flash drives look like and from there my real desk top – an organized structure with a few small slush piles. My PC desktop usually has about 6 shortcuts and the same number of files on it.

Before running my spyware, malware, adware, or disc cleanup programs, I like to go through my hard drives and hand delete any files I don’t need and safely store the ones I want, Exactly the same thing you would do if you were picking up your living room before you fired up the vacuum cleaner. (btw your ‘desktop’ is a file folder on your hard drive just like all the others)

Booksellers accumulate just as many documents inside their computer as they do in real life: emails saved as texts, database extracts, images of books they own, they DID own or they wanna own. Presorting the files before they hit your hard drive is a good idea: develop consistent naming conventions for files and folders, pretend your PC is a file cabinet and when you put something in there you want to be able to find it again. Try storing data files by topic: customer wants, auction images, appraisals, tax documents. Adding years to folder names tax_files_04 which will allow you to archive old files easily.

If you feel uncomfortable about deleting things, then compress them to save space, or move them off the hard drive to a clearly labeled CD. Personally I run two hard drives inside my PC. Whenever I get a larger hard drive, I simply make the old one my secondary drive where I keep all my music, images, audio books, old accounting files, anything I don’t use all the time, but still may need to reference now and then.

Every so often go to the Control panel and run Add/Remove program, try to identify all the programs on your PC. Software and hardware often comes with ‘extra’ programs that you may never ever need nor want. Old software you don’t use anymore – all of this stuff can be removed to free up space on your hard drive. Check your Startup folder under Programs and see if there are things running you don’t want or know about.

Need I tell you that you SHOULD subscribe to an anti-virus program like McAfee or Norton? You also need Ad-ware removal program like Ad_aware. There are a lot of things on your pc, you can’t see that can be slowing it down and taking up space. If you keep a clean hard drive, it becomes easier to see what shouldn’t be there. If all of this frightens you, then put a crowbar in your wallet and PAY someone to do it for you. You spend a lot of money on this machine that basically the heart of your business, you have an auto mechanic don’t you?

Aside from cleaning the INSIDES of your PC, use compressed air, long bristle paint brushes, tweezers. And don’t forget the outside, the keyboard, the mouse, the peripherals etc . . . you don’t want it seizing up from cat hair in the cooling fan. [cough-cough] not like it ever happened to me.

I thought I had already posted this item, but it is just another thing I never actually did.

After polling a few friends I think I finally came up with what I think is a really good check list for show supplies. Your mileage may vary of course, but as always it’s better to have something and not need it, than need something and not have it. Besides it always gives one a smug sense of self satisfaction to be a have instead of a have not.

This is one of my favorite old bookseller tricks
Clear cosmetics bag cost: $9 value: priceless.

Pens
Pencils
Notebook/paper
Post it notes
Eraser
Scotch Tape
packing Tape
Stapler
Scissors
Business Cards
Calculator
Checkbook
Receipts/Invoices
Charge slips
Change
Maps
Catalogs/handouts
Paper Bags
Bubblewrap
Tissue
Book Easels
Poly Bags
Document Displays
Bookends
Book Weights
Poly strapping
Table Cloth
Tarp
Glass Cleaner
Paper Towels
Band-Aids

Win Schaeffer found this little baby
at Costco for 25 bucks!

Bookcases
Hammer
Nails
Screwdriver
Duct tape
Superglue
Flashlight
Table Fan
Hooks
Folding chair
Hand Truck
Asprin

thanks to
Edwin “Win” Schaeffer
Lee Lee Kirk of The Prints & The Paper

[for those who may remember this is something i dug up from my personal archives - you may be seeing retreads pop up now and then, i have a wider maw to feed now. ed.]

intro

In my booklife I have seen books repaired with book tape, duct tape, ‘lectric tape & masking tape. I have seen rubber cement, white glue, airplane glue, super glue and hot glue. I have seen them priced with stickers, ink, crayon, marker, and lipstick. And dear hearts, I have been asked to remove every bit of it. Some of these mutilations were done by people I know and respect in the field. I have even done a few myself, I did library type repairs on books in high school and have been paying penance ever since.

I know a bookbinder who sells bottles of furniture polish & neatsfoot oil for a handsome price & calls it ‘book creme’. I know another who buys saddlery polish & relabels it as ‘leather book treatment’. I have had the world’s foremost bookbinding deity dictate verbatim the British Museum Recipe to me. Every book dealer I have ever met has proudly shown me their personal teeny tiny secret method for spiffing up new acquisitions. Whatever it is, I just smile a bit and nod a bit and scream blue bloody murder on the inside.

Where once I would have given a 40 minute lecture on the evils of non-archival procedure, I now say what they hell [actually I would say something more colorful but this is a PG-rated post] . . . it’s not my book. It’s THEIR BOOK, for the moment anyway. If they want to fix it with bottle caps and bailing wire. . . it’s not my business. People are gonna do whatever they hell they want.

And beyond it all. . . [I may burn for this] not every book deserves archival quality treatment. That 7.50 copy of Mary Lasswell’s HIGH TIMES without a dust jacket deserves a spiffy new outlook on life, but not to the extent of spending an hour of my life dry cleaning & redyeing it.

If you have 30 bucks into a 100 dollar book, you don’t want to spend $75 on a full-boat restoration when a 25 buck reback will do. It’s your book, it’s your money. Do what your conscience dictates. If you care what happens to a book you sold 40 years down the road, when you are wheeling around in a home counting your ill gotten gains, you will take the time to learn which books not to harm.

As with all TYPES of people there are TWO TYPES of book arts people. There are the traditional BOOKBINDERS: who do things the way they do because that’s how it’s always been done and for the last 400 years things have been pretty swell. [I'd like to see what a CD-ROM looks like in 400 years.] And then there are the WHITE COATS, the lab mice who point at anything organic and make that Invasion of the Body Snatcher wail. These are two camps who have agreed to disagree. Would you believe that leather is not coinsidered archival quality material?

As with anything in this universe there are no hard and fast rules, and nothing is ever carved in stone. Opinions are like anal orafices, everybody has one, especially book people, ’cause we get to put ours on paper. I own about 40 books on binding and repair – each and every author dead sure in the knowledge that their word is gospel and everyone else is going to burn in the 10th layer of hell reserved for biblio-crimes.

Here’s a thumbnail sketch of the diverse territory on JUST leather treatments that lies out there:

Greenfield, Jane. CARE OF FINE BOOKS. 1988: – LEATHER:‘Leather bindings can be cleaned, of course with saddle soap, but moisture can cause blackening & cracking of some deteriorated leathers‘ – OILING:‘The leather dressing recommended is made of 40% anhydrous lanolin & 60% neatsfoot oils, per the NYPL & USDA.‘ -

Johnson, Arthur. W. THAMES & HUDSON MANUAL OF BOOKBINDING. 1979. ‘British Museum recipe 200 grams of lanolin, 300 milliliters of cedarwood oil, 15 grams beeswax & 310 milliliters of hexane or petroleum ether.’

Johnson, Arthur. W. PRACTICAL GUIDE TO BOOK REPAIR & CONSERVATION. 1992. ‘Chemical treatment for cleaning & preserving books & documents is constantly reviewed. Chemists & conservators fail to agree on the efficacy & safety of some methods, even those that have been accepted for years. These necessary revisions are confusing to the restorer who has to carry out the wishes of the customer.‘ – LEATHER DRESSING: ‘Periodic dressings of a fatty nature are a valuable contribution to the life & usefulness of a binding ….Dry, brittle leather requires feeding to enable the working parts of the binding to be supple & functional & to protect the covers from bruising due to indiscriminate handling.’ – CLEANING AGENTS:‘Potassium methyl cyclohexyl oleate. Commercial named ‘Vulpex’, this liquid soap is soluble in water & white spirit and can be used with confidence for washing leather covered books.‘ [chapters go heavily into unpronounceable chemicals to do all types of wonderful things..breathe deeply kiddies.]

Lydenberg, Harry Miller & John Archer. CARE & REPAIR OF BOOKS. 1931. ‘Take 4 parts lanolin the consistency of lard, to this add 6 parts neatsfoot oil, mixing the two thoroughly. If more polish is required apply a small quantity of castor oil & rub with a chamois.’ LEATHER DRESSING: [USDA 1962] 3% castile soap, 25% Neatsfoot oil, 10% tallow, 12% turpentine, 50% rainwater.’ LEATHER DRESSING: [1929 LOC] 50%Lanolin, 20% japan wax, 5 % sodium stearate, 25% sperm oil. [book also contains 6 other variations, seems every expert has their own recipe, will wonders never cease...]

Middleton, Bernard. RESTORATION OF LEATHER BINDINGS. 1972. Potassium Lactate & British Museum recipe. [Big time, and why not? he invented it.]

Morrow, Carolyn. PRESERVATION CHALLENGE. 1983. ‘one popular treatment, however, involves saturation of the leather with a 7% solution of Potassium Lactate followed by lubrication with 60/40 mixture of neatsfoot oil & lanolin. Potassium lactate, a buffering salt, will in ‘theory’ replace the protective salts washed out of the leather during the tanning process and serve as a buffer against acid attach from polluted atmospheres. Leather dressing or lubrication with animal fats such as neatsfoot oil & lanolin supposedly restores suppleness & durability to leather that has become dessicated by exposure to light & heat or by oxidation of the natural oils over time. However leather in an advanced state of deterioration accrues no benefits from treatment of any kind, and the unsightly powder is transferred during handling into the leaves and onto other books.’

Morrow, Carolyn. CONSERVATION TREATMENT PROCEDURES. 1982. ‘Potassium Lactate solution: 7% Potassium Lactate, .25% paranitrophenol, 92.75% Distilled water.’ LEATHER DRESSING: neatsfoot oil 60%, lanolin 40%.

Shep, Robert L. CLEANING, REPAIRING & CARING FOR OLD BOOKS. 1991. ‘Potassium lactate is recommended to clean & preserve leather. The British Museum has a famous dressing . . . Another famous basic formula often mentioned is 50% Neatsfoot oil & 50% castor oil.’

Vaughan, Alex. J. MODERN BOOKBINDING. 1996. – ‘Much of the deterioration of leather & especially with russia & unpolished calf is due to drying out. This can be counteracted to a certain extent by the application of animal fat to those bindings that are likely to remain untouched for years-remarkably enough books that are frequently handled derive this from the hands that come into contact with them.’ [also recommends water stains for redyeing]

Young. Laura S. BOOKBINDING & CONSERVATION BY HAND. 1995. ‘Leather, cloth & paper can all be successfully dyed with the same type of dye. There are 2 types of powdered aniline dyes available:those that are soluble in water & those that are soluble in alcohol.’….’The final step is to oil & polish the volume. The best dressing for this -according to present thinking conservators- is a 60/40 combination of neats foot oil & lanolin.’

For every one book I have that says one thing I am sure there are an equal number of lab reports somewhere that says that says the converse is true. You say potato, I say stuffing.

Thumb rules for repair:

If you don’t know the book’s true value. STOP
If you think you may harm it. STOP.
If you aren’t sure what it’s gonna look like later. STOP.
If you can sell it as is. STOP.
If you can’t afford to throw it away after you have ruined it. STOP.

Basically, it all comes down to the fact that I don’t care if you use shoe creme, whip cream or brill creme just don’t expect a binder to undo it later.

yours truly,
J-

Okay so I took yesterday off for a little road trip. Rebekah Bartlett from Coelacanth Books and I took in a book auction up in the wilds of New Hampshire. (why are auction houses ALWAYS hell and gone from civilization?) Here’s a few thumbs I cobbled together -

BRING MAPS - Buy new ones at least once a decade – mine tend to find their way to the floor of the truck and then acquire decoratively placed muddy boot prints. Regardless of how many I have, I always end up with 3 of one state and only half of another. I hate it when I drive off a map and onto a new one I don’t have.

I like to make small marks on the maps with MM/YY when I find an out of the way goodie, like an off the grid bookshop or good place to eat. I even scrawl radio station info, so I don’t have to spend ages scanning the dial. If this bugs you get a seperate set of maps for notations.

BRING A DIRECTORY – the regions Book Association Dealer directory – ALMOST everywhere has an association of old bookies and any org worth their salt has a directory with a map. When you see them grab FOUR – one goes in the car, one goes on your desk, one gets lent to someone else and one gets lost. You can always visit an association site and print out stuff before you go. Also bring any directories of Antique Malls or thrift stores. You may not plan your trip around them, but if you are off on a stretch between bookstores you may do some exploring. I found a antiuqe mall booth with 50% decent books yesterday cause I was killing time waiting for the auction to start.

BRING YOUR CAMERA – it’s not just for travel snaps anymore. With the no cost of digital photos, I take pictures of things I want to remember instead of writing them down. A signpost, a store front, a restaurant, even a meal or a book. A phone with a camera is a terrific toy for surreptitiously shooting a book in a store.

BRING YOUR OWN BOX and/or bags - I hate it when I buy an expensive book and they put it in a grocery bag or if I buy several and all they have is a banana box with no decent bottom. I save them money and me aggravation, by putting them directly into my own box or bag with handles. You can tear up whatever they gave you and use it to keep them from sliding around.

BRING A TO-GO BAG – my glove box is already full of garage receipts, flashlights, wd-40 and whatnot. So, I keep a canvas bookbag hanging on the chair by the door – with maps, directories, pens, notebook etc . . . It all comes back it the house on top of the box of books. If anything it is a place to put the days receipts and flyers.

HAVE A FLEXIBLE DESTINATION - I learned this doing photography, find a destination point. It doesn’t even HAVE to be a bookstore. You may stop many times before you get there you may even change your trip and NOT get there. But when you have one, you can always swing your compass back to it when you are stuck for a decision.

TAKE THINGS - flyers, anouncements, free mags – the flyers and annoucement cards can lead you to a store or a sale you didn’t know about and may help you plan your next trip. And the free mags are good for packing material after read them or decide your aren’t going to read them.

FOLLOW YOUR NOSE - if you see someplace curious STOP – the odds are good you won’t remember it the next time you go back there. You never know what you will find. There are ENDLESS tales of booksellers stopping unplanned at a thrift store and finding a gem.

USE THE FACILITIES – remember when your mother told you to go before you go? booksellers you don’t know personally may not have a public restroom. Use the ones in the fast food joints, like Mickey D’s, BK adn Dunkins – you DON’T HAVE to eat there – trust me it’s okay – they really don’t care.

STOP AND EAT – regardless of whether you are just starting out or writing off the whole trip. TAKE time to stop and eat. It will at least give you a chance to make notes, check your time and map and make your next decision. If you are on a strict book only budget – bring food and drink in a small cooler with ice and don’t bring crappy road food, bring a treat – something nice you don’t normally make and stop at those odd side road monuments, that’s what they put them there for! I once made my own lobster rolls and ice tea and was eating by a babbling brook off a side road in Warren, New Hampshire when a deer walked right past me – I kid you not! If you have a more flexible allowance – stop someplace that LOOKS interesting – not a chain. Either the food will be great or just as mediocre as fast food kind – either way it is better than eating in your car.

TAKE A LOAD OFF - If you aren’t driving your own vehicle or are somewhere you had to fly to get to think about shipping. If you are visiting a bookseller you know collect up your hoard and ship it home ahead of you from their place. (I did that from California and was sooo glad I did) It may be pricey to stop and ship from a ’shipping’ store – but depending on the weight of your books, their value and your chiropractic bills it may be worth it. If you are worried about your new acquires, ship your clothes home and put your books in your luggage*. I like to bring empty soft suitcases stuffed inside each other JUST to fill with books.

KEEP AN OPEN MIND – Don’t clutter your head with a search for just the stuff you WANT to find – you will blind yourself to stuff you didn’t know you were looking for. So? you find a few non-book things that you can eBay, or you find some decent books that AREN’T your specialty you can resell to another dealer.

“Never THINK you are going to find anything when you look, just look, with an open mind. Most people CANNOT DO THIS, what with their egos getting in the way, etc. I mean it. One of the absolute hardest things to do is NEVER THINK YOU WILL HIT THE LICK, just have an interest in things and OBSERVE, trying to LEARN SOMETHING. There is a certain chemistry involved with luck, I believe, and, if one does not lay the groundwork for the luck, ie; do the open mind thing and don’t let GREED enter in to your preparation, you can pick up every book in sight for the next million years and all you will be doing is “lifting.” * in from Ed Smith Books

TAKE SOME CHANCES - Blind buy stuff. Most booksellers DON’T live and die by ScoutPal, we use our head and instincts. We buy stuff, we research it and we file that knowledge away so that we can make better guesses the next time. What you learn by merely researching a book can usually outweigh the cost of the book. You are honing your knowledge and over the years you make fewer and fewer ‘bad’ buys. One of the first things a bookseller ever told me is that “You never regret the books you buy as much as the ones you don’t” You HAVE to take some risks, because THOSE are the lessons you remember.

Recently I have had the occasion to pay homage to the inventor of the thumb drive, technically called a USB Flash Drive.

Micro discs, floppy disks, zip disks, tape drives, backup drives, over the years we have tried them all to preserve our data in case of tragedy. Now these popular little buggers, available in assorted sizes including 1 & 2 gigs, hold a ridiculous amount and allow us to keep our precious data literally close to our hearts.

USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports are popping up on everything. Every new gadget plugs in – keyboards, cameras, fans, vaccums, even coffee mugs. But the best plugin so far is the humble flash drive. Using drag and drop, you can either copy your data or use automated backup applications to do it for you.

Last week, I had to replace 2 computers at my day job and if I hadn’t been wearing the most important data around my neck I would have been in a panic. Customer files, documents, Quicken files, book databases, even utility programs, software setup programs, printer drivers, all live on my thumbs. In case of fire, a thumb drive on your keychain can save your sanity. Simply reinstall your major programs drag & drop your datafiles and you are up and running anywhere.

On a further note, the new trend in the wind is AWAY from desktop or even laptop dependency. Surfing through life from computer to computer with only a thumb drive may be in your foreseeable future. There are already many applications that RUN right off a flash drive. There are portable version of Firefox browser, Thunderbird email and OpenOffice, and more coming. Toss that in with the new trend towards Web-based applications (software that runs off the net not installed on your PC) like Google’s, Calendar, Gmail, Writely, and Spreadsheets, as well as file sharing websites like Google video, Flickr, YouTube – we may never have to buy or install software again.

HOW TO MOVE, WITH BOOKS or How I Packed My Books 6 (12) Times by Ed Smith.

When your move involves a library of books, it can be difficult. I have moved 6 times in 12 years mostly due to my wife’s work and have packed my own books each time. Make that packed and unpacked. Longest move was the last one (so far), 3000 miles. Of course the moving truck actually did the transport, but I packed well over 100 boxes of books. I like to use THARCO double-walled #TW-677 boxes (15 x 15 x 15 inches). I use the large size bubble wrap, perforated at 16.” One roll consists of actually 3 rolls. And for this latest move I used 2 rolls (6 rolls) because I had 2 rolls already (6 rolls). I told you it gets complicated. In total, I used 120 boxes and 12 rolls of large size bubble wrap. A word about tape. I tape the whole box. You could take a box of mine, taped, and float it down the Mississippi. UPS once delivered an expensive book of mine to the right address, but the wrong town, and it sat in snow and ice, out in the open at an abandoned house, for 12 days before the recipient called me to state he did not receive it. When he finally got it, it was snug as a bug and dry as the Sahara. So, best way is to have your supplies, and plenty of time, and at least a case of tape (I use 3.6mil clear). I pack very carefully, using plenty of bubble wrap. Layer of bubble, layer of books, layer of bubble, layer of books, etc. Then I stand up some larger books in the remaining space. Remember, you are packing your investment. I pack the same way for shipping to a bookfair. The most important advice is this: pack a weight that considers the lifting from the angle of who has to handle it. My average box weight is 35-40 lbs. It is also wise to number the boxes and keep a list of where stuff is. My new bookshelves are being installed tomorrow, about a month after arriving here in Florida, and I have sold some nice books since being here. Unfortunately, I did not keep a list and did not number the boxes. I have had to locate 6 books so far, and, for the most part, they have been in the next to last box I carefully unpacked and packed again!

Happy moving! Ed

Ed Smith Books,
Ponte Vedra Beach, FL