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Hi Martin and all-

We have a number of books that travel with two of our exhibitions, "It's 
a Nano World" and "Too Small To See" that have held up remarkably well. 
 It's particularly nice for those exhibitions, all about things that you 
can't see, to include some picture books for young children and some 
books targeting older kids, for interested parents and kids.  You walk 
by and the books have moved around, so people do read them to their kids 
and by themselves while waiting for their kids.  We've got nice seating 
areas too, which also helps.

We laminate each page in the book individually, leaving maybe 3"  of 
extra laminating material to the left (the binding side) and trimming 
the other three sides to leave 1/4";  we use 5mil laminating material 
that goes through a heating element.  Then we make a pair of wooden 
boards out of  ~1/2" thick quality plywood, that are maybe 2" wide and 
as long as the book is tall (rounded, sanded, and polyurethaned of 
course). We stack up the pages, and sandwich the plain part of the 
laminated page in-between the boards, then drill through the entire 
assembly, and finally hold it all together with bolts and corresponding 
recessed nuts that have very flat heads (Hafele calls them Screw nuts- 
page 391 of their furniture/cabinetry catalog;  the bolt and nut take 
allen wrenches   
http://www.hafele.com/us/external/catalog/pages09/391.pdf  ).  

When you turn the pages there's an extra 1" or so of plain laminating 
sheet that takes the brunt of the page-turning.

This method with the wooden boards seems to keep the books from 
disappearing!

After a year or two the front or back covers might have their corners 
bent some, but they look pretty good still.  I"ll send you a digital 
photo- a picture is worth a thousand words.  You can also put "return to 
exhibition" or logo stickers on the book cover before laminating.

Kathy Krafft
Exhibit Projects Director
Sciencenter
Ithaca, NY


>
>
> Which protective systems have you found especially effective for  
> protecting books included in traveling or permanent exhibitions? Are  
> there different considerations for traveling vs. permanent exhibitions?
>
> Martin
>
>

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