Last summer, I began a project where I wanted to digitize my paperback book collection to take many, many titles with me while on vacation and everywhere else. My method: use a double-sided feed scanner (about $120) to scan entire books. The only downside to the operation was that I had to un-bind entire books, figuring that 'some-day' I would rebind them. Well my wife, lover of libraries and rooms full of books, can't stand the fact that I'm "destroying" mine, so the some-day has come much sooner than I thought.
The un-binding process was simple: take one electric griddle and set it to about 200F. Hold the paperback spine-down on top of a piece of aluminum foil on the griddle, and pull the sheets out one-by-one when the adhesive became warm enough. I can pull 800-1000 page books into a stack of single sheets in about an hour, so it's easy enough to do while watching a movie.
To scan the book, it would also take about an hour with me putting a stack of 20 or more sheets in the scanner. Someday I'll find a good enough OCR that'll let me transfer plain text eBooks to my Sony reader. For now, the scans (in the form of single PDFs/book) work just fine.
When it comes to rebinding them, I get my inspiration from a series a books I received as a gift 10 years ago. The books appear to at one point been paperbacks that someone rebound as hardcover books, so you essentially have hardcovers that look great on the shelf with all of my paperbacks. They even laminated the old cover onto the cover of the newly bound book. I'd like to duplicate this final product with my books. Here's where I'd like any and all suggestions you can give.
Right now, I'm hurting on binding material selections, so maybe you can help here at the very least.
This is from memory, as I'm writing this at work during lunch, but it should be fairly accurate. Here's how the cover layers up starting at the pages and working out:
1. Endsheet: What weight and type of paper would work well?
2. Hinge Material: I don't have a machine, so I don't plan on stitching (nor do I think there's margin enough to support that) so a similar thermal binding onto a study fabric or paper product would be ideal.
3. Board: For all I know this could be anything from a paper product to masonite. Would chit-board or museum board work? I have access to acceptably-sized scraps of these latter two at work that I could get at no charge.
4. Board Backing: Some form of paper is adhered to the board to give it a clean look, and wrapped around to on top of the endsheets on the inside of the close book. I would normally use spray-adhesive for something like this to give it a clean look, but is that advisable for longevity? Please suggest a material for this and the adhesive.
5. Original Paperback Cover: These I definitely want to use on the re-bound books. Any ideas on how to adhere them onto the board backing? Or do I even need to beyond taking them down if the exterior lamination holds it in place?
6. Final Exterior Lamination: The books have a glossy, crystal clear lamination to show the original covers in preserved glory. What kind of lamination could be used for this? Low-heat lamination? Where can I get smaller, less expensive quantities of it?
When it comes to adhesion, I have access to scraps of material we use to mount presentation boards. It's basically a thin cotton sheet with adhesive that's been soaked into it. It's heat activated and forms a bubble-less bond between paper and whatever kind of board we use at the time. If this is a respectable, non-damaging adhesion process for sandwiching the above layers, do tell as I can definitely make that work.
I originally started the scanning process as a way to preserve my older books, and modernize my collection. Now I'm beginning to want to have both paper and digital formats at my disposal depending on if it's at-home use or on-the-go use. When I get the details banged out, I'd be glad to post some tutorials on the "digital and back again conversion process" if anyone is interested.
