Book Bindings
What should guide a School Librarian’s decision as to what binding should be purchased?
The simple answer is that you want the binding to last as long as the content and no longer.
What does this answer mean?
In all grade level Libraries there are going to be titles that most likely will be there forever. I suspect that Harry Potter books will out-last all Librarians’ careers that might read this blog. Therefore, you want to buy the very best binding possible. The Bound To Stay Bound book company (BTSB) produces the best bindings I know of in the industry. BTSB takes regular hard back books and strips the cover off and rebinds it with a binding as strong as the technology allows. They used to cover the books with what always looked like wall paper to me. However, for many years they have had the technology to reproduce the original book cover art into their permanent binding.
Now, for the other extreme, for books that you suspect will only be popular for perhaps a year, you may want to buy paperbacks. For example, in Texas for 3rd through 6th graders we have a book award called the Texas Bluebonnet Award. The list of potential winners is announced usually in November.
The contest consists of students reading at least 5 of the 20 books on the list and then voting in January 14 months after the list is announced. Typically, the School Librarian wants to have multiple copies of the 20 titles during the reading period.
Traditionally, books that do not win the award are not very popular years after. At least they are not popular enough to maintain several copies.
So, purchasing one copy of each title in a standard Library binding and then buying multiple copies of each title in paperback usually works out just right.
In between, a School Librarian my want to buy paperbacks because they are preferred by the students, but the Librarian is buying titles that are expected to be popular for several years. In this case pre-bound paperback books are a good solution. One company that produces pre-bound paperback books is Perma-Bound. There are many others.
As in all things pertaining to being a good School Librarian, even the simplest things need to be thought about thoroughly. What we do effects those who fund us and those who benefit from our decisions.
