Since you are referring to miscellaneous materials, I am taking that to
mean that you are not referring to your regular periodicals.  If that is
the case, yes, we do some in-house binding.  We have 3 different, and quite
easy to use machines.  The one machine was probably the best buy that we
have made.  Everyone likes it.  It is a spiral binding machine.  We use
plastic combs (there are some that use metal, but I think that the metal
tears up the pages faster) and the machine punches the holes and holds the
combs open for us.  The advantage to this machine is that when people go to
copy something, the item that we have bound this way opens fully and lies
flat on the copier.  Or if you are binding something like a music book, it
is ideal, because it will, again, lie flat and stay open to the page you
are playing from.  The only disadvantages are that the combs give out or
break sometimes (but they are inexpensive and easy to replace) and
sometimes the holes in the paper give out.  We have various solutions for
the second problem - if it is the first or last page, we might laminate it
and punch new holes, or if it it is several pages, we might trim the edges
and punch new holes, if the margins allow.  That is another point that I
should make.  It is easier for us to use all 3 of our machines because we
own a hydraulic chopper which allows us to trim the edges of a book
uniformly and in one swipe.  One more disadvantage of the spiral binder is
that it really isn't a good idea to bind something that is more than 1 1/2"
- 2" thick (if you can even find a comb bigger than that).  We also have a
velobind machine, but we don't use it very much since we went to spiral
binding.  This works best for thin items that are not likely to get a lot
of use or be copied much (it breaks the binding when you try to make it lie
flat).  Our last machine looked good, but doesn't do that great a job.  It
is a Uni-bind machine.  Basically, it is supposed to put a thin layer of
glue down the spine (sort-of like with a paperback binding), but it is
extremely difficult to catch all of the pages with the glue, no matter how
careful you are.  All of the machines are very easy to operate.  We
frequently will use pamphlet covers with the first two machines, if the
original cover is gone or doesn't look up to the task, although we also
frequently laminate the original covers to give them some longevity.   I
would not really recommend any of these for even temporary periodical binding.
If you want more details, feel free to get in touch we me.

Hope this helps,
Susan Andrews

At 10:53 AM 6/23/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>Does anyone have experience with in-house binding? We are thinking
>binding some of our miscellaneous materials in the library instead
>of sending them out to our commercial bindery. Any info on
>equipment, labor, savings...would be appreciated.
>
>
>_____________________________________________________________________________________
>Jeff Flynn                                Tel: (617) 305-1603
>Serials/Bibliographic Control Librarian   Fax: (617) 723-3164
>Suffolk University Law Library            Email: jflynn@acad.suffolk.edu
>120 Tremont St.
>Boston, MA 02108
>_____________________________________________________________________________________

Susan Andrews
Head, Serials Librarian
Texas A&M University-Commerce
P.O. Box 3011
Commerce, TX 75429-3011
Susan_Andrews@tamu-commerce.edu
(903)886-5733
"Your Success Is Our Business"