I replied to Allen privately, but then thought there might be more people
out there who had similar problems.  You should never have glossy pages
bound with an adhesive bind.  They should always be sewn.  If the bindery
is worth anything they should have told you this.  Some journals, for
margin reasons or whatever, can't be sewn (either center sewn or regularly
sewn) so they must be adhesive bound.  If that is the case at least insist
that they double fan it so the glue is applied to both sides of the page
and/or notch the spine so the glue can get in deeper etc.  We had tons of
troubles with American Bindery, so the state just broke the contract with
them and we are now using Heckman and they seem to be doing very well.  We
set up our parameters with the bindery to always sew everything as the
default.  With all the photocopying and use that our journals see, we have
found that the sewn volumes definitely hold up better than plain adhesive
bound one.  Hope this helps.  If anyone has any specific questions just
let me know, I do all the binding as well as serials processing here.

Cindy Morley
University of Arkansas
Law School Library
Fayetteville AR

cmorley@law.uark.edu
(501) 575-7916
 When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the
world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum

> On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Allen Williams wrote:
>
> > I'm not sure if this problem has been addressed recently, please forgive
> > me if it has.  I would like to hear from medical libraries on how their
> > journals are being professionally bound and if you are having problems
> > with pages falling out.
> >
> > We are experiencing problems with the majority of our bound medical
> > journals.  Due to the glossy pages and heavy use by patrons, many of the
> > pages are slipping out of the professional binds.  Some volumes have been
> > rebound to the point that the margins cannot be reduced any further.  Our
> > current bindery does not notch the spines before binding which we have
> > heard would help this problem considerably.  We have been told that
> > they're working on finding a new glue, but in the meantime our expensive
> > journals are becoming rather ragged.
> >
> > Do you have suggestions on other bindery practices to try or on specific
> > binderies that you would recommend for this type of problem?
> >
> > Thanks in advance for your help --
> >
> >
> >         Allen Williams
> >         Periodicals Specialist
> >         Grand Valley State University
> >         email: williama@gvsu.edu