Before the age of endless digital writing space, it’s easy to forget that blank paper was a commodity. Below are two fun examples of writing ledgers that remind me just how precious paper was.
While it’s possible that salacious writings were once written and removed from the back of these bindings… another theory is that the blank pages were no longer needed for their original intended purpose, and since they were going to waste… an opportunistic writer hastily cut and ripped out pages, seizing the goods for use elsewhere.

So what does that mean for the ledgers left behind whose guts have been partially removed?
The covers no longer fit the pages inside.  The spines sag or pop off, and the covers extend beyond the fore edge of the book’s textblock – making both handling and long-term preservation problematic.


In order to relieve stress, conservation treatment can be undertaken to compensate for loss.  For extremely important bindings, treatment may entail replacing lost pages with new paper, resewing the sheets into the binding.
However, in the following two examples below, the textblocks were otherwise in fairly good condition, so the Lab explored a lower cost route by inserting foam spacers.
The Leonard Hotel registry (which contains Grover Cleveland’s signature from 1885!) was treated overall to reback and consolidate deteriorated leather.  A closed cell polyethylene foam was loosely inserted as a placeholder for the missing text. In this case, the foam can be removed at any time and the jagged edges of the page fragments can be observed.  Simple, yet effective!

Before treatment images are displayed on the left, after treatment images on the right:

 
A similar treatment taken a step further builds upon the treatment solution above.  The following ledger contains early Cincinnati baptismal, marriage, and funeral records that predate city records, dating to 1838-1885.  A large section of lost paper in the back of the binding has caused the stiff spine to pop off.  The loose covers no longer support the textblock pages.

Treatment was conducted by our senior conservation technician, Catarina Figueirinhas, to stabilize the ledger for digitization out of house, as well as long-term storage.  Rather than insert foam loosely, this book was in need of a rigid support that would not be in danger of becoming lost.  Therefore, foam was sewn into the back of the binding as if it was a gathering.  This was achieved by wrapping the foam in an archival e-flute cardboard.  Essentially, the blue cardboard was folded into a “u-shape” with sharp corners and treated as an outer folio.  The corrugated cardboard was then sewn through each fold onto the original sewing supports, as though the cardboard was two gatherings.  The foam was adhered inside the cardboard with adhesive.

Because this condition issue is unique – it’s part of the object’s history, yet presents us with preservation challenges – treatment solutions are not one-size-fits-all.  Each book calls for solutions based on how it will be used and interpreted.
In these cases, the foam gatherings, both sewn and loose, functioned well in the back of the bindings while also retaining the history of use. The constructed gatherings helped to improve handling and support the bindings in a cost effective and reversible way (with differing levels of reversibility).  I imagine this will not be the last book to come across my bench with chunks of missing text; I am excited to be armed with these simple solutions.
Ashleigh Ferguson Schieszer (PLCH) —- Book and Paper Conservator
Photographic Documentation by Jessica Ebert & Ashleigh Schieszer