This is truley a public servant...and he does it for free!
Retiree turned page on new career. Restoring books began as a hobby, became a vocation
Who in today's world of ever-advancing electronic media gives a hoot for the lore of yore, the tired, worn and acid-chewed books that, in some cases, only a scholar could love?
In the Houston Public Library's historic special collections section, where some 40,000 volumes, some centuries old, wait in climate-controlled stacks for that special reader, the answer is clear: Charlie Arbore.
A goateed septuagenarian who resembles a slim Col. Sanders, Arbore is the Houston Metropolitan Research Center's volunteer book doctor. He's on duty six hours a day, five days a week — excepting the two summer months he tours Europe — mending the broken and binding the wounded.
"Charlie is worth his weight in gold, literally," said research center director Kemo Curry. "I think of him as an angel. What he does for us is so supremely important and good."
Arbore's work conservatively is valued at $100 an hour, she said.
For Arbore, a retired oil company engineer, working with damaged old books is both an intellectual challenge and a labor of love. Even a routine repair job often sends him on a quest to learn more about the author, publisher and printer.
"Then, too," he said, "I'll check on the importance of the book — the social, religious and educational connections. … That gives me a heck of a lot of satisfaction."
$75 was just too much
Arbore's interest in book repair grew out of the needs of his personal library, the core of which was assembled in the early 1970s while he was living in England.
"I bought several volumes that were very interesting and in very bad condition," he said.
One was a first edition from the 1700s that traced the history of English royalty. Arbore paid about $2.50 for the tome, written by famed physicist, mathematician and astronomer Isaac Newton. The book's pages were in excellent condition, but the volume lacked a cover.
Back in Houston in 1975, Arbore approached a local bookbinder about repairing the book but was dismayed at the cost estimate — $75.
"I declined," Arbore said.
Nonetheless, the bookbinder invited him to join in some informal book-repair classes offered by a master craftsman in Galveston. Arbore accepted the offer — the classes approximated a college course in the basics — and expanded his new knowledge by delving into the public library's holdings on book-making and conservation...
...In the early 1990s, after the research center's conservator departed, librarians recruited Arbore to repair the spine of a 19th century book they wanted to exhibit.
Over the next few years, he repaired a couple dozen books for the library, joining the volunteer staff full time about five years ago.
With the help of an occasional assistant, Arbore handles as many as 100 items a year, patching maps, rebinding books, cleaning and de-acidifying pages and building special acid-free boxes for storage of especially rare volumes....
...His greatest challenge
...Arbore's greatest challenge as a conservator came when he was called upon to repair an 18th-century book detailing the lives of Venetian doges. The book was printed in Latin, but on the back of each page was a handwritten Italian translation.
The book was in fragments, the pages water-stained and mildewed.
The book doctor's prescription was to soak the pages in a mild bleach solution, but the trick was to do so without destroying the inked writing on the back.
"We floated the paper in the wash liquid with the translation face up," Arbore explained. "As the paper soaks, the water penetrates from the bottom up. When it reaches the top, the sheen of the paper changes. ... We'd let it float and soak and twiddle our thumbs and when the color changed, we'd pull it out and put it between blotters."
The blotters absorbed the liquid along with mildew and stains....
I love the Internet and technoolgy...but nothing beats a good book. Thank you again Mr Arborn.
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