Reading is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Some people like to do their reading on a tablet or a smartphone, but for many people, there’s nothing like going “old school” and curling up for hours with a good book. These bibliophiles are proud of their book collections and want to take absolute care of them. In addition to collectors, libraries and merchants also want to make certain their books are in excellent condition. Whether you’re having a garage sale or doing a home renovation or preparing for a move you want to store your books as carefully as possible. A.B. Richards can help you do that.
Make A.B. Richards Your Storage Container Company
A.B. Richards is the Northeast’s premier storage container company. If you’re looking to store your home based collection, consider renting our 20ft storage containers. If you run a business and have extra inventory and need a large amount of storage, consider our 40ft storage units or our 40ft Jumbo Storage Containers with an extra foot of head room. All of our ground level storage containers are sturdy and secure and will keep your books safe. We’d like to give some other tips as well.
Before Storing Books
The Library of Congress has several suggestions for caring for your books. They include:
- Make sure your hands are clean and you read in a clean place.
- Keep food and drinks away from your books.
- When taking books off shelves grab them on both sides in the middle of the spine.
- Don’t lie a book open at 180 degrees. Instead prop them up by the cover.
- Don’t use paper clips, dog ears or acidic inserts as bookmarks.
Preparing Books for Storage
Once it’s time to store your books you also need to take care. Your storage area must be dusted and cleaned often. You also want to store books in a cool, clean area. This means room temperature or below. Avoid humidity. About 35 percent humidity is ideal. You can get away with higher humidity, up to 60 percent, but this can be problematic if you’re storing your books on shelves. Keep books of similar size with other books propping up other books on either side. The website Biblio also suggests doing everything you can to keep books out of sunlight. Another great way to preserve books is to put them in dust jackets. It’s important to make certain that the jackets are tucked inside the boards and aren’t creased or folded.
If you don’t have shelves and have to stack your books, put the largest volumes on the bottom and put the next largest on top of them as if you were building a pyramid. If you’re storing books in boxes, you should be careful about allowing moisture to build in the box. Stack the books horizontally and use properly sized books to fill gaps in an upright position.
A.B. Richards is Perfect for All Types of Storage
Whether you’re storing for business or for residential use or keeping equipment safe at a work site, A.B. Richards makes storage easy and convenient. We’ll deliver your portable storage container to wherever you’ll need it and we’ll pick it up as well. Contact us today.
