Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books
A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology

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The fine, threadlike elements that make up the structure of fibers of certain natural and synthetic materials and which are considered to be made up ultimately of long-chain molecules oriented in a bundle in one direction. In vegetable fibers they are the threadlike elements of the wall of the native cellulose fiber, consisting of still finer microscopic microfibrils. In animal fibers they are the long proteinaceous filaments consisting of bundles of submicroscopic micelles, which in turn are made up of very long molecules of collagen twisted together. Fibrils are the smallest physical unit encountered in fibers; at this point the physical area ends and the chemical area begins. (17 , 291 , 363 )

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