"Not every workplace features a guillotine. At a book conservation lab tucked beneath the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the office guillotine might as well be a water cooler or a file cabinet for all that it fazes the staff. 'We have a lot of violent equipment,' said Mindell Dubansky, who heads the Sherman Fairchild Center for Book Conservation."

"Fearsome machines are part of daily life at the lab, which serves as a hospital where ailing books from every department of the museum are restored to health. The lab’s six employees process an astonishing 2,500 books each year."