[naoqfqdm] Clamped book

Consider the task of printing a multipage document which has very low likelihood of every being read in the future, some sort of archival application, or a backup copy.  One does not need anything as fancy as book binding, which produces something that can be read many times.  We are interested in providing a way of keeping the pages together, and of protecting the pages from external forces, like being folded or dropped.

Incidentally, a nice feature of unbound pages is that if the "book" ever needs to be read, and read a lot, the unbound pages can easily be passed through a sheet feed scanner.

Unbound pages in a box is the obvious first idea.  Slightly difficult in that we would like the size of the box to be precisely big enough to hold the pages and no larger.

Pages sandwiched between two sheets of stiff material, like book covers, but held together with a clamp instead of book binding.  Easiest idea, the clamp is something that wraps tightly all the way around, perhaps string or band.  Bolts connecting the covers on the outside of the pages, on all four corners.  Bolts through holes in the pages, most famously binders with three hole punched paper.  Most unorthodox: a single bolt through the center of each page.  This requires printing to avoid printing in the center of the page.

The sides of such a sandwich remain unprotected, but have mostly been fine for books, which suffer the same problem.

Because everything is tightly clamped into a rigid object, it resists shear forces, to which traditionally bound books are weak.