Thanks for the info, Bill. I realize it's an idiot move on my part, asking a question that Google can answer in a minute, but this way I have your expert testimony.
It would indeed be a catastrophe if the dry adhesive suddenly failed after many years. I think about stuff like this because I deal with old books a lot and the ways they fall apart interest me. With the majority of 19th Century leatherbound books, the main problem is that binders pared the leather too thin, plus the way the leather was tanned made it dry out and disintegrate over time (called red rot). The result is that most leather bound books from that time have cracked joints, loose covers, loose or missing spines. Binders did beautiful work in those days, fine gold tooling on fine leathers, but much of it is now in ruins. They could have avoided this, had they but known that their methods weren't safe for the long term. On the other hand, they're all dead and so are the readers who originally bought the books, so it's not their problem, it's ours.
A mistake I made in the 70s - 80s was using rubber cement to glue down labels/cover art on my publications. It dried out, turned the paper brown, and the labels came loose. Bad choice, but I had no clue.
Anyway, no reason to think the dry adhesive isn't okay.
