Bookbinding is the process of manually assembling a book together from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of literature or other material. There are various methods of carrying out this practise using many techniques, some of which can be dated back to ancient times. Modern day bookbinding uses some traditional methods along with hi-tech techniques to obtain a well presented book, one of which is thermal binding. Thermal binding itself uses several techniques using glue and heat such as a one piece cover with glue down the spine to quickly bind pages without the need for punching. Thermal covers are usually made to fit a standard sheet size of paper and come with a glue channel down the spine. The paper is located in the cover and then heated in a machine, when the glue cools down it adheres the paper to the spine. Other methods are also used including perfect binding, tape binding and a process known as unibind.