I know this is a bit off topic for this forum but it may be useful to some of you so I'll go ahead with the post.
Recently I was going through some of my reference materials and realized how bad of condition my books had gotten into. Like many of you I use them often and found that the bindings were loose. I also have an extensive magazine library I use for references and they too were deteriorating. I did an online search for bookbinders and contacted a few and was amazed at the prices they were asking...some were as high as $85 an hour! I mentioned this to a friend of mine and he said it was funny I should mention it as HE did bookbinding himself. I sent my items off to him and before I knew it I had neatly bound books in my hands!! He was also able to put the magazines together for me bound into volumes so I have them all together and no longer falling apart. I convinced him to let the public know about his skill and he has put together a website and I thought I would pass it along to all of you. If you are like me at all then you have some money invested into your reference material and I know I use mine all the time. Normal wear and tear on them is awful at best and this was a great way for me to get mine back to a "like new" condition. Anyway, here is the link to his site.... http://mandalaybindery.com/
He is very helpful if you have any questions and will let you know exactly what can be done before he does it....and it was MUCH CHEAPER than the other bookbinders I spoke to! I hope this is of some use to someone

Darla Meyer
TLB Miniatures

Wish he lived a bit closer to New Zealand!
I'm in the same fix; lots of well-read references collectetd over 35+ years. I wish your mate all the best luck in the world.
Now... Do I know any-one with book-repair as a hobby....

Darla - I'm not sure this is off topic at all. I've only been in the hobby for a few years, but one of my passions has been to acquire as many images of Great War uniforms, weapons and equipment as my modest hobby budget allows. The only way I can keep track of the "library" is to reduce them to scanned-in .jpg files and store them in indexes on my hard drive. I imagine many of us are facing similar problems and trying to figure out what to do. The bookbinding is certainly a novel approach!

If anybody is planning to digitize their "library", my only tip is don't scrimp on the scanner, the size of the hard drive or the computer operating speed.

All the best,
Dan