Binding and mending Binding a book means not only covering it, but preserving it.

Good binding, even at a high price, educates the public taste and promotes a desire to protect the library from injury and loss.

Cheap binding degrades books and costs more in the end than good work.
Keep in a bindery-book, which may be any simple blank book, or one especially made for the purpose (see Library Bureau catalog), a record of each volume that the library binds or rebinds.
Enter in the bindery-book consecutive bindery number, book-number, author, title, binding to be used, date sent to bindery, date returned from bindery, and cost of binding.
Books subject to much wear should be sewn on tapes, not on strings; should have cloth joints, tight backs, and a tough, flexible leather, or a good, smooth cloth of cotton or linen such as is now much used by good binders.

Most of the expensive leather, and all cheap leather, rots in a short time; good cloth does not.

Very few libraries can afford luxurious binding.