From some point after its incoporation to the early 80s, the Library Association of Portland operated its own bindery.

Throughout the collection of Multnomah County Library you will see the custom bindings on bound periodicals, on sets of books and reference titles, and occasionally, on circulating monographs that haven't been weeded from the collection.

The buckram cloth used on these books was probably widely available to other binders in Portland, if not across the United States. We can only guess which of these were done in-house and which were jobbed out, but we can marvel at them just the same. Some are plain, some are patterned, and some are extraordinarily beautiful.

This site explores those books and some of their history and mystery.