As knife makers, we often find ourselves in need of reference material -- for heat treating, for reproducing an antique Bowie, etc. The books we seek are expensive and often when we purchase a book based on a title we find that the book is not what we wanted or expected.

A solution to this is to visit your local library and see if they participate in an Inner Library Loan program. This program allows you access to (in my case) any book in any library in the state that also participates (most do)

This is a huge asset I have found and I can do it all from my local small town (1600 people) library. Taking advantage of this program allows you to "test drive" a book before you purchase it. At my library, there is no charge for this program up to 20 books per year and then it is only the cost of shipping.

A past example of how I used this program was I wanted to see the "Antique Bowie Knife Book". As many know this book cost around $1000.00. Through the loan program, there were 5 different libraries where I could get the book.

This program has been very helpful to me and I thought I would pass on the information to those who may wnat to use it.

Brian