Extra prep options

A little extra step we include is to put some clear spine label lockers over our corners. This helps to ensure our corners don’t get too banged up. We also rubber band our games with H-Bands to help keep all the lids together. Some games are too small for the H-Bands so we just use some sturdy regular sized rubber bands for those games.

Snakes and Lattes, a board game cafe in Canada, also takes extra steps at times to protect their games. They will use a clear spray varnish on tiles in order to give them a bit more stability, and will often use plastic sleeves on each card in order to protect the cards from wear and tear. I personally see this as unnecessary for a library collection. Even the most popular games only are borrowed around 20 times a year, and if a game has been borrowed that many times and is in rough shape, we’ll order another to replace it if the need arises. For me that’s a lot of extra cost up front for extra materials to prevent a replacement that may take years to eventually occur.