A thank-you for your bookbinding and book conservation volunteers: a photo of a sewing frame, a row of old leather spines or a binder's hands with the bone folder as a jigsaw

Written by the team behind Puzzlify. Puzzlify is our product, so weigh what follows with that in mind. We've tried to make this useful even if you never use it. We're not affiliated with any bookbinding guild, book conservation body, library, archive, record office, museum, printing or book heritage trust, university, church, heritage body, heritage funder, sponsor, school or community organisation. Nothing here is legal, historical, conservation, archival, workshop safety, chemical safety, mould handling, first aid, health and safety, safeguarding, bereavement, copyright, trade mark, photography permission or employment advice; check your own group's guidance on gifts, photos, books, the workshop, children and people's details.

It's a rainy Wednesday afternoon in the basement workroom of an old town library, and the radio is playing quietly. On the bench, under a lamp, sits a parish register that has been falling apart since before anyone in the room was born: the spine split, the boards loose, the pages fanned out like a deck of cards. A retired bank clerk called Eileen is sewing a new section onto the sewing frame, pulling linen thread through the fold with a curved needle, counting the stations under her breath. "Three hundred years of christenings in here," she says, tightening a kettle stitch. "They can wait another week for me to do it properly." At the next table, a volunteer called Raj is showing a group of Year 5 children how to fold a sheet of paper into a little booklet and crease it with a bone folder. A girl asks why the old books smell like that. "That's the leather and the paper getting old together," he says. "It's a library smell." Neither of them is paid. The register will go back on the shelf because they turned up.

If you want to say thank you to people like Eileen and Raj, this is a guide to doing it well, with or without a puzzle.

Who we mean

Old books and records are kept usable by many kinds of volunteers: the bookbinding and repair volunteers who resew sections, mend tears, consolidate leather and make boxes under the guidance of a professional conservator, the cleaning volunteers who brush the dust from shelves of books one volume at a time, the box-makers who build made-to-measure enclosures so fragile volumes are protected, the demonstrators at heritage centres and print museums who show visitors how a book was sewn and covered, the guides who explain how a book was made before machines, the cataloguers and archive volunteers who record bindings, bookplates and provenance, the education volunteers who run book-making days for schools, the event helpers at open days, book fairs and festivals, the shop and café volunteers in libraries and museums, and the trustees and founders who rescued a collection, raised the money for its conservation, or set up a bindery in a disused room. Some help at a great library or cathedral archive; some care for the books of a small parish, a chapel or a society; some teach in a community bindery. This guide is for all of them.

Words first

Before anything else, write what you want to say. The best thank-yous are specific: the afternoon your son made his first stitched booklet and carried it home like a trophy, the way someone explained that a book's pages are folded sheets sewn together, the time a volunteer found your great-grandmother's baptism in a register they had just repaired. Two or three sentences in your own words matter more than any gift. If you can name the moment, the note will be kept.

Workshops, blades and old dust come first

Bookbinding and book conservation involve sharp knives, scalpels, needles, heavy presses and guillotines, adhesives, and old materials that can carry dust, mould and sometimes harmful pigments or treatments. If you take a photo, do it from where visitors are meant to stand, never touch a book, a tool or a press unless you are invited and shown how, never lean on a bench with work laid out, and never distract someone with a blade in their hand. Follow the rules about food, drink and handwashing near the books, and about gloves and masks where they apply. Ask before using flash, because some collections are light-sensitive, and follow what the volunteers tell you about where to stand, children and the books. A good photo is never worth a cut hand or a torn page.

The craft that held the knowledge

For centuries, almost everything people wrote down that mattered was held together by a binder: Bibles and prayer books, laws and land records, parish registers of births, marriages and deaths, account books, school ledgers, novels, maps and letters. Bookbinding was a skilled trade in every town, with its own tools, its own language of signatures, cords, boards and headbands, and its own small beauties in tooled leather and marbled paper. Machines took over most binding, but the old books remain, and leather dries out, glue fails, threads break, damp and insects do their damage. The books that can still be opened safely, and the volunteers who help keep them that way, let people touch their own history.

An honest word about the past

Heritage is not only craft, and good volunteers know it. Bookbinding was often low-paid work, and much of the sewing and folding was done by women and girls on piece rates, sometimes in poor conditions, while the master binder's name went on the label. Leather, glue and some decorative materials came from trades with their own hard histories, and some books were paid for by fortunes made in industries, including slavery and empire, that communities now look at very differently. Collections can also hold records and books that describe people cruelly, or that were taken from communities without their consent, and registers carry the names of real families who may still feel strongly about them. A thank-you doesn't need to cover any of this, but it helps to know that the people you're thanking often carry these stories carefully.

When to send it

When a repaired register or rare book goes back on the shelf, at the end of a long conservation project, after a book-making school visit, at a heritage open day or book fair, on the anniversary of a library or record office, at the end of the year, or when a long-serving volunteer hangs up their bone folder.

Why a jigsaw can fit

A photo jigsaw gives someone a picture of what they helped save, and a few quiet minutes to look at it piece by piece. Bookbinding is full of good subjects: a sewing frame with signatures in place, a row of old leather spines with gold lettering, a sheet of marbled endpaper, a binder's hands with the bone folder, a register open at a page they mended, a shelf of new boxes made to measure. The note appears when the last piece clicks in, so your words are the last thing they see.

For the binding and repair volunteers

These are the volunteers who spend months resewing sections, mending torn pages with Japanese tissue, consolidating crumbling leather and reattaching boards, always under the guidance of a professional conservator. It is slow, careful, quiet work, and most readers never see it. A photo of the book they repaired, open and safe, can mean a lot. A note that names one thing you learned, such as "I never knew a book was sewn like a garment", tells them it landed.

For the cleaners and box-makers

Somebody brushes the dust from thousands of volumes, one at a time, with a soft brush and a lot of patience. Somebody measures, cuts and folds a made-to-measure box for every fragile book, so it can sit safely on the shelf for another century. It is unglamorous and it is how collections survive. A photo of a neat shelf of new boxes tells them you saw the work behind the books.

For the demonstrators

At heritage centres, print museums and book fairs, demonstrators show visitors how a book is folded, sewn, glued, covered and tooled, answering the same questions with the same patience all day. A note that names something they showed you, such as watching the gold leaf go down on a spine, shows that it stuck.

For the guides

Guides turn a shelf of old books into a story: who owned them, how they were made, why one is chained to the shelf, what a bookplate says about the family who owned it. A note that repeats one of their stories back to them shows that it was heard.

For the cataloguers and archive volunteers

Somebody records every binding, every bookplate, every inscription and every former owner, so that researchers and families can find what they need. Somebody indexes a parish register so names can be searched. These volunteers save the parts of the story that are hidden inside the covers. A puzzle of an old binding or an archive photograph, used with permission, can be a lovely way to thank them, as long as the image is theirs to share.

For the education volunteers

Book-making days are full of paper, glue sticks, wobbly stitches and children who want to take home five booklets each. They need preparation, patience and blunt needles. A class thank-you, perhaps a photo of the children's home-made books turned into a small puzzle, can go back to the volunteers who hosted them. Check your school's photo rules first.

For the event volunteers

Open days, book fairs, festivals and late openings need people to set out tables, welcome visitors, steward the workroom door, run the raffle and pack everything away in the evening. A photo of a busy day, with permission from anyone recognisable, says thank you for the whole effort.

For the shop and café volunteers

They welcome everyone, explain where the reading room is for the tenth time, sell the notebooks and marbled-paper cards, and make the tea that keeps the binders going. They are often the first and last face a visitor sees. A short, specific note about how they made your visit easy goes a long way.

For the trustees and the founders

Somebody noticed the registers were falling apart, called a meeting, commissioned a condition survey, wrote the grant applications, found a conservator, set up the volunteer bindery and spent years on paperwork. Sometimes they rescued a whole collection from a damp vestry or a closing library. A photo of the books as they are now, boxed and safe on a shelf, next to the damp, broken pile they once were, can be a moving thank-you for the people who made that difference.

When a long-serving volunteer steps down

For someone who has mended books for twenty years, a larger puzzle with a meaningful photo, such as the first register they repaired or their own bench with its tools, gives them something to spend time with. Ask the group whether others would like to add their names to the note.

In memory of a volunteer

If the group has lost a much-loved binder, cataloguer or guide, a puzzle for their family with a photo of them at the bench, or of the book they were proudest of, can be a gentle gift. Ask the family first, keep the note simple, and understand if they would prefer something else.

Not just in one country

Bookbinding and book conservation are heritage in many places, and volunteers help almost everywhere. There are community binderies and library volunteers in Britain and Ireland, the old monastic and university libraries of France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the book arts centres and historical societies of the United States and Canada, the record offices and libraries of Australia and New Zealand, the manuscript libraries of Timbuktu, where families and volunteers saved thousands of manuscripts, the Ethiopian and Coptic binding traditions, the Islamic book arts of Turkey, Iran and Central Asia with their marbled ebru papers, and the stab-bound books of Japan, China and Korea. Wherever you are, the words "thank you for keeping these books together" translate.

Photo ideas and consent

• a sewing frame with signatures in place
• a row of old leather spines with gold lettering
• a sheet of marbled endpaper, close up
• a binder's hands with the bone folder, taken from a safe spot
• a repaired register open at a mended page
• a shelf of new made-to-measure boxes
• an old photograph of a bindery, used with permission
• a table of children's home-made booklets

Ask the people in the photo before you use it, and ask the library, archive, museum, church or owner before using photos of their books, rooms or records. Registers, letters and account books name real people, so keep pages with names, addresses or personal details out of the frame, and keep visitors, children and anyone's details out of shot too.

Getting the JPG right

Use a JPG, sharp and well lit. Workrooms and stacks are often dim, so turn off flash where it isn't allowed, use the light from a window or a bench lamp, hold the phone steady against the edge of a table, and tap the screen on the book to set the focus. Gold tooling and glossy covers can reflect lamps, so move a little to the side to avoid glare. A single spine or a close-up of the stitching makes an easier puzzle; a whole shelf of books makes a harder but satisfying one. Crop to the part that matters.

Privacy and an optional PIN

Puzzlify puzzles are private links. You can add an optional PIN so only the person you send it to can open it. Photos aren't used to train AI and aren't shared with third parties.

Say it's from you

Put your name, or your family's, in the note at the end so they know who sent it. A puzzle that ends with "from the Year 5 class who now know what a bone folder is" is a thank-you, not a mystery.

Piece counts

How to send it

Make the puzzle, write the note, publish the link, and send it by email or message, or print the link as a QR code inside a card. The recipient doesn't need an account or an app; it plays in the browser on a phone, tablet or computer.

Note examples

• "Thank you for every Wednesday at the sewing frame, for years."
• "We found Nan's christening in the book you mended. Thank you."
• "You put three hundred years back together. From all of us, thank you."
• "Every time I open an old book I'll think of your hands."

Honest pricing

The preview is free, so you can see how it looks before deciding anything. Publishing the link costs one credit (€3.99), or less per puzzle with a bundle. It's a digital puzzle, not a printed one, so nothing arrives in the post. If a card and a few sentences feel like enough, they are.

Ideas that are not a puzzle

• a handwritten card, perhaps in a little booklet you sewed yourself
• a short message to the library, archive or volunteer coordinator naming the volunteer, so it reaches them
• a donation to the conservation fund in their name, perhaps sponsoring the repair of one book
• an offer of your own time: cleaning shelves, making boxes or stewarding an open day
• a family photograph or memory connected with the collection, offered to the archive if they'd like it

If a photo puzzle feels right as well, choose the spines, the sewing frame, the endpapers or the hands, take it from a safe spot with permission, keep names, children, visitors and anyone's details out of the frame, pick a piece count that suits them, and write the note in your own words. You can make a free preview here and decide later whether to send it.

Whatever you send, the most important part is the sentence that sounds like you, written to the person who sews by lamplight in the basement, who brushes the dust from every volume, and who shows a child how folded paper becomes a book, one stitch, one piece at a time.

Written by the small team behind Puzzlify (info@puzzlify.app). Not legal, historical, conservation, archival, workshop safety, chemical safety, mould handling, first aid, health and safety, safeguarding, bereavement, copyright, trade mark, photography permission or employment advice. Check your own group's guidance on gifts, photos, books, the workshop, children and people's details.