The question of concern is How can I preserve books, but keep them accessible?. There has been a good bit of chatter in comments about the on-topicness of the question, and I have seen the close vote count change a few times. The question is short, so I will reproduce it here:
How can I preserve my older, or more delicate, RPG books? My collection includes some older books (from the 1970s-1980s), some of which are in less than stellar condition. They may be paperbacks, have loose bindings, etc.
I would like to preserve them for future enjoyment, but also keep them accessible. My contractor is salivating at the thought of building an expensive, climate-controlled room with each book individually held in a display case. However, that would make the books inaccessible and difficult to enjoy.
I don't need a way to safeguard the entire collection, just a curated subset of the most valuable or at-risk items.
I think VLAZ raised a particularly salient point in this comment:
The expected usage of RPG books is quite different to, say, a novel. You'd be going through them a lot to reference different sections. Math books might not need be referenced that often or you could extract from them the small sections you need. For an RPG book, you might need to reference 100 pages (e.g., encompassing races, classes, combat rules) multiple times a session. Also, RPG books are usually shared around the table, so you might have one that, say, five people need to look up stuff during a play session. AFAIK, that's not how mathematicians use their books.
While this is similar to how I used some of my maths texts while doing graduate work, I think the point is well made. But, given volume of comments and the observed up and down changes in the close vote count, I would like to offer this question up for a more thorough community review here on meta.
Is this question on topic?