Since I don't pack my songbooks around to song fests (I commit the songs to memory), I prefer the larger format.

Hardcovers (Lomax's "Folk Songs of North America" or Sandburg's "American Songbag") don't seem to be much of a problem once you've worked the stiffness out of the spine, but "perfect bound" paperbacks (like "Rise Up Sinking" for example) can be a real pain in the ass—neck. Hard to keep them open. They keep wanting to flop shut. Same problem with a lot of guitar manuals, such as the Frederick Noad set. Great technique books and music collections, but you need a sturdy wooden music stand and a nail-gun to keep them open.

Lately Mel-Bay has been putting a lot of their music books out with a spiral binding, or with a plastic comb binding. Good! Very good!

My perfect bound copy of "The Folksinger's Word Book" was such a monster that I eventually removed the pages carefully from the binding, used a three-hole punch on them, and put them into a three-ring binder. That works fine.

Don Firth