Library books and periodicals undergo significantly high levels of circulation and handling and thus require increased durability to withstand these rigors.
Library binding features a hard, buckram cover (buckram cloth coated in acrylic), which is not as fragile as regular cloth or leather. It also usually involves a special sewing technique, called over-sewing; strong endpapers, which are papers glued to the insides of a book's covers and are used to reinforce binding; and back-lining, or gluing paper or fabric to the spine and cover boards for reinforcement.
Library-bound books are already bound once before reaching the library, and thus need to be drastically reconstructed in the library binding process. For this reason, book collectors tend to avoid library bound books. However, these books tend to differ visually only minimally from books of other types of bindings. For example, the difference may only be noticeable in the color choice of endpapers used.