ISSAQUAH, Wash. — Sometimes a book just gets loved to death. A Bible, or a copy of “Charlotte’s Web,” for that matter, can be opened only so many times, even by the gentlest reader, before its spine weakens and surrenders.

And here is a dirty little secret: Public libraries, despite their reputations for hushed wonder about the written word, can be rough places. Automated sorting machines, whirring conveyor belts and hard bins can break a book and shorten its life.

Donald Vass, who has spent the last 26 years mending and tending to books for the King County Public Library system here in the Seattle area, has seen both mechanical and human-inflicted damage and more. At 57 and with not many years left before retirement, he says he believes he will be the last full-time traditional bookbinder ever to take up shears, brushes and needles here. The skills take too long to learn, he said, and no one is being groomed to take his place in “the mendery,” Room 111 at the library’s central service center, where not so many years ago 10 people worked.