Good idea! I may try this. I have a lot of books I want to get rid of.

Scan the pattern and put them in a binder in the clear plastic sleeves. Have done that with my machine embroidery designs and one for my e-patterns and one for quilt patterns.

I bought a hand held scanner at Walmart a few years back (under &100.00 but they are less expensive now). You put one of the small SIM cards like your camera or cell phone has in it. You just glide the scanner over the page and it stores it on the card. You then put the card into a card reader (also at Walmart for under $10.00) and download the info to you computer. Nice thing is you can take it anywhere and scan anything. Depending on the card size, you can store quite a bit on the card before you have to transfer the designs. Set up your folder and sub-folders by magazine, date, design name etc. There is a way to thumb nail a photo of the pattern, but have not found a freebie to download, yet.

Several years ago I went through my magazines and removed patterns that I wanted - I wrote on the front if the magazine was missing pages - a group that I am involved with sold old magazines at a quilt show table - but we knew up front if pages were missing. But, when I remove a pattern, if one of the pages goes with another pattern in the magazine that I am leaving, I made a copy of the page I wanted so the next person wouldn't be missing the last page of a pattern. Hope this all makes sense. I would love to scan all the patterns I have pulled out of magazines but it would take me FOREVER with my home scanner and it's not worth the money to have it done by someone with a faster machine.

I would cut it out, but I would also mark on the front of the magazine that that pattern has been cut out. So no one is surprised when they get it home.

Whenever I remove a pattern from a magazine, I make sure there are no instructions for another pattern on the reverse side. (and if so, I photocopy the instructions I need). The remainder of the magazine I give away to my quilt buddies at our retreats. There may be a pattern or two missing, but at least all the instructions are intact.

I had a huge amount of magazines I was going to try to sell or donate. Asked my neighbor if she wanted to look through some of them. She told me she ripped out the pages she wanted -- I was horrified. I can't do anything with them now. Guess I didn't make it clear I expected them back. I just never would have thought to do that with a magazine someone let me borrow.