Hey All,
I was wondering were you all get your reference books and material from? I’ve gotten some off of Amazon and other book sites like ThriftBooks and Books a Million, but those are hit and miss at times. I’m hoping you all will share the places you get yours from so I can expand my reference library.
Ebay and Abebooks can be useful.
All my reference books come from:
Book stores (Barnes & Noble)
Amazon
From the Clearance shelf at the local library.
Resale/Thrift stores
Vendor area at model contests.
Very few of my references are new, but rather, items that are out of print.
Things like Osprey books I get online or at shops (eg, For the Historian in Gettysburg), or at shows.
New books, I get online. The mainstream bookstores don’t really carry the kinds of references I use.
Other books I get online or at shows.
And I get some from other collectors.
Internet research
Local library
Thrift stores
Yard and estate sales
when it comes to “printed material”, I usually find it on Ebay. I’ll do a search like; “F-14A Tomcat books”. When something comes up interesting I’ll google search the book to see if it has what I’m looking for. The 'net too, but alot of times, the algorithm has the same stuff come up over and over.
Being mainly a sci-fi modeler, there isn’t too much reference material in print. Most of my reference is from movie screen grabs and search engine images.
Depends on the subject. For example, Space in Miniature ( Space In Miniature - Reference Books for Space Model Builders) run by Mike Mackowski is a haven for real space reference material.
from this link https://archive.org/details/ship-design-drawings & others on the net.
There is a series of Hayne’s manuals called “Owner’s Workshop Manuals.” I’ve purchased two so far; a B-36 Peacemaker and a Space Shuttle. They are available through Amazon.
These books have a lot of detail. Yes, you can find most of the info on the googlenet, but I really like owning hard-copy books, especially “technical Manuals” (these aren’t truly that, but they’re still cool.
Also on line hobby sites like Sprue Brothers and Kitlinx have books
David Doyle Books is a fantastic source for books on aircraft, military vehicles, weapons, and naval warfare. Doyle has written a number of books himself - he wrote the majestic two volume Son of Sherman, the definitive book on the development and history of the Sherman tank.