Other ideas: 

If you live near a source of scrap materials, you might find some interesting lightweight metals you could use to make books. Any nonferrous metal that's fairly thin would be easy to work with. I often use jewelry techniques for my metal books. Very small rivets can be used to attach many objects. A jeweler's saw cuts metals, museum and Davey boards, and plastics, such as formica and plexiglas. You can make or buy jump rings for binding. You can make your own hinges and clasps. These techniques require more time invested in learning and more expensive tools. A large jewelry supply company, like Rio Grande (www.riogrande.com) would have catalogs showing the variety of tools available. There are several good books on basic jewelry techniques. One I am biased toward is Tim McCreight's "Jewelry: Fundamentals of Metalsmithing." (he included a photo of one of my pieces.) I find his descriptions of working processes to be very clear and precise.
There is also a new Tim McCreight book: "Making Boxes and Lockets" that has a lot of great information. Go back to page 6.