Bookish Parking Garage in Kansas City

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This is the Kansas City Library's central branch parking garage aka the community bookshelf. The "books" are made of signboard mylar, are 25 ft. high and  cover the entire south wall of the garage. The stairwells at either end look like book ends.  Featured are titles popular with Kansas City readers such as Willa Cather's Oh Pioneers, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, and  The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes.Also included are Ray Bradbury's sci-fi classic, Fahrenheit 451, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  by Mark Twain and Plato's Republic.  How's that for variety?

Here's another view from Panoramio Hmmmm I wonder if a generation from now people will still be reading old fashioned, printed books?  If not, this will be a really fun historical artifact.  Either way. It's a winner in my opinion. I love it.

Recycled Books Make A Great Desk

Need a new desk? Want to recycle some old books? Here's is a great idea right from the reference desk at the library of the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands.  It's inexpensive, looks fabulous and puts old books to a good use--perfect not just for libraries, but for everywhere.  Trust the Dutch to come up with something cool like this.

 The entrance to the library. You can see the desk through the doors

 Main desk made entirely of recycled books. Cool eh?

Here's the desk complete with librarian

Here's the view from across the library

Here's a close up so you can see how it was done

Now you know what to do with those boxes of old books in the attic and the beauty part is it doesn't destroy the books. You can disassemble the desk anytime and the books will still be intact and readable, just not taking up space in the garage.  Go ahead, you know you need a new desk and a new rainy day project. 

Photos courtesy of  ellen forsyth on Flickr. Thank you.