"Librarian Girl": Lena Hardt is Nerdy Chic by Nick Hudson for L'Officiel Paris September 2015

(Zorka)

Umberto Eco, Book Collecting, Unread Books, and the Anti-Library

This is a wonderful statement about personal libraries and why we have books, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book The Black Swan.  He's discussing Umberto Eco's attitude towards the collecting of books.  I have definitely dealt with a few of the first type of visitor to my library.

"The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and non dull.  He is the owner of a large personal lib ray (containing thirty thousand books), and separated visitors into two categories: those who react with 'Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have!  How many of these books have you read?' and the others--a very small minority--who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool.  Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.  The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there.  You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow  older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly.  Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books.  Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary."

-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

Debbie McKeegen Card Catalog Wallpaper

(Anthropologie)

A 17th-Century Traveling Library

This Jacobean boxed collection of 50 tiny books is part of the collection of the University of Leeds.  When it's closed, it resembles a large leather-bound folio.  The books are classics, including works by Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid.

(Daily Mail)

Oxonia Illustrata (1675) Illustrated by David Loggan

This seventeenth-century book includes many engravings depicting the architecture of Oxford University.

The Bodleian Library, exterior and interior

Academic regalia!

(BibliOdyssey)

Old Friends Library Check-Out Card Print Fabric by jenimp for Spoonflower

I love this fabric printed with a photographic print of those old library book checkout cards.  The designer of the fabric made the cards have the titles of her favorite books, and she will even personalize the fabric for you, using your own favorites!  

Here's a list of the books that are on the fabric: Pride & Prejudice, The Bell Jar, The Catcher in the Rye, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson, Robin Hood, Much Ado About Nothing, The Last of the Mohicans, Alice in Wonderland, Little House on the Prairie, Choose Your Own Adventure, A Separate Peace, Tom Sawyer, King Arthur, Emma, The Great Gatsby, Peter Pan, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Crying of Lot 49, Northanger Abbey, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Farhenheit 451, Where the Wild Things Are, Nancy Drew, Jane Eyre, Selected Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Slaughterhouse Five, Harriet the Spy, Walden, Persuasion, The Wind in the Willows, Cranford, The Tempest, The Secret Garden, On the Road, Huckleberry Finn, Leaves of Grass, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, A Wrinkle in Time, Little Women.  

Not a bad list, eh?  Buy it here at Spoonflower.

(Photos)

Librarian Chic in Anthropologie Fall 2004

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Ineke Floral Curiosities Scent Library

San Francisco-based perfumer Ineke created these lovely trompe l'oeil books that look like old library books, complete with check-out cards (that actually have information about the scents), and filled with perfume.  There are few different "volumes" with different scents.

(Ineke & Undina)

"Get Your Geek On": Colleen van Rensburg Does Geeky Chic in the Library for Seventeen Magazine

(Colleen van Rensburg)