CV Shelving

Named after the keyboard shortcut for copy/paste.
Jardine Couture

Seashore Library, Nandaihe, China

Vector Architects

Libraries lose a quarter of staff as hundreds close

Almost 8,000 jobs in UK libraries have disappeared in six years, about a quarter of the overall total, an investigation by the BBC has revealed.
BBC

Funky bookshelf

Designed to go against the wall or in the middle of the room as a divider with peek-through open cutouts. Even more funky, this bookshelf transforms to any space as it is created to stand horizontally or vertically with nine adjustable shelf fitting any which way.
Shiner

The Shelf

Phyllis Rose

Pi Workstation

The Pi Workstation functions as a desk, bookshelf and occasional chair. In addition to these functions, there is the option to remove the bookshelf and transform the desk into a 2 top dining table.
Joe Manus

Library in the shape of a book

A  library in the shape of an open book is expected to open next year in Dubai. The Mohammed bin Rashid Library in Al Jaddaf will hold more than 1.5 million volumes, 1 million audio books and 2 million e-books, making it the world’s largest electronic collection and the biggest library in the Arab world.
The National

JIgsaw: Style and Truth

Jigsaw

Teich Toys and Books

Hunt Architecture

Literary Trumps

As well as running Bookshelf and Shedworking regular readers know that I have also published various books over the last half dozen years, the last two on Bookshelves and Improbable Libraries. This year, instead of a book, it's a game - Literary Trumps. I am hoping to crowdfund this via the excellent book publisher Unbound which crowdfunds all its titles (you may have read the best-selling Letters of Note or the Booker short-listed The Wake).

The game is played along similar lines to other Trump games you will have played in your youth, only instead of classic cars or dragsters, Literary Trumps is all about writers, their quotability, their ouptut and their speed. Please do click on the links above for more information and do consider making a pledge to fund it - the whole thing will only happen if 500 people generously put their hands in their pockets.

What sex is your bookshelf?

What if my bookshelf is female and also male? And what do we mean by male and female books, anyway? Those written by women with female protagonists, or a style and substance beyond this which male writers have access to, or can assume?
Arifa Akbar in The Independent

I Murdered My Library

What happens when you begin to build a library in childhood and then find you have too many books? From a small collection held together by a pair of plaster of Paris horse-head bookends to books piled on stairs, and in front of each other on shelves, books cease to furnish a room and begin to overwhelm it. At the end of 2013, novelist Linda Grant moved from a rambling maisonette over four floors to a two bedroom flat with a tiny corridor-shaped study. The trauma of getting rid of thousands of books raises the question of what purpose personal libraries serve in contemporary life and the seductive lure of the Kindle. Both a memoir of a lifetime of reading and an insight into how interior décor has banished the bookcase, her account of the emotional struggle of her relationship with books asks questions about the way we live today.
Kindle Single

Literary Trumps

As well as running Bookshelf and Shedworking regular readers know that I have also published various books over the last half dozen years, the last two on Bookshelves and Improbable Libraries. This year, instead of a book, it's a game - Literary Trumps. I am hoping to crowdfund this via the excellent book publisher Unbound which crowdfunds all its titles (you may have read the best-selling Letters of Note or the Booker short-listed The Wake).

The game is played along similar lines to other Trump games you will have played in your youth, only instead of classic cars or dragsters, Literary Trumps is all about writers, their quotability, their ouptut and their speed. Please do click on the links above for more information and do consider making a pledge to fund it - the whole thing will only happen if 500 people generously put their hands in their pockets.

Ernest Shackleton bookshelf in Antarctica

"It is now known that the explorer carried with him dictionaries, encyclopaedias and books chronicling other dangerous polar expeditions. He took established works by Dostoyevsky and Shelley - but also, explains Alasdair MacLeod from the RGS, newly published fiction by popular authors of the time."
BBC

Betty's Reading Room

A couple from Orkney have created an unusual memorial to friend who died unexpectedly. Betty's Reading Room has been created in a once derelict bothy in Tingwall in the Orkney Islands. Craig Mollison and Jane Spiers said they wanted to create a fitting tribute to their friend Betty Prictor.

BBC

Shopping for bookcases

Bookcases say as much about you as the books you read. So which style to choose? An interior designer offers some suggestions.
The New York Times

Albero bookcase

The bookcase comprises just a few ingeniously interconnected elements, which show Gianfranco Frattini's attention to the laws of statics and dynamics. It has four vertical struts and two rack and pinion poles at the two ends, all crafted from solid olive wood. The shelves, produced in MDF with olive essence veneer, can be positioned in the holes along the struts as desired with a minimum of eight and a maximum of 12 shelves. A special metal cylinder is attached to the ceiling to hold the bookcase in place. The Albero's frame is attached to this and the floor thanks to two adjustable metal ferrules that ensure its stability. The height of the bookcase can vary between 2.66 m to 3.26 m.
Poltrona Frau

Blooks: The Art of Books That Aren't

Book-objects designed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

About Blooks

Ebook sales falling

Ebook sales for the UK’s five biggest publishers fell in 2015, according to a new report in the Bookseller, collectively declining 2.4%, to 47.9m units. It is the drop in numbers of books sold in this medium for the “big five” since the digital age began... “For those who predicted the death of the physical book, and digital dominating the market by the end of this decade, the print and digital sales figures from the big five for 2015 might force a reassessment,” wrote the Bookseller’s features editor Tom Tivnan.

The Guardian

Giotto

Round bookcase made of lacquered white MDF and teak wood or zebrawood. This original round bookcase is obtained with the same technique that is employed in the creation of wooden drum shells for percussion instruments  that are made of wooden horizontal layers
Villa

Fishbone shelf

A modular shelf resembling herring fish bones that can be arranged in a variety of ways. The back panel is made of multi-layered plywood while the shelving surface is made from extremely thin curved sheet-metal.
Fancy.com

Mini mobile libraries in Seoul

The ‘mobile library’ project is part of a larger initiative by the Seoul Innovation Park, and the city of Seoul, South Korea to revitalize a site originally occupied by the ministry of food and drug safety. a number of social companies and startups have been gathered, and will continually work from the site to address various social issues in the city.
Designboom and Archiworkshop

Improbable Libraries on Australia's ABC

Mark Sutton and Zoe Norton Lodge love libraries. In fact, Mark’s parents met in a library and his mother is a former librarian. But when in history did the concept of a library first emerge? What were some of the most famous libraries from history? What are some of the most unusual libraries around the world? And what challenges assail the library in the modern day?
[I'm talking about unusual libraries around the world from around the 36:30 mark]
ABC

The Search for Tiny Libraries in New Zealand

Dotting the countryside of New Zealand are dozens of tiny libraries – freestanding buildings that serve as meeting places, resource centres and lending libraries for the smaller regions located between larger urban areas. While New Zealand’s national public library culture thrives, these unassuming structures, having survived regular floods, aging populations, and the rise of the Internet, are mostly alive and continue to provide books for local readers. 
BBC World Service

Antiquity

Antiquity is a homage to the historical icon Venus D’Arles... In full view, an intricate system of strategically placed mahogany shelves surround and veil the marble statue, allowing an interesting play with the seen and unseen. This wooden framework functions as a bookshelf that can hold eclectic items, but it also doubles as "scaffolding," paralleling the experience of a tourist visiting an antique sculpture under conservation.
Sebastian ErraZuriz

L Shelf

A single module, a piece of bentwood, the logical result of the meeting with a carpentry workshop specialized in bending wood.
Objet Optimisé

Bottleship

Ernest Race was invited by Jack Pritchard to redesign Egon Riss’s original Isokon Penguin Donkey and Bottleship in 1963. For his Bottleship Mark 2, Race developed a piece of similar dimensions to the Donkey but with a hinged lid under which glasses and bottles are stored creating a cross between a mini-bar and side table.
Isokonplus

Cuerda

Cuerda from Emmanuel Gonzalez Guzman on Vimeo.

Un poco aludiendo a las cuerdas de un ring de boxeo y la idea de una celosia, este rack sin puertas tradicionales deja ver su interior de forma simple con la cuerda elastica de protagonista, con esto buscaba hacer algo entretenido sin mayor complicación.
Emmanuel Gonzalez

Is there still any point collecting books?

"Books breathe as trees breathe. When all the books have gone our mental climate will have changed. It's a question whether we'll survive. Technology cannot replace a book. No matter that I can quickly find a digital version of a novel I'm looking for, I still fly into a rage when I discover I no longer have it, and remember who borrowed and didn't return it, five, 10, 20 years ago. For it is irreplaceable. It has my scribblings in it. The marginal expletives. The turned-down pages. The bus ticket or taxi receipt or even billet doux employed as a bookmark - not just the marginalia of an intellectual life but the detritus of the heart. And that you don't get on a Kindle, or a free e-book courtesy of Project Gutenberg. What you can't bend or throw or write on isn't, in the end, literature."

Howard Jacobson. More at BBC

Book Pedlar

A mobile bookstore on a Classic No. 33 Pashley cargo bicycle that allows for great books [have a close look at the stock...] to infiltrate the streets.
The National Design Collective

Story Pod

A book exchange and an urban marker. During the day, two of the walls pivot open like the covers of a book, welcoming people inside or to gather around the front. Visitors can take or leave something to read, or lounge quietly on the built-in seating

Atelier Kastelic Buffey

Oblique

Filip Janssens

Link bookshelf

The Link Bookshelf unites on one side the soft and round, and on the other side, the sharp and pointy. Two poles interconnected. The shelf consists of 14 sub-elements made of laminated birch veneer individually oiled and waxed.
Dimensions: H. 29 cm. W. 27 cm. L. 239 cm.

Peter Qvist Lorentsen

Book and Bed Tokyo

Book And Bed is an 'accommodation bookshop'. Shared shower, toilet and shower space are available as well as two types of bed, compact and standard. The new hostel targets overseas and out­ of­ town travelers. Day rates as well as overnight.
Book and Bed

"Library" Shelfsystem

 

 

Ein Regalsystem,das für kleine Wohnung und das Lebensstil von junger Generation gestaltet wird."Library" ist ein Regalsystem,damit mann ganz einfach auf/abbauen und mitnehmen kann. Atelier Shan

Büchertreppe

Eine begehbare Raumskulptur verbindet zwei übereinander liegende Wohnungen in Düsseldorf. Dieses multifunktionale Element besteht aus in Stufenabstand um die Treppe umlaufende Bücherregale. Sie ist Bibliothek und Treppe zugleich. Das eingefügte Möbelstück greift die Gesamthöhe beider Wohnungen auf und schafft es diese zu einem Großen und Ganzen zu vereinen.
Dreihausfrauen

E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead

Now, there are signs that some e-book adopters are returning to print, or becoming hybrid readers, who juggle devices and paper. E-book sales fell by 10 percent in the first five months of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, which collects data from nearly 1,200 publishers. Digital books accounted last year for around 20 percent of the market, roughly the same as they did a few years ago. E-books’ declining popularity may signal that publishing, while not immune to technological upheaval, will weather the tidal wave of digital technology better than other forms of media, like music and television.

Read more at The New York Times

Nest

A shelf that from within a second shelf of the same size seemingly grows outward. Extending the shelf halfway produces a grid shelf-style layout with rows of square shelves.
Nendo

Corners

Placing furniture in the corner of the room will sometimes give off a calming effect. The three-sided cube box is designed so that it can be joined in various directions, and the box can be configured to suit your preferences and needs
nendo

Framed bookshelf

Mark Taylor Design

Conarte Library

Conarte is the council for culture and art in the city of Monterrey, Mexico. Conarte aims to promote and stimulate artistic expression and supports the preservation and enrichment of culture. Our mission was to create a space that gives value to the experience of reading. A design-intelligent space was created for the bookshop and library granting value to the reading experience. Our design proposal focuses on creating a space that wraps the reader in. The bookshelves attend more that just their basic function and were designed to simulate a dome that plays with the visual perspective. The stands incorporate a color gradient finish that attributes depth. The illuminated half circle found in the back wall simulates the vanishing point of the structure, creating a perfect balance between color and perspective.

anagrama

Little TARDIS Library

The Little TARDIS Library is on a tour of the UK sharing stories with children and young people to help promote their love of reading. Stocked with hundreds of classic books (because the Little TARDIS Library is bigger on the inside) it will be landing in schools, libraries and parks.

Little Free Library UK

Paris flat

Each child has its own independent bedroom; the common living space is open and partitioned by elements of furniture which have all been designed so as to follow the sloping games of the roof-line, forming a landscape of “totems”. They include bookshelves and diverse storage spaces. 

h2oarchitectes

Reading for pleasure builds empathy and improves wellbeing, new research finds

"There is strong evidence that reading for pleasure can increase empathy, improve relationships with others, reduce the symptoms of depression and the risk of dementia, and improve wellbeing throughout life, new research carried out for The Reading Agency has found.

"Among the benefits it finds are improved social capital for children, young people and the general adult population; better parent-child communication and reduction of depression and dementia symptoms among adults. Another key finding of the report is that enjoyment of reading is a prerequisite for all these positive outcomes: people who choose to read, and enjoy doing so, in their spare time are more likely to reap all of these benefits."

More at The Reading Agency

Bookshelf giant mural

An adaptable design that can be centred on a feature wall, or cut down to fit smaller nooks and corners. This mural is applied in the same way as wallpaper and comes in easy to manage sections. This bookshelf mural comes in a choice of colour, or black and white. Murals measure 315 x 232cm, comprising of 4 separate pieces.
present indicative

Book lockers

When Biloxi Junior High students return to school this August, they might be surprised at what they see in one of the hallways. Some teachers are spending part of their summer working on a very creative project. They are transforming some old, unused lockers into a larger than life library. 

WLox

Private libraries are enjoying a renaissance

Not everyone who wants something new to read can satisfy their urge with a trip to Waterstones or a scoot around Amazon. Some want to have a copy of every book ever written on their chosen specialised subject. Others want to build a library of titles handpicked for them... In the age of e-readers and instant gratification, the writing is far from on the wall for the printed word. “If not exactly in rude health, books are… alive,” says Nicky Dunne, head of rare books at Heywood Hill.

Read more at Daily Telegraph

Extend

A bookend on which books can be placed in the air as an extension of a desk. It can be fixed to a tabletop by a clamp and the length can be adjusted as you like. It is formed by bending 2 mm steel plate in order to make it strong enough to hold books.
Material : Steel
Dimensions : H180 W300 D100 mm
Photos: Yasuko Furukawa
YoY

Blow

A shelf that looks like a paper blowing up in the wind, formed by bending A4 size thin steel plates with molds. There are 5 types of shape and they can be used both upside and downside. It can be fixed to the wall with a hook.
Steel Dimensions : H210 W300 D20 mm
YOY