More creative new uses for old books:

Make table runners from the pages of unwanted books, e.g., books damaged beyond repair.

(via BHG)

unconsumption:

utnereader:

Phone booths re-purposed as micro-libraries in New York City. (via Designboom)

I love urban interventions, especially when books are involved. (Check out this newspaper stand converted into a community lending library, if you haven’t already seen it.)

Anyway, this NYC phone-booth-turned-book-swap is a great addition to the group of repurposed phone booths featured previously on Unconsumption (here), which includes other micro-libraries in various cities.

Are there other repurposed phone booths that we — your friendly Unconsumption hosts — haven’t yet come across? 

wnycradiolab:

kateoplis:

Palazzo Toschi Mosca inner court (via Yewknee)

Is that a fire hose? If so, good thinking.

Beautiful, isn’t it? (The wall of books, I mean. Not the fire hose.) File under: bookshelf of the week.

Via sweethomestyle:

(via iampirate)

(via catladysoul)

Via smarterplanet:

Awesome Augmented Reality App Could Save Librarians Hours

If you’ve ever worked in a library, you’re familiar with the drudgery of shelf reading. That’s the process of verifying that all the books on a shelf are in the right order, based on their call numbers. Books get out of order fairly easily, when they’re taken off the shelf and examined, for example, or when they’re just stuck in the wrong place.

Miami University’s Augmented Reality Research Group (MU ARRG! - that exclamation point, I confess, is my addition), led by Professor Bo Brinkman, has developed an Android app that could save librarians a lot of time and hassle. Using the Android’s camera, the app “reads” a bookshelf, and with an AR overlay, quickly flags those books that are misplaced. It will also point to the correct place on the bookshelf so the book can easily be re-shelved correctly.

Source: ReadWriteWeb

Via bookshelfporn:

Awesome story on Wired about a 360-degree panorama photograph that takes you inside Prague’s off-limits Baroque Library.

(via Sara Blask)

By the numbers:

868-year-old Strahov monastery library + 42,000 rare 18th century books + one fresco (45 feet above you, completed in 1794) + 2,947 photos + at least 111 hours’ worth of color correcting and digital stitching time = one stunning, 40-gigapixel, 360-degree image

On leaving his camera overnight in the hall, photographer Jeffrey Martin said: “That’s one advantage of shooting in an 18th-century library — my camera is the least valuable thing in the room.”

So cool.

Via halfletterpress:

FREERIDING

Just saw The Art Guys post this on Facebook on Saturday: Want to be a part of the FREERIDING exhibition? Call 832-525-5113 between January 10 and February 10, 2011 to participate in The Art Guys’ “Phone” piece. I should add that it’s the recording of your voice that gets included in the piece.

Via unconsumption:

Via bookshelfporn:

Repurposed newspaper stand bookshelf.

(via Poetic Home)

.

Love this — it’s part of Reading in Public’s work, a group based in San Luis Obispo, California, that encourages the art of reading. 

About Reading in Public:

Reading In Public (RIP!) was formed to celebrate the written word by way of community performance in public spaces. The project began as a response to the shifting landscape in publishing, and the realization that more and more of us are writing in public, as bloggers and tweeters, for instance. Similarly, we sought to broadcast words in public, through the simple act of contemplative reading on a noisy street corner, or as performance, with readers directly engaging onlookers.

About the book rack:

Library! is an abandoned newspaper rack, repurposed into an informal traveling book and culture exchange within the city of San Luis Obispo, a venue for creative readers who care that reading not become a lost art.

Readers of all ages will be able to find books, magazines, sketchbooks, or an actual piece of book art, and borrowers are encouraged to leave an item for lending. Each piece will have a library card documenting its travels. When a reader checks a piece out, they’re asked to sign the card and leave those in a box located on top of the rack. We welcome creative annotation to all the art pieces, and we encourage personal notes in the books left by readers.

Related: Unconsumption post about a used book exchange/swap housed in a repurposed phone booth. 

Today in “things we love.” Also: Bookshelf-of-the-week — on a Monday!

Via dachesterfrench:

Awesome stage for Verdi’ s opera “A Masked Ball” in 1999.

(via The Telegraph)

Via nevver:

Old Chum

Bookshelf-of-the-week.

Via keiren-smith:

youwillbeassimilated:

Via bookshelves:

El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Converted from a theatre.

Oh.Oh.Oh. I want to go to there.

Bookshelf-of-the-week.

libraryland:

landscapearchitecture:

theaccounts:

upyourarchitecture:

neilywheely:

firedust:

fuckyeaheyegasms:

University of Houston Light Sculpture (via jade001)

The art installation is named “A,A” created by Jim Sanborn.
www.uh.edu/uhtoday/2004/06jun/062804sanborn.html

WTF how have I never seen this?

Love it! I worked here! The University of Houston’s M.D. Anderson Library renovation and expansion, which includes this fabulous sculpture (and other works by) Jim Sanborn, was the capital project for which I raised funds when I worked at the university.

Via newsweek:

thedailywhat:

Print Ad of the Day: McDonald’s promotes a high-brow burger called “The M” with a stack of faux-books arranged to resemble a cheeseburger.

[copyranter.]

This is actually kind of genius.

Via johneepixels7:

thedailywhat:

Interior Design of the Day: The interior of the Bryant Park branch of Manhattan-based coffee shop D’Espresso was designed by Nema Workshop’s Anurag Nema to resemble a sideways library.

The “books” are actually tiles printed with sepia-toned photos of bookshelves at a local travel bookstore that ring the room, including the floor, walls and ceiling. In addition to painting unusual surfaces with intriguing patterns — whoa, you’re standing on books! — it gives an Alice in Wonderland-esque sense that the room has been suddenly upended.

[fastcodesign.]

This will be my new interior wallpaper. I love it.

This ranks highly on the bookshelf-of-the-week list.