JET writes “BROKEN SHELVES
a more natural way of shelving books.
the new structure that appears through the broken shelves gives space to differently sized books.
one element provides a place to sit and read inside the shelves.”
-wow this is interesting – it was so hard to picture before I saw the actual books on the shelves! – A.K.
Problems…
To sit inside a bookshelf is going to require your shelf to be *at least* 1’4″ wide – and that’s for the scrawniest individuals.
Some people are a lot bigger and weigh a lot more. Is the bookshelf going to bear up that weight, when only supported at the back of the seat (no front legs)?
Getting into and out of such a space is hard, especially if you’re injured or slightly disabled.
In any case, I only rarely need bookshelves to be 1′ deep. Everything else is going to be a loss of space – and it will collect dust, and need (more) cleaning. As well as require more floor-space.
Order:
Arranging your books by size (as is necessary here) in order to maximize shelf-space is going to be problematic to any other type of ordering scheme.
Some people like orderly piles of stuff. I know I’d be driven to distraction with such shelving.
It’s hard to tell when things break in such a shelving unit. Which could be problematic for your books, if one shelf breaks and is being supported by books below it. You might not notice for years, if you’re not using things from those shelves.
It doesn’t show end-lips on those shelves. So you need to have a book large enough to reach the opposing shelf to act as your brace to keep everything else from sliding off. Books should not be used as support – except when they are laid flat. Anything else messes up spines and bindings and stuff.
This looks like someone’s architectural design class project. And while I like seeing new designs, this has to many drawbacks for me to seriously consider it for books I care about. For a coffeeshop, or other pretentious place – sure, it’s a break from the norm.
Yeah, regular bookshelves are kinda boring. But that’s because they’re functional. An ideal bookshelf would store each book flat on it’s own shelf. That’d treat each book the nicest, and make withdrawing them easy (if you’ve got a stack of books piled flat, getting to the bottom-most one is problematic). Edge-placement of books is a compromise, which works well. But yes, it’s straight, and boring.
We could of course make books in all different sizes and shapes (and hard-back people love to do this) instead of a standard size. Standards would do wonders for this stuff, but nobody is interested in doing that 😛 Everyone wants their books to be ‘different’. This is the same problem, but moved to shelving.
— Ender, Duke_of_URL
Re:Problems…
Your comments made me think of this book. The Book on the Bookshelf
Thanks 🙂
I’m always on the lookout for new books to add to my list of things to look for.
One of my friends re-phrased one of my points, and made it clearer:
>the angled stuff would always mess with my mind by
>appearing to be disorderly.
— Ender, Duke_of_URL
Library of Alexandria…
From the amazon review:
>Along the way he provides plenty of amusing
>anecdotes about libraries (according to one
>possibly apocryphal account, the library at
>Alexandria borrowed the works of the great Greek
>authors from Athens, had them copied, and then
>sent the copies back, keeping the originals),
This I’ve read about in other places. And from what I’ve read it is true, as well as the fact that the King (whose name I forget) had paid a gaurantee on requesting the originals. Which he happily forfieted in order to keep them (He sent back copies, probably to keep them from going to war – although why he didn’t just “lose” the ship with the originals, I don’t know…).
— Ender, Duke_of_URL
Goofy shelves
It is certainly thinking outside the box.
It’s not useful for libraries, but I have 4 units of shelving in my office that could use something more attractive and interesting than same old same old.than
Re:Problems…
Me too–and that book was one of those that surprised the heck out of me: It was fascinating. (One of my semi-random nonfiction picks from the local public library…)