Our new library project is finally completed!

 

My library has finally done it! After three years of work, and over 14 million dollars, we have finally converted our collection.

It is now made out of blocks of wood!

Every single book in our collection is now a hand carved facsimile of an actual book! The process has been amazing, and the result looks fantastic. 

We started by requisitioning nearly half a million custom processed blocks of wood:

These were prepped and packaged overseas:

In our onsite workshop local craftspeople hand carved the blocks of wood into rough facsimiles of actual books.

From there, finishing details were hand painted by the brush staff to give the blocks of wood, or "Bookdummies" as we have come to call them, an authentic look.

Sometimes multi-book "dummies" were created, according to careful specs, for the higher shelves.

Here is a picture of the shelving when we were staging the pre finished books:

And here is a picture of the nearly finished project on the main floor:

It has been a huge project, and one with considerable expense, but the long term benefits to our library aesthetics and future acquisitions budget are incalculable. 

We open this new collection to the public in just under a week, and we are so excited for the library patrons to finally see what we've been working on!