If You Can't Have a Personal Library, How About a Virtual One?

Not everyone can afford a personal library. Many don't have enough room for one if they could. The reality is that most young people, and many older ones too, live is apartments or smaller quarters, or have paychecks that maybe cover expenses and a few pleasures, but not a lot beyond that. Older people, even with decent savings, don't have a lot to spare at the end of the day. A personal library may be beyond their means, but wouldn't it be nice to have one? In these days of virtual reality, maybe the answer is a virtual library.

In this case we're not talking about a collection of e-books. That's a virtual library you can hold on your smart phone. Good for reading, but it doesn't look anything like a library. The same is true of the Internet Archive's Open Library. There are cover images and the ability to electronically borrow those books, but that isn't anything like the libraries Andrew Carnegie built either. We want something that looks like an actual library – shelves of books.

The answer is bookshelf wallpaper. There are places that specialize in wallpaper with various scenes, books and bookcases among them. Paste it on the wall and voila, it looks like a library. Wallsauce, and Milton and King are a couple of places to look, but you can also find it at the ubiquitous Amazon. It won't set you back that much. It comes in rolls and there are plenty of choices under $0.50 a square foot, a few under $0.40. For actual books, you can at best get them for as low as $20 per foot for the less desirable ones, and shipping will obviously be more than for shipping some wallpaper. Then you have to add the shelves. Wallpaper books come in their own virtual bookshelves.

A major advantage of wallpaper bookshelves is they take up very little floor space. Their depth is about 1/8th or maybe 3/16ths of an inch. Actual bookshelves will protrude a foot or so into the room, taking up valuable floor space. And how about the annoying job of dusting bookshelves? No problem here. Nor will you ever have to worry about your books being devoured by bookworms. You won't be able to read your wallpaper books, but you probably aren't going to do that with most of the books lining your shelves anyway.

Still, you may think photo bookshelves aren't quite real. After all, old books have that distinctive old books scent which wallpaper doesn't have. No problem. A company called M&T Scents offers all sorts of strange perfumes if you prefer to smell like something other than standard flowers. One of them is called “Vintage Bookstore.” They describe it as “Our sophisticated blend of bergamot, leather books, and cedar.” It sounds a bit odd to want to smell like old books, but perhaps if you have been working with books all day you pick up the scent? This would enhance your book collecting creds. It might make more sense to spray it somewhere near the wallpaper if you don't want to carry the scent with you wherever you go.

There are many words that can describe the advantages of a virtual book collection, “practical,” “affordable,” “sensible.” “Authenticity” isn't one of them.

Rare Book Monthly

If You Can't Have a Personal Library, How About a Virtual One?

Rare Book Monthly

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If You Can't Have a Personal Library, How About a Virtual One?

Rare Book Monthly

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