Book Jacket Design

Ever wander through a library and find a book that catches your eye? Maybe you're drawn by a striking picture, a title in a flowery font or an unusual description on the back cover. Welcome to the world of graphic design. Book jacket designers, like Chip Kidd, have become legends in the publishing industry. Kidd has designed over 800 covers for Knopf, from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park to Oliver Sack's The Island of the Colorblind. Here's his take on designing hardback covers: “...that manuscript lands on your desk, and you read it and it seizes your imagination and fills your head with ideas like a balloon with helium—and then you chance about the perfect art.” Like an involved reader, jacket designers pore over the pages and bring themes to life.

Librarians with a keen sense of design can tell when book jacket styles change. Angela Frederick, a Teen Services Llbrarian, noticed recently that images on book covers for young adults “seem to start below the model's eyes, leaving only the lower face in view.” When asked if this trend “meant” anything, she answered, “You could interpret it in a bad way, as objectifying the girls, but the author or publisher might want the readers to imagine their own characters.”

Every library has monthly displays that reflect the creative interests of our staff. Step into one library and find out what staff picks our librarians share with their readers. In another, find a quiet garden of books about landscaping. Big or small, the displays both bring out the artistry of the book jackets, and feature collections of novel ideas. It's an excellent way to explore more in the library. In a busy world, judging a book by its cover is not a bad thing. You might find something surprising inside.
 

In a world of Google and keyword searches on Amazon, the concept of using official subject headings is foreign to most people. But most libraries use Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to organize their collections and maintain bibliographic control. Applying correct subject headings to a book allows not only retrieval of a known title, but also allows for discovery of other books on the same subject.

Keyword searches on the catalog can retrieve wanted materials, but also a whole other slew of unrelated materials, as well. Learning the appropriate subject heading of your favorite topic could save you time in future searches. For example, cookbooks can be found by a keyword search, but learning that cookery is the actual subject heading for such books ensures that you find all the books on that topic. Qualifiers can be applied to the term for more precise searching. Searching for Cookery Thai or Cookery Peanut Butter Juvenile Literature allows retrieval of exactly what you are looking for.

If you are familiar with searching SAPL’s online catalog using keywords, check out the subject headings next time you search. It’s easy: just scroll down on the item page that lists locations and availability and you will see which Library of Congress Subject Headings are applied to that particular book. These subject headings in our catalog are hyperlinked, so if you click on one that looks interesting, you’ll see which other materials come up with that subject.

While subject headings for nonfiction books are usually pretty thorough, fiction subject headings are notoriously spotty at best. However, some novels can be identified based on their subject headings alone.

Guess the novel based on the LCSH!

Scroll down for the answers and links to the novels in our catalog!
 

Just east of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore’s historic Charles Village neighborhood, there’s a library with self-checkout, no late fees and possibly the world’s most eclectic collection. The downside is the checkout limit. According to Russell Wattenberg, founder, “you can only take 150,000 per day per person.”

Wattenberg’s nonprofit project, The Book Thing of Baltimore, started as a take-what-you-want-for-free collection for teachers bemoaning the shortage of books for their impoverished students. At the time, Wattenberg was a bartender, but rather than just drowning the sorrows of his teacher-customers, he used tip money to purchase used books. The teachers’ happy hour at the bar became just that as Wattenberg gave them the keys to his van and instructed them to help themselves to the books there. Hearing of his largesse, folks soon started bringing in books for the “book thing” that he did.

With the help of some of his bar regulars, Wattenberg founded The Book Thing of Baltimore, Inc., in 2000 to manage and distribute the growing collection that numbers now in the hundreds of thousands. This isn’t because unwanted books linger. Instead, the lure of free books and the daily book donations (sometimes thousands a day) ensure that the collection is constantly refreshed.

The Book Thing’s philanthropy extends far beyond Baltimore’s city limits. Remember that 150,000 items per day limit? Well, one of Wattenberg’s patrons almost took him up on the offer. The patron loaded a moving truck with 20,000 books and shipped them to Africa on behalf of a charity.

The work of Wattenberg and his many volunteers is just one of the reasons that Baltimore earns its nickname: Charm City.

Some of the Strangest Titles Donated to The Book Thing

Library of Congress Subject Headings
Answers

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
2. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

FEATURED Staff Recommendation

Cindy Moreno (Librarian, Thousand Oaks) shares some favorite reads.

Favorite Children’s Book as a Child:
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

Favorite Children’s Book as an Adult:
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
Don’t Let the Pigeon books by Mo Willems

Loved as a Teenager:
Lois Duncan books
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Just Finished Reading:
The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart

Just Started Reading:
Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause

Some of My Favorite Fiction:
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Rain of Gold by Victor Villaseñor

Some of My Favorite Poets:
Sylvia Plath, Sandra Cisneros, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Edgar Allan Poe

FEATURED Database

Check out all our databases.
 

FEATURED Event

SAPL Events

If you have any questions about the library or would like to see something included in this newsletter, please contact our Web Administrator at librarywebadmin@sanantonio.gov.

Unsubscribe  | Subscribe