It turns out you can judge a book by its cover. Defying the age-old idiom, librarians in London Ont. are exploring their collection of easy-to-match covers to perfect their #BookFace, lightening the mood among staff after a heavy year.
It turns out you can judge a book by its cover! Librarians in London, Ont. are exploring their collection of easy-to-match covers to perfect their #BookFace, in an attempt to lighten the mood after a heavy year.
Librarian Lana Winchester-Tucker introduced the concept of bookface to her branch late last year and it’s since taken off on the library’s social media channels helping to boost an international mini trend.
“With everything COVID, I just had the idea to lighten our days a little bit,” said Winchester-Tucker. She also thought it would help promote the library’s collection and help get people reading.
Bookface is an activity that uses books with fun and expressive covers to create art, with a person matching up a body part or a feature with an image on a book cover.
It’s the literary take on Sleeve Face, which matched record albums to people’s faces.The web is awash with creative bookface photos from passionate readers around the world. Even animals make the cut.
Ok, it’s not exactly fanart, but it’s a cat so it wins! The city library in Aalen, Germany has created the cutest #bookface ever! 😂😻 #fanartfriday pic.twitter.com/Xb5hVM9bnK
—@SiriPettersen
But finding a book that matches up to a staff member’s face or their personality is tougher than it looks, said Winchester-Tucker.
At her branch, she said it took weeks to find the right books. The London Public Library has a collection of 600,000 print items so the selection is much better than a home library.
“It’s pretty popular I would say, but for us it was really just stress-relief,” said Winchester-Tucker. “It’s something I wanted to do for my staff.”