Labeling Books with More Books

Ironically, that rare book, that Gutenberg Bible you have on display … nobody can read it.

It is beige.

Dimly lit.

Written in a dead language.

Behind glass at an angle.

And even if none of that were true, even if it were an English-language romance thriller about Taylor Swift … visitors don’t come to read two random adjacent pages of a book.

To bridge these barriers — to make our book sing — we add a written interpretive label alongside. It takes us quite a few words to cover everything. So the label ends up having as many words, and being the same size, as a book page.

And it is also … beige.

Dimly lit.

Written in technical language.

Behind glass at an angle.

Now there are two things the visitor has trouble reading.

Here’s the thing:
We can improve how we label our rare books by changing anything in the usual formula. Length, color, size, location, or all of the above.

Warmly,
Jonathan

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MtM Word of the Day:
Shop drawings. Highly detailed drawings produced by builders. Used to build the work in a manner specific to their "shop". Shop drawings are based on, and more detailed than, the final design or construction drawings by a designer or architect.