CONCEPT:

With the addition of chiseled bookshelves I thought it would be nice to make a functional library in Minecraft.

PROBLEM:

Chiseled bookshelves don't display what book you're looking at, meaning the only way to know what book is on the shelf is to take it out and read it. That seemed really counter-intuitive to how you should use a library.

Additionally, books themselves can only hold up to 100 pages, and many books are considerably longer than that. Especially given the limited amount of room per page of a typical Minecraft book.

While it's true this could be solved with mods or datapacks or add-ons... I wanted to make this a library ANYONE could use in vanilla Minecraft.

SOLUTION:

I am using the website Gutencraft to copy/paste the text of the books into Minecraft page by page.
Books will be broken up into parts and named: Part 1, Part2, Part 3, etc.
Books will be displayed on lecterns because that way you can instantly read the book.
Titles of the books will be on display (either above or below the lectern, I haven't figured out which yet) so you know instantly which book and part you're currently reading.
I am using a command to change the name of the author to the name of the actual author of the book.
And for backup purposes, multiple copies of the book part will be stored behind the lectern in chiseled bookshelves (just to be safe).

THE COLLECTION SO FAR:

The Hobbit
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Most Dangerous Game
The Silver Crown
The Wizard of OZ

SUGGESTIONS

I would very much like suggestions on how to either organize this collection, ways on displaying it that are more intuitive, or anything that would make using this library easier for players. While I would like for people to be able to download and use this map in their own worlds, for now this is a work in progress and proof of concept at best.