The Sustainability Faire at Kent Library will feature a book furniture display constructed by art student, Shawn Guiling. Guiling is also an instructor of psychology at Southeast Missouri State University. The idea to build furniture out of weeded books came together when faculty members at Kent Library and the art department combined a few separate projects.

According to David Starrett, director of Kent Library, all libraries go through a weeding process during certain times to make room for new books to be added to the collection.

"We've got the books that we are going to be weeding and we need to dispose of them," Starrett said. "We are always trying to purchase new furniture in the library. We've got a limited budget and sustainability week is coming up this spring. We have Earth Day then we have sustainability week, and so we saw all three of those kind of coming together."

Chris Wubbena, art professor at Southeast, teaches the sculpture class Guiling is enrolled in. Wubbena came up with the idea after receiving an email from Starrett about contributing to the Sustainability Faire by creating a book furniture display.

"The library contacted the art faculty about what they could do, and I take an art class every semester," Guiling said. "I'm taking sculpture with Chris Wubbena, he lets us use all kinds of different materials. I had already gotten about 14 boxes of discarded books when other offices, or people, have moved, just to get rid of their boxes of books. So I have been playing around with what you can do with books. When Chris got the email about coming to this meeting, about the Sustainability Faire, it just made perfect sense to ask me to come."

Guiling has been constructing the ottoman display for the last few weeks that will be featured at the Sustainability Faire on April 24, hosted by Kent Library.

"Because those books will be taken off the shelves and won't be circulating anymore, they wanted something better to do with them than just sell them or put them in a landfill," Guiling said. "They wanted to give them a new life, just not as books on the shelves in this library."

According to Guiling, some of the outdated bestsellers that have been weeded are being used to build the ottoman due to their uniformity and similar sizes. There will still be electronic versions available at the library according to Starrett.

"With bestsellers they're kind of similar height, some have similar widths, and that's what he had and what they were weeding first," Guiling said. "There's some uniformity. I'm finding that not all books are created equally, and even if they look the same, some are wobbly and some are bowed and some don't stand up right. Some are too small to match the others, each one has a certain number of pages. It's gone through a lot of reshaping because books don't always stack the same."

Thousands of books will need to be relocated due to the weeding process and are being removed from the inventory to create room for an updated selection.

"We're in the process of weeding 10 to 15 percent of the books that are no longer being used or they're outdated, or there is newer versions or they're old and falling apart," Starrett said. "We add about 5,000 books a year, we need to create room for that. You need to have enough room that when you add one to a shelf you've got room on that shelf to add, rather than having to go move the books all the way down the line. You always want some space on each shelf."

The weeding process has started but it will take time to create space and relocate all of the books that will be taken off the shelves. If the book furniture project goes well, there are plans to create other pieces out of the weeded books, including a divider wall enclosing computers in a space near the Heather MacDonald Greene Multimedia Center.

"We're talking about expanding the Heather McDonald Greene Multimedia Center and there is a space with three walls on it, right across from the multimedia center," Starrett said. "We would need to wall it in to make it into another computer room for the multimedia center. What we're talking about with that now is actually, using books to build the wall with. Not a structurally supportive wall but just a divider that would prevent people from going into that room where the computers are that would be constructed out of books. Shawn is going to be looking at that. That will be the next project we'll be starting on."

Guiling hopes to have the ottoman done by April 20 to have the display in the library for the duration of Earth Week, being held April 20-24. He will be present to feature his piece at the Sustainability Faire, which will consist of a variety of vendor booths and informational displays, educating students about sustainability.