If you are a librarian into social media, you may have seen Bookface Friday posts. If not, I’ll briefly explain what a “bookface” is. A bookface is a photograph of a book jacket—usually the front cover but not always—lined up with a background in real life. Often the cover is a person’s face, but it could also be any body part. Sometimes they are not humans at all but rather animals, bookshelves, food, plants, and landscapes. We once used an airplane.
Bookface Friday was reportedly started in August 2014 by Morgan Holzer at the New York Public Library. Soon after, other librarians started posting their own images and the trend took off. They are usually posted to Instagram and Twitter on Fridays, thus the hashtag #BookfaceFriday.
Hunt Library where I work has been making bookfaces since 2016. They are created by our Social Media Team of which I am a member. Since 2018, I have appeared in four of these and worked behind the scenes on several others. They are fun to create.
The Daily Show (The Book) by Jon Stewart
I’m not a fan of Jon Stewart and rarely watched his show (or anything, really) but enjoyed making this bookface in April 2018. They needed an older guy with a scruffy face so I was recruited. It came out well.
Hacking and Freedom of Information edited by Marcia Amidon Lüsted
Anyone could have posed as the hacker for this but maybe because of the title, I was chosen. Not sure why they wanted me to make a peace sign, but there it is. Here are a couple of behind-the-scenes photos of the process. The photos were taken by our student assistant, Katie.
The Good Neighbor by Fred Rogers
The Team needed a man with a grey cardigan sweater which describes me every day at work. This was a simple one to execute. I probably should have worn a black tie to really complete the cover’s look.
Old Bones by Preston & Child
The latest bookface we posted was for today, February 28, 2020. Here my colleague Jesper stands in for Douglas Preston (left) and I am Lincoln Child (right). We rarely edit the photos but in the original photo we were in front of a white wall. I wanted the background to match the dark grey behind the authors, so I edited the background to match the book’s and reduce the glare.
On the main #BookfaceFriday Instagram page, Hunt Library’s bookface of The Night Fire by Michael Connelly is being used for the profile photo. Out of 83,725 photos.
See many more fun #BookfaceFriday photos on Instagram and Twitter.