Shelf Appeal: Library Science Students' Attraction to Fiction Dust Jacket Covers and Their Opinions about Books as Objects

Though people are admonished not to judge a book by its cover, they often do. In order to better understand the communication between a person and a dust jacket, fifteen library science students were interviewed to elicit their opinions about twenty-two fiction books based on information gleaned from front covers. Additionally, the students were asked various questions regarding their attitudes about dust jackets as information providers and about books as objects in order to gain insight into their ideas about the artifactual value of dust jackets and books. The guiding questions were: What is it in a novel's front cover design that first attracts a reader to a book, and does the cover affect the reading of the text? Do library science students, future custodians of books, view fiction books and their dust jackets as merely the carriers of the text, part of the text, or as something else entirely