The Sorted Books project puts book spines to work as storytelling devices:
The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library’s holdings.
I’d love to see a mash-up combining Sorted Book projects, outsourced book cataloging, and a customizable Web interface.
(Via Boing Boing and Shelf Awareness)