Bookshelf

A Bookshelf serves to enhance an Enchantment Table, as a decoration, or as an inefficient furnace fuel. Bookshelves naturally occur in libraries inside Strongholds, and NPC Villages. Breaking a bookshelf will drop 3 books, but no wooden planks.

Properties
A bookshelf has two textures: one borrowed from the plank block put on the top and bottom of the block, and one edited version of the plank texture put on all four sides.

As one bookshelf requires three books, books require three sheets of paper and one piece of leather; paper requires one sugar cane per sheet (crafted in batches of three), nine sugar canes are necessary for each bookshelf block. It would take 576 cane to produce a full stack of bookshelves, 192 pieces of leather for the books and 96 logs for the wood. This gives a use to sugar cane: with that kind of need for resources, the endless cane farms of many players have a use.

Bookshelves can be destroyed fairly easily by hand, but more quickly using an axe. In either case, they will drop 3 books when destroyed, allowing the reconstruction of the bookshelf with the addition of six Wooden Planks.

Bookshelves will catch on fire, so make sure to place them in a safe area away from fire and lava.

Occurrence
Bookshelves can be found in a couple of places:
 * NPC villages often have libraries, and inside each library there are a seven bookshelves, presumably for the villagers to borrow and read in their spare time, however they never borrow books.
 * Strongholds almost always feature a library. Small libraries feature some bookshelves arranged in 2x1 pillars, and large libraries feature more bookshelves arranged in the space below, plus there is a balcony with two walls covered in bookshelves.

Use
Bookshelves are used to gain access to higher level enchantments when using the Enchanting Table. If an enchanting table is placed nearby, glyphs will fly towards it from the bookshelf in a manner similar to nether portal particles. To get the highest boost (level 30), you need 15 bookshelves, which means 45 books and 90 planks, or 135 paper, 45 leather and 22.5 logs.

Trivia

 * In Minecraft Pocket Edition you don't need Leather to craft books, you only need paper to craft them. This is an advantage since you waste less resources crafting bookshelfs, making the construction of a library more viable.

Gallery
Bücherregal Estante Bibliothèque Könyvespolc Bookshelf 책꽂이 Boekenkast Biblioteczka Книжный шкаф 书架