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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.

Crafting

A single Bookshelf can be crafted by arranging six wooden planks and three books in the pattern below:

Ingredients Input » Output
Wooden Planks + Books Template:Grid/Crafting Table

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 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, plus 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.

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, you need 30 bookshelves (Or 15 in 12w22a), which means 90 books and 180 planks, or 270 sugar cane and 45 logs.


History

Jigsaw Block (top texture) JE2 BE2
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The bookshelf was added in Classic 0.26 Survival Test, and served no purpose other than its usage as decoration until Beta 1.9pre3 when Libraries (in Strongholds) and Enchanting were implemented.

  • Classic - Can be freely placed.
  • Survival Test - Impossible to obtain without loading a pre-edited map. Destroyed in explosions. When mined drops nothing.
  • Infdev - Same as Survival Test and Indev. Cannot be crafted.
  • Indev - Same as Survival Test and Infdev. Cannot be crafted.
  • Alpha - Same as Beta, can't be used to obtain higher level enchantments (enchantments did not exist) and drops nothing.
  • Beta - Can be freely placed. Drops nothing (before 1.9pre3) and can't be used to obtain higher level enchantments.
  • Minecraft 1.0 - Can be freely placed. Drops 3 book with an axe, nothing with anything else. Can be used for higher level enchantments.
  • As of snapshot 12w17a, crafting a book requires a piece of Leather, so making thirty bookshelves requires 90 Leather.
  • As of 12w22a, the number of bookshelves required to reach maximum has been decreased to 15.

Gallery

Bugs

  • In 1.2.5, if you use the Pick Block control when looking at a bookshelf it will put books in your quickbar instead of bookshelves.
  • In Pocket Edition, destroying a bookshelf will yield 3 bookshelves instead of 3 books, allowing a infinite number of bookshelves to be made.(the initial crafting still has to be done)
  • Piston can push Minecart with Chest in to a bookshelf.(If you right click it will open minecart with a chest inventory so it works like a real bookshelf.)
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