What’s a dust jacket? You may know it as a book jacket, dust wrapper, or dust cover. It’s the paper cover of a hard cover book, often with flaps and illustrations, author photos, etc. Traditionally, academic libraries have removed these jackets (except in our Special Collections, of course), to save both time and money. Unlike a bookstore or public library, some might say that we don’t judge our books by their covers, but for their research value.

Well, a few of our collections, namely faculty authors, graphic novels, foreign language browing, and general browsing (popular fiction, mysteries, memoirs, etc.) serve a slightly different purpose. These books should catch your eye and offer a little distraction. In other words, pleasure reading. So, for these collections, we’re leaving the dust jackets on our new hard cover books. Like these two below, with more to come.