Starting next week Hodges and Pendergrass libraries will have their “Blind Date with a Book” displays. These will have books of various genres wrapped up with a brief description of each book written on the front. If students are interested, they can pick up one of these books and check them out.

Alex Boris, who works in the University of Tennessee Libraries’ Health, Wellness and Professional Programs Department, hopes that this display will teach people not to judge a book by its cover.

“A lot of it is not taking a book’s cover for what it is,” Boris said. “We also hope to bring students experiences that will get them out of their comfort zones.”

Included in the display will be books for Black History Month. These books will have special labels.

Nicole Stephens, a Public Services Supervisor within Pendergrass Library at UT Libraries, is hoping that students will fall back in love with reading.

“At Pendergrass, we are hoping to engage more people in leisure reading,” Stephens said. “I know in college, it’s hard to find time to enjoy a good book, but maybe looking at a brief, fun description of a story can help people rediscover their love for reading and hopefully find it as a form of self-care as well.”

When curating books for these blind picks, the librarians not only consider what students may want to see but also books that will make students feel seen.

“It’s a lot of picking titles that are less regulated as well as titles from lesser-known authors,” Boris said. “Sometimes titles are picked just because they look interesting.”

There is a wide variety in the picks for these blind dates, ranging from fantasy, science fiction, romance, general fiction, historical fiction and more.

The selection process at Pendergrass is a little different according to Stephens.

“We had staff, our student library assistants and our graduate student library assistants pick books that they enjoyed and something that got them back into reading,” Stephens said.

To go with the theme of falling back in love with reading, Pendergrass will also have the opportunity for staff and visitors to write down things they love about the library. They want to embrace the Pendergrass community with love.

This is the fifth year of Blind Date with a Book, and the initiative has been incredibly successful. In past years, Boris says that this may be the library’s most popular book display.

“The books fly off the shelf,” Boris said. “If someone doesn’t pick up a book, they’ll at least give it a look. It’s kind of nice. Often, I’m replacing books at least twice a day.”

Other book displays included at the libraries are ones for Mental Health Awareness Month, staff picks and titles with Netflix adaptations.

At Pendergrass, they have done picks for Native American History Month as well as books that have been adapted into TV series or movies.

Boris and Stephens had to get creative to summarize the books for the blind dates.

“One book in the past was labeled ‘Studio Ghibli meets science fiction,’ and another was ‘Mulan meets Song of Achilles,’” Boris said. “We do a lot of ‘if you like this book, try this book.’ We’ve also had descriptions like ‘hockey plus conflict equals enemies to lovers.’ Sometimes the labels are cutesy and sometimes they are more detailed.”

The process at Pendergrass is a little different, Stephens explains.

“At Pendergrass, we had students who picked out books and wrote down two to three sentence descriptions of it,” Stephens said. “We also want to showcase students’ personalities through their picks. It allows them to express themselves in their own way.”

Stephens also had a method of labeling books based on vibes. For books with spicy, sexual content, she would draw a chili pepper on its packaging. For emotional books, she would draw a crying emoji.

If you go to the UT Library website and navigate to their Resource Sharing page, you can find an option to request books to stock the library’s shelves. Boris explained that most of the time she will just buy the book. If there is a book you wish to see in Hodges Library, it’s highly recommended you use this feature.

Hodges and Pendergrass Libraries’ Blind Date with a Book starts Feb. 1. You can find the blind picks on display in both libraries.