By: Erica Lampert ~Staff Writer~

The Conaton Learning Commons (CLC) encouraged students and faculty to take a bite out of their favorite books in celebration of National Library Week on April 11.

To celebrate the library and its catalogue of 235,000 books, the CLC held the 10th annual edible book competition where students, faculty and staff could make an edible representation of their favorite book.

“Most often people will make cakes, but you can do anything that is edible,” Circulation Specialist of the CLC Megan Martin said. “This year, we had all kinds of things. For example, one entry used a New York-style and Chicago-style pizza for A Tale of Two Cities. It was very clever.”

This year, the pizza representation of A Tale of Two Cities was a fan favorite, in addition to the Bunny Cakes winner. The winner of the event won a Visa gift card this year.

“One of our librarians actually did Tattoos On The Heart this year,” Martin said. “It took a lot of time because he had his edible book cooking in the crockpot for over 48 hours!”

The competition consisted of 22 participants with their edible representations of books and about 60 community members who stopped by to eat and vote on the entries.

“It was the most attendance we have seen in the 10 years we have done this event,” Martin said.

The Edible Book Competition began as a fun event to get the community involved with the library. The staff is always happy to have any participants involved with the event, whether they are voting, eating or actually entering an edible book creation.

“I think the event is really enjoyable in the sense that you don’t have to enter to actually come and enjoy any of it or vote on any of it,” Martin said. “This is a very low-key event that you don’t have to put a lot of effort into to participate in. We are always happy to have any participants, whether they are just voting or going to make an entry.”

The library staff also held a staff recognition breakfast in addition to the competition. There was also a contest where the Xavier community could make a guess on how many books were in the library. The winner received a gift card for having the closet number.

“We have 235,000 books in our library,” Martin said, “so we thought it would be fun for the community to guess and to see what they came up with.”

The library also celebrated its 50th anniversary the week prior to National Library Week with a party involving all of the library staff.

“The party was catered and we even (had) a birthday cake for the library,” Martin said. “Father Graham also came to speak as well as our archives volunteer.”

Through these events, the library staff wants to get the community involved with the library, so they can understand all of the resources the library has available for them.

“We don’t want the library to just be confined to a building,” Martin said. “We want to be able to serve the student population and even have some fun things for the students.”