I would love to have a dining room library, but our dining room is barely big enough as it is. What we do have is a single bookshelf in the dining room, which is where I store all of my cookbooks/recipe binders/food magazines. It's a small bookshelf (it has to be), but I think it gives the room some extra character beyond table/chairs/trash can/cat box.

I have part of my cookbooks in the dining room. Now that I think about it, we've always had books of some sort in the dining room. We are also lucky enough to have a really nice built-in sideboard, so lots of storage and display space.

Yes! Our long, narrow 1920's living room was not conducive to contemporary life, so we swapped the dining and living areas, making the former living room into a dining room and "library." It's probably my favorite room in the house.

We live in a small house and the only place there was room for our bookshelf was the dining room. I've been wanting to see pictures of other dining room libraries. This is great! Thanks:)

I have had bookshelves in the dining room now for 25 years. I live in an old victorian semi (which is long/deep and narrow) and the bookshelves are on the inside wall. The dining room is 15 by 10 with a traffic area from the living room to the kitchen along and beside the bookshelf wall which leaves an actual usable area in the dining room of 11 by 10. I have often thought of extending the bookshelves along two of the other walls and above the doorways and making the dining room into a library with comfortable chairs and good lighting for reading and a writing desk as the kitchen table is used for most entertaining now and a formal dining room is form without function.

My fiance and I would love to have a room like that in our home. Our living room currently serves all the purposes apart from sleeping and cooking, but we tend to entertain around his rather large table (3.5'x5' with two leaves that bring it out to 7'). We're rather geeky and like to play boardgames and role-playing games around the table, which makes shelves near it a necessity! He and I both have rather large book collections - he's an English professor - and it just seems to make sense to have most of them together. Not only is it convenient to store all the books together, but it makes for an attractive aesthetic statement too!

If I actually liked owning books, this unit would contain more, but I prefer to fill it with unique items. We bought a Rakks system, bought cedar planks from a lumber yard and a teak dining tabletop and had it cut in half as the desk part. I like that we can watch TV on our computer from the dining table if we feel like it.

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m26y8gOGv51rt6ydio1_1280.jpg

Has anyone seen the French movie Cache? The main characters have an absolutely wonderful flat with many walls of books, especially in the dining area. I can't find too many stills of the dining room online (here's one: http://c181321.r21.cf0.rackcdn.com/PHnpLwovx4dbqq_1_m.jpg) but you can see it in the trailer a few times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS4VVUYsK44. I love it! Here's another favorite, captured by Rita Konig: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/inside-out-a-bookish-mix/