These cakes are some of the entries from last year´s Edible Book Festival. This year´s festival at the University is one of many that will be taking place around the world between April 1 and 5.

Students at UT's School of Information, formerly library sciences, dedicate themselves to protecting books, but Thursday they will eat them at the University's second Edible Book Festival.

Put on by first-year students in the Preservation and Conser-vation Studies program, the festival kicks off at 2 p.m. with the hopes of raising awareness about the program - the only one of its kind in the world according to students and faculty. Contestants will make or bake books out of edible materials and submit them for judging.

"It's just a fun event," said Genevieve Pierce, a co-organizer and library and information sciences graduate student. "We really want to have people come to collections and see where we are and who we are. It's a fun way to combine food and books. We've kind of jumped on the bandwagon and want to make it an annual event, and hopefully it will grow."

The University's festival is one of many that will take place around the world between April 1 and 5. The idea for edible books came to founder Judith A. Hoffberg over a Thanksgiving dinner with book artists in 1999 and has become an international event through the artist Béatrice Coron. The first festival was held in 2000.

"We have some very creative students here," said Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa, assistant director of the Preservation and Conservation program. "They just learned about the International Edible Book Festival, and I said 'Let's do it.' Now it looks like it's going to be a tradition handed down to first-years."

Last year's Edible Book Festival at the University drew 20 applicants with books made out of materials ranging from Jell-O to cold cuts. Judges awarded prizes such as "silliest book" and "tastiest book," and the edible works of art were auctioned off to the highest bidder and eaten. Local businesses donated gift certificates to award the winners' creative culinary skills.

Cunningham-Kruppa won for her cake book, modeled after the famous painting of a pipe known as "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe) by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. The chocolate novel bared the title "Livre" (book), and the caption below it read, "Ceci n'est pas une livre" (This is not a book). Other entries in last year's contest included "Rice of the Ancient Mariner," "Peeps of Wrath" and "To Brie or not to Brie."

In addition to community-building, the students hope the festival will raise a little money. The auction and T-shirt sales should bring some cash back to the program, which organizers say they will use to buy preservation and conservation tools. Last year's event raised about $150. Cunningham-Kruppa said the festival costs only about $40 or $50 to put on because most of the materials, like card tables and table cloths, are supplied by students and faculty.

The Preservation and Conservation Studies graduate program, which began in 1981 at Columbia University and moved to the University in 1991, lasts from two-to-three years and teaches students how to protect and house literary artifacts such as books, manuscripts and original drawings. Students learn how to test ink and paint and wash the materials with chemicals that stop the deterioration process. They also build structures to protect the materials from temperature changes and wear. Such artifacts on display at the University, including the Gutenberg Bible, must pass through the hands of a specialist in preservation and conservation before being put on public display.

Organizers said there are no specific rules or regulations for the book entries. Some function as novels with turnable pages and icing words and some are loosely based on the literature theme. Katie Mullen, a co-organizer and graduate student in library and information science, plans to bake a cake in the shape of a printer's mark.

"There were really, really nice ones last year," Pierce said. "People use everything from phyllo food to cakes decorated to look like books. They don't have to function like a book. There's the judging, and then everybody cut theirs up and eats them."

Another organizer and graduate student in library and information science, Shannon Phillips said people spend anywhere from an hour to a couple of days making their books.

"I think I'm going to do some sort of comic book. I haven't really started it yet. I'm thinking about doing a cake and making it into a comic strip," she said.

Beth Heller, one of last year's festival organizers and a second-year library sciences student, said the event so was so successful that filmmakers from FerretLodge Productions came to make a documentary and interview organizers and contestants. One of the contestants even picked up a culinary job at the festival.

"One of the judges last year was the owner of Jeffrey's, and one of the artists was a cake decorator. She made a beautiful cake that looked like a stack of engineering books and a beautiful wedding album. She ended up getting hired to do some cakes for Jeffrey's," Heller said.

This year's organizers said they expect a higher turnout for the festival and hope to draw people from all around the city.

"We were amazed at the stuff that people brought in last year," said Cunningham-Kruppa. "We would love to see more people from the community come enter."

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