That’s actually a neat idea. First, you’d need a way to quantify the dust‑patterns—maybe image‑processing to extract texture features or a simple binary map of where dust sits. Then you can treat each shelf as a vector in feature space. Once you have a dataset, a k‑nearest‑neighbors or a collaborative‑filter‑style model could surface books that tend to show similar dust patterns. You’d probably want a small pilot to tweak the feature extraction, then scale up once the patterns start aligning with the right titles. It’s a bit of a niche data source, but with a decent dataset it could become a quirky recommendation engine. Let me know if you want help setting up the pipeline or choosing the right model.

Great, let’s outline the pilot steps. First, gather a few shelves with a mix of dusty and relatively clean books. Scan each shelf with a high‑resolution camera or a flat‑bed scanner so you get consistent lighting. Then run a simple image‑processing routine: convert to grayscale, blur slightly to reduce noise, and extract a texture feature like Local Binary Patterns or a histogram of gradients. That gives you a numeric vector for each shelf. Next, tag each vector with the books on that shelf. For the pilot you can keep it to maybe 20–30 books. That’s enough to see if patterns cluster by genre or author. Once you have the vectors, pick a basic k‑NN algorithm: for any new shelf vector, find the nearest neighbors in your dataset and recommend the books that appear most frequently among those neighbors. You’ll want to evaluate it by asking a few people to guess what books should be suggested based on dust alone. Adjust the feature extraction if the recommendations feel off. Keep the code in a single Python file, use OpenCV for the image part, scikit‑learn for k‑NN. Once the pilot looks good, you can expand the dataset and maybe add a tiny web interface for others to contribute their own dust maps. Let me know when you’ve got the images ready, and I can help you script the processing.