My wife, Tery, wanted a display cabinet with doors on it (i.e not as deep as a bookshelf, maybe 6″ to 7″ deep). The reason she wanted doors was so that she could put display items in it and the cats wouldn’t knock them out (apparently something they do with the regular display shelves we have in that spot).
As a lover of the arts & crafts style, I took the opportunity to take a typical bookshelf example and scale it down somewhat. The joinery includes mortise & tenon, splines and a ship-lap back (a method of cutting “half lap” joints in the back, so the back panels overlap, which allows for wood movement). . The material is classic quarter-sawn white oak., the traditional wood for arts & crafts furniture. Its more expensive to cut up a log this way, but the rays and flakes in the wood are very pretty.
Still need to make the doors and attach them, then apply the finish – but its starting to look good.