The wife and I have moved into a new house and I've promised to turn
one of the rooms into a library. The plan is to build 7 bookshelves
each of which is 30" wide, 12" deep, and 8' tall out of walnut (the
room has 10' ceilings). 4 shelves will be on one wall and 3 on
another. Keep in mind that I have a decent table saw and router table
but no planer or jointer...

The original plan was to build a case out of 3/4" walnut plywood with
a 1/4" walnut plywood back. The shelves would be 3/4" walnut plywood
with solid walnut trim piece on the front. The shelves are going to
be attached to the walls and spaced about 3" apart from each other.
I'm planning on covering the 3" gap and the face of the case with a
solid walnut face frame and some decorative trim.

After hunting around, it looks like 3/4" sheets are going for almost
$100 and 1/4" sheets for around $60. I started looking into pricing
the hardwood portion and found Advantage Lumber
(http://www.advantagelumber.com/main.htm) which has 4/4 walnut for
$3.60/bd ft and will also sell thinner pieces. That started me
thinking about making the whole thing out of solid wood.

Plywood:
Pro: fast, easy construction - no panel glue ups (I know I can do
these but w/o a jointer it could take awhile)
Pro: no movement - probably not a big deal for this project though
???: How will the shelves look with a 3/4" thick trim piece on the
front of the plywood? Will it match well or will there be a noticable
difference in the woods?

Hardwood:
Pro: it's hardwood - just feels better, cooler, etc...
Pro: allows me to do interesting things with the back panel like
v-notching 4" wide pieces which I think looks fantastic.
Con: long, potentially difficult road to glue up all those uprights
and shelves.
Con: probably more expensive - though w/ Advantage's wholesale prices
for thin stock, this might be OK.

Another option I thought of was buying 1/16" thick walnut pieces from
Advantage ($2.50/sq ft for orders $500) and creating my own
"plywood" by attaching them to a cheaper plywood core and then
building the shelves out of solid wood. Since the bookcases cover a
whole wall, I only need 1 good face for each of the vertical uprights.
How much wood movement would I need to worry about with pieces this
thin? If this is do-able, the cost is probably similar to using
walnut plywood (2.50/sq ft * 32 sq ft == $80+core vs $100 for a 4x8
plywood sheet). Advantage has 1/4" quatersawn walnut for $3.25/sq ft
which I can use for the backs. (30" x 8' x $3.25 = $65 which is about
the same as a single 1/4" 4x8 sheet). This also has the advantage
using less wood since I'm won't be wasting wood because of the fixed
size of the plywood sheets.

Any thoughts? Part of me thinks I've been thinking about this too
much and should have just picked a plan and started already. However,
with the amount of wood (and $$$) this project will use, I want to
make sure I've got a detailed plan that is going to work well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Ted