apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I have two children. One's a climber, one isn't. My experience is that anything (even, or especially, regular shelves) is a temptation for a kid who likes to explore vertically.

It's impossible to fully baby-proof or toddler-proof a space, which is why kids under the age of three shouldn't be left unsupervised in a room. By the time they leave the toddler years behind, they should have internalized your rules about what they're allowed to climb and what they aren't, and you can relax a bit. So I'd say go with the shelf if you like it and if you aren't planning to leave your child unattended in the room.

Even if they're not climbers, they will figure out a way to do something on or with the shelf. Rule of thumb is to raise everything to about a three- or four-year-old's vertical reach, and if you leave kids unattended, get rid of the harmful stuff because your child will scoot a chair, climb the chair, dig through upper cabinets when you're not looking. We all did that as kids.

Since you ask this question I am assuming you will mount the shelf at a lower level (so she may reach them?) If not, then not a problem.
My belief is that if the shelf is there from infancy with BOOKs on it then she will grow to know that that is what it is there for. Her familiarity with it will only be in the sense that it is a book shelf and nothing else ("This is where I find my books and can put them away all by myself!")

Good luck!

I say put it up for now and if she climbs on it, take it down for a while. Some kids will climb anything, but it doesn't usually happen out of the blue (my son started climbing before he was walking, so we knew what to look out for.) My daughter was never much of a climber though. All kids are different.
One thing about lollipop's theory - I'm pretty sure my son was familiar with the idea that the fridge was for food storage and nothing else, but that didn't stop him from climbing on top of it!

I think it all depends on the child. I never baby-proofed anything save for the cabinets in the kitchen in my old apartment. We moved when my daughter was 18 months into a house and never baby-proofed here. Every child is different, but I have found that redirection works wonders...at least it did for us. My daughter just sort of figured out what she could and could not play with. She has some modular book crates on the floor for toys and books that she is allowed to climb on and mess with and she knows not to play with stuff on the walls (she will be 3 in January.)

I say either put it up out of reach or just try teaching her that she can play with something else instead. If there are books on it, she'll probably just want to take those out and make a mess with them on the floor rather than climb anyway! Books themselves are so tempting for little ones :)