Little Free Library Movement: Books Creating Improved Face-to-Face Communities

Something interesting is happening with a movement that started about a year ago in Wisconsin, called the Little Free Library Movement. People put up small, free library boxes on their property, usually out by the edge of their front yard, and put books they own inside for others to stop by and borrow at will. That concept, itself, is certainly interesting, and as the experience has spread throughout the U.S., there seems to be a happy byproduct—positive face-to-face community interaction through sharing the books.

The Little Free Library Movement is a kind of amazing grass-roots effort. When you go on the website, you'll see that their mission is:

To promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide. 
To build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity, and wisdom across generations
To build more than 2,510 libraries around the world - more than Andrew Carnegie!

Here's how it's described in a recent newspaper article:
The book-sharing movement began about a year ago in Wisconsin and is creating ripples of goodwill in neighborhoods. 
The two men who started the Little Free Library are Rick Brooks, 64, and Todd Bol, 56.

Brooks is an outreach program manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He does a lot of workshops on everything from preventing lead poisoning to getting through to kids about drinking and driving. Bol's background is in developing businesses in foreign countries. 

In the fall of 2009, Bol happened to attend a workshop by Brooks, and then told him about a memorial he had built in his front yard in Hudson for his late mother, June Bol, a schoolteacher. It was in the shape of a little red schoolhouse, with a bell on top, and offered free books.

Bol soon found himself starting to make Little Free Libraries for others, having gone to an old barn that had been torn down and gotten trailer loads of wood. People loved the little buildings.

"They'd tell me they had met more people than in the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years," Bol says.

By 2011, they were getting national publicity. This year, they hear every day about more of the hutches going up. . . .

Maybe in a few years, the Little Free Libraries will be remembered as just another fad.

For right now, though, Rick Brooks says about the little wooden structures that are spreading across the country, "This is obviously about more than just books. Something is going on."

(Seattle Times 7/12/12)

Do you have a Little Free Library participant in your neighborhood? I have to admit, I was not familiar with this until I read the Seattle Times article. But I'm kind of thrilled by it. Sometimes things happen that restore your faith in humans. They don't have to be big things, they can be little things, and they can make your heart full. This is a great Little one.