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Little Free Library

littlefreelibrary.org

I had my handyman build one of these in front of our house. Also, I make a hobby of biking around to circulate books between different little free libraries in my extended neighborhood. I've found some amazing books over the years, things that were very different from my typical prior experience of books. I like this aspect, that it can be eye opening. Each little free library has it's own style of books. Some are better at handling magazines. Some see a lot of book movement, some much less. These factors influence how I move books around from one to another.

Suggestions on building a little free library: 1) By far the number one priority: Waterproof. If it's not waterproof, in my opinion you're actually doing a disservice to the community, rather than a service. And have an angled roof for proper drainage. 2) Don't make it too deep. Definitely not more than 18 inches. Probably 15 inches is a good depth. 3) If you can, make two levels: One level for tall books, another level for short books. 4) Don't make it too tiny, because then it's hard to get books in and out of. 5) A good solid stand so it doesn't fall over. 6) A good latch that will resist wind. Magnetic is good. I also like to have a magnet plus a hook that can be used for backup. Also with time it's nice to have the second option in case the shape changes a little and the magnet doesn't work. 7) You might try making a mockup out of cardboard so you can see the physical size and get a sense of how many books will fit. 8) Not a building tip, but: Try to arrange the books to look nice. If you have few books you can face some of them to attract attention.

Definitely don't make it too shallow either. People are forever jamming oversize books in ours and damaging the doors/hinges/catch.

Great points - a Little Library near me has become more of a dumping ground than it used to be because when they re-did it, they replaced the clear plastic window with a frosted/corrugated plastic (you can't see what's in it without opening the door), and they replaced the hook latch with a chain one that lets rain get in.

I build these and have one at my house.

Its been interesting.

Had some teenagers try to blow it up with fireworks.

Have to constantly remove proselytizing, mostly christian, pamphlets from it.

Had to buy a stamp https://littlefreelibrary.myshopify.com/products/self-inking... so drug addicts don't clear it out sell the books to buy smack.

Other than hat its been mostly self sustaining.

Did the stamp work out?

Ideally, what should the stamp say?

It says in the OP's link. I was just wondering if book buyers respected the stamp and furthermore if the people stealing the books recognize it enough to be deterred.

Yes the places that buy used books respect the stamp. They usually take all the books and take them to some place Half Priced Books https://www.hpb.com/ for some quick cash.

Places like that won't buy them if they are stamped.

They could try selling them on Amazon or E-Bay, but that's too much effort for quick cash to get a fix.

Thanks very much for the info. I'm building one now in a city with a fairly rough drug problem and I had no idea the stamp existed.

Drug addicts mess with them in most of the states I have been to, including Oregon, Washington, California, Maryland and New York.

Ah man, even my hometown in germany, which I consider to have a big drug problem - somehow manages to have these libaries(usually in old telephone cells) without junkies clearing them out. Apparently things can be worse it seems, what a shame.

Interesting. In New Hampshire and Vermont they seem to be mostly fine (if usually full of very bland romance books.) In the Netherlands there is a broader selection of books in my experience but they are more often vandalized / emptied.

My wife wanted one of these so bad that she fought the HOA on it to install one. It's been better than you describe, but yeah... Pamphlets, stolen books, etc. And we know they were "stolen" because if all the good books disappear at once and never return, you know someone stole them.

I've considered getting a stamp... But just haven't bothered yet. If the thefts start to really bother my wife, I'll get one.

She gets a ton of joy from seeing kids use it. And that's what really matters.

I don't understand the meaning of the word "stolen" in this context.

I've never seen a LFL with explicit rules on who can or cannot take out the books, or what they're allowed to do with the books afterward.

If someone sees "all the good books," are they not allowed to want all the good books? What if they take them and don't get around to reading them, are they stealing them?

I understand that there's a potential tragedy of the commons with a LFL, but if I put some of my books in one, am not going to worry about whether they're being read the "right" way. Mostly I'm happy to have had a place to donate my books, and figure there's a non-zero chance they'll be read again.

It means taken with the intent to resell, not to read.

Sure, but how do you honestly know that? Is it based on the profile of the person you see looking through them? Some people don't look like they should be readers? Or the fact that the "good ones" -- the ones that people presumably want to read -- get taken?

I guess I'm happier not getting angry over things that I don't know for sure, I'm happier generally assuming the best of my neighbors, and I accept that the books are out of my control once I drop them off at the library.

Well first of all if thirty books disappear in one day, that's probably an inorganic usage. If none of them ever reappear, that's another indicator. And then if the person you see taking thirty books is dressed in rags with a shopping cart, you can be pretty confident.

Or maybe OP just means that none of them ever return; it's supposed to be a LF Library after all, not a LF bookshelf.

Huh, I've literally never heard of someone before thinking it's supposed to be a library that you return books to. Must be different attitudes in different places. I've always seen people treat it as a swap-shop. Take some books you want, and some other day drop off some books you want to give away.

Both are okay. Returning or just keeping, as long as you aren't excessive. You aren't supposed to just take all the "good" ones, no matter if you're keeping or selling.

And there's an unspoken rule that you should probably give back, too. It's a community good, not a charity.

I don't understand how it's bad to pirate a book, but fine to freely give one away. Both deprive the author of a sale. Either they should both be allowed or both be prohibited.

Same reason you're allowed to gift your gold watch to someone, or sell your car.

Both of them do potentially deprive the creator of a sale, but they keep the same total number of things in circulation.

Sure, you can argue that philosophically it comes to the same thing, but the problem is that, if you win that argument, the powers that be are more likely to ban giving away things you own than they are to allow piracy...

Interesting idea, but isn't the value of a book derived from the entertainment or reference usage? If I enjoy a story, the transaction is complete. I paid my money, got my product, consumed it , and now I can get another. If I transfer it to someone, the content is potentially consumed twice, but only one payment was made to the author. "Can't have your cake and eat it too - except for books"

There's a little neighborhood park where I live, just down the street, where there have been 2 attempts to setup one of these. The first one was poorly constructed and the door fell off after just a couple of weeks. The second one I think the neighborhood kids broke on purpose. This, of course, after taking the books out and lighting them on fire for fun. There were charred pages all over for days. We're lucky they didn't catch the brush, of which there is plenty, on fire.

I've considered trying to build one myself, but I know it would just end up the same way.

Saw one of these at an Airbnb I rented in Bernal Heights for my parents to stay a few years ago. Neat little Mathematics textbook I used to teach my wife a little of this stuff. They're a loud signal of the neighbourhood. This one had some fun textbooks and romance books but in less nice parts of the city the ones I have seen are usually empty. Presumably, they are subject to the universal law I'm familiar with from the India of my childhood that anything that can be converted to money (no matter how lossy the mechanism) will be so converted.

I like the idea and books aren't something I value holding once I've read them so we put some sci-fi in back along with the textbook.

Amusingly, I saw them in the news a few years later under absolutely hilarious circumstances when the WSJ reported[0] that SF was fining some homeowners $1400 for a Little Free Library they'd placed outside their home after a neighbour complained. It seems to have had a happy ending with those people chasing it down till an ordinance was passed[1] permitting these.

0: https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-fights-urban-diso...

1: https://littlefreelibrary.org/2024/02/san-francisco-stewards...

Gosh, and what a cute one too! This is what a community is all about, ghastly to complain about this.

It's fun to be on vacation and go visit one of these. They're usually not in tourist areas and are likely to be in well established neighborhoods that a a different vibe than home. Also fun to read and come home with some random book that anchors you to that trip.

yeah! I've done some geocaching (or even just walking around exploring) while on my travels, and have very often encountered these "leave one, take one" type of free libraries along the way. It's really interesting to find different types of books depending on the area - the small town on an island of course has all these books on marine travel, sailing, that sort of stuff, for example. Nice way to get a little extra idea of the area and its culture, sometimes.

I've known Rick since 2001 and was around when he & Todd kicked this off. We've both since moved and it's been a pleasure watching this take off (inter)nationally. In parens b/c I can only verify the "national" part, personally. :) I look for them whenever I visit new places

I've seen several book boxes in Brisbane, Australia, but neither one that I know the location of has been registered as a little free library.

Hello fellow Brisbanite! Australia has it's own version of this directory - see if you can find it here:

https://streetlibrary.org.au/brisbane/

They are both there, thanks for that link.

We got at least one of these in my home town in central Italy, which is less than 50k people.

I don't think it works particularly well, but then neither does the actual public library, tho I basically grew up in it.

Are Scholastic book orders no longer a thing for children?

When my father retired from the service, he moved to the second poorest county in Virginia in terms of tax base, and the library at that time was a carrel of used paperbacks in the courthouse of the old library --- for each Scholastic book order, my teacher would open the box, remove a couple of books for other students, then hand me the box (she would also remove the promotional poster for the classroom, even though it was always my order which qualified for it).

Things got better when I got to high school, since that library was somewhat better stocked (in particular, a cousin of Andre Norton's lived in the county, received books from her, and then donated them to the library, which I will eternally be grateful of).

Fortunately, since then, the county has managed to build and stock an actual library building.

“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” ― Anne Herbert

These are a great way to spread something you appreciate with the world. I once bought a stack of 30 or so well-used Calvin and Hobbes books and would regularly seed a few every now and then.

These can show up on Google Maps, which is how I found out about them.

I once had time to kill in a neighboring town and so I thought I'd check out the local library, and a marker saying "Little Free Library" showed up nearby.

Imagine my confusion when I ended up in the middle of a residential area and did not find anything resembling a library. I cruised back and forth in the neighborhood, to the point I started worrying about looking suspicious, before I saw this little box on a corner and then it clicked.

Now I see them everywhere.

Just this morning I added several copies of books 1,2 & 3 of the Wheel Of Time series to a random Little Free Library because I had so much fun reading them and I hoped others would as well.

Hoping this continues.

Last time I went looking for LFL's, the map data quality was terrible. There's no way to flag a defunct location as defunct, since only the "owner" can edit their own entry. If they don't respond, it's a permanent ghost on the map.

I've taken to mapping them in OSM using amenity=public_bookcase (and amenity=food_sharing for the similar little free pantry). This way anyone can update the entries over the years.

We have probably 30 of these within 10 miles and it's great. Perfect excuse to go for a walk, get a book, read it, and then return it to one of the others.

Wikipedia lists them by country, and with pictures, for example

French: [Boîte à livres](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo%C3%AEte_%C3%A0_livres?wprov...)

German: [Öffentlicher Bücherschrank](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96ffentlicher_B%C3%BCchers...)

and many more countries. They all need a caretaker, or else they degenerate into rubbish.

In France I stumbled upon one during a holiday trip, it was located in an old phone booth. Hmm, I must have a picture somewhere in my photo collection, …

"In France I stumbled upon one during a holiday trip, it was located in an old phone booth"

Those are pretty common in (eastern) germany, they were empty for a while after the telephones went out of service and then before demolishing many got turned into little libaries. I really like the idea and exchanged many books.

There are several in my neighborhood, and I enjoy patronizing them. The only difficulty is the same books sit in them for months at a time. What might work is having a backing store of books, and rotate them through the library once a month or so.

I have been dropping my puzzle books [1] into many of these in my area. It is encouraging to see they are almost always gone when I return.

[1] https://www.kakurokokoro.com/

This seems like the worst of both worlds. If you don't care about the social/interpersonal aspect of reading then just use the internet. If you do, go to a real library.

Seems to be entirely a boredom-fueled bird-watching project for the maintainer. It's not a "nice thing" at all it's an out of place paternalistic nudge that makes teens feel unsafe in their neighborhood.

The only nice things that comes from them are teens "blowing them up", artists vandalizing them or homeless/vagrants selling the books.

Wow. "Makes teens feel unsafe"? Care to explain that?

The rest of your comment is so absurd I'm not going to bother asking.

In Australia it's 'Street Library'

https://streetlibrary.org.au/

Do they have other names in different countries?

in NA we have to call them "free libraries" because the concept of not having to pay for something is so rare, it has to be clearly indicated upfront! (joking lol, mostly!!)

I think being free is implied in being a library

Some libraries require membership. Also some people have private libraries. Universities often have libraries which, at least, don’t offer all of their services to the general public.

Not being open to the general public doesn't mean it's not free

I’d argue it is paid for by the students’ tuition, but money is fungible so I’m not sure how exactly we could nail that down.

I love the idea but whenever I look in these it’s always the weirdest books and never anything I’ve heard of

I guess that is expected though as the unwanted ones build up over time

Why would you want something you'd already heard of? That's hardly a discovery you could get such a book at the public library.

Why would you want something you hadn't heard of? Nobody has run out of books that they've heard are good.

Yeah the thing is books are really time consuming so I tend to pick carefully

I run out of books all the time and go hunting for recommendations

https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo...

Should keep you busy

Consider stepping out of your comfort zone.

Into the harlequin romance zone or the “Wordperfect 6 for Dummies” zone?

harlequin romance zone, for sure.

Sure it’s not 1985 now, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

I feel like they are often unwanted discards... but we have one and we try to put interesting books in there. Recently gave away my entire Harry Potter series.

The ones in my neighborhood are full of religious evangelism titles or bad self-help books.

I cannot and will not advocate the burning of books, but I did get a 13 volume collection of Ann Coulter books... And they did burn well. 415F.

Sorry. I'm the weird niche author who puts a copy of his books in these whenever I come across a new one. Author's copies are so bloody cheap and little free libraries are full of weird stuff already, it feels more likely someone looking for books in one will appreciate mine.

Built one of these [an oversized version] the first year I moved into my house (charter 76305), and it's been a hot spot as children (and adults) walk by it every day.

Stephen King and Patterson books tend to go quickly, as well as science fiction.

Luckily, I've been able to have a good mix of children, teenage, and adult books recycled through.

Would highly recommend having one installed/setup on a well travel sidewalk/park.

I find these to be cute, romantic almost. But I have never found anything worth borrowing. I wonder what is the real impact in terms of additional books read. I do love the concept of spreading knowledge in the neighborhood. I'd be curious about other similar approaches.

I've found them to be little microcosms of the area where they are: around me, those in wealthy neighborhoods tend to have biopics and non-fiction. Maybe more business or finance focused. Those in my neighborhood (tons of young families) have more casual reading and certainly a lot of fiction.

So that's all to say sorry, your hood is full of boring people. Try finding one in a different area.

In my experience (I have 3 within walking distance of home), they tend to have good children's books, but the adult selection is almost useless, leaning towards religious propaganda and bad cookbooks.

A great project for any student taking wood shop (our daughter built our LFL last semester).

i build lil free libraries and bird houses to get rid of my scrap wood. it's a fun limitation on the project that often makes ya think outside the box, so to speak.

Most of the ones around here are pretty obviously built from the same plan, but the ones that are kit-bashed from random materials are always the most interesting.

What do you do with them? Give them away on Facebook or something?

These started in a tiny Wisconsin town called Hudson, where I grew up. The only time we’d ever be front page on HN :)

We have one at the local park nearby. A neighbor also has one in her front yard. It's a really neat concept!

There are about a half dozen around my neighborhood. My daughter and I constantly move books in and out of them to keep them fresh on our walks.

Sometimes they’re great; but, oftentimes I find them to be utterly and completely devoid of anything interesting or different. Almost every single one has some sort of religious spam in it.

I find that they're almost always a perfect cross-section of the local thrift store's books - including the absolutely inordinate number of cookbooks.

They’re either what folks don’t have accepted at Half Priced Books or people read absolute shit.

If the latter, it’s no wonder folks don’t read as much as they once did.

I’m convinced people pick these over to resell the books in some cities.

I’m sure that happens but it may still be a net benefit. The original owner gets rid of a book they don’t need and don’t need money for, somebody who needs money takes the book and sells it, and somebody who wants the book buys it.

But some do seem to just have high turnover. When I moved away from a place in New Orleans I probably took about 100 books to one of these over the course of a month. Most of the time I’d come back a couple days later and find all the books I dropped gone—and entirely different (and not obviously inferior or cheaper) books in the library.

agreed, it is a net benefit, but maybe not the intention. I drop off books in these regularly that probably have decent resale value (relatively speaking) but very rarely find anything I am interested in reading.

The margins on used books aren't there to make this worth anyone's time.

Yet I still see someone scanning books with their phone to find the value most times I am in goodwill.

any idea what app they were using? I want an app to scan a bookshelf for books I want or may want to read.

Are these not hell on the books, being outside and all? It's generally pretty high humidity where I live, but I still see these. I'd half expect all the books in them to be moldy.

They’re usually reasonably rainproof.

Paper can survive in humidity for a few weeks. Think of all the antique stores in old buildings that almost certainly don’t run AC all night in hot and humid environments, and how many books survive from the era before air conditioning.

Somehow it's not a problem, even in Western Washington in the winter.

I think this is very cool and a brilliant idea, there are a few of these in my area where I have borrowed and contributed books too.

We have a makeshift library like this in my apartment complex, and our municipality have one in our town. It’s cool stuff!

My wife loves these, and tries to donate a book to them when she can.

It's astounding to me that there isn't a cheap mass-produced e-ink device meant for kids to fill the need of paper books yet. We got mandated laptops in the hands of schoolchildren before this!

Color is a problem, isn't it? Also, they have software and as soon as there's software, there's an explosion of over-complication that raises the minimum age limit for being able to use them.

This is a bit of a rant but I have a lamp/flashlight that my 4yo can't use because it's too complicated. It has 3 buttons which control 2 separate lights built into the same device. You can spend all day pressing buttons and making it change color or brightness or turn the flashlight part on and off but if you want to turn all the lights off, you have to know the secret button code. Also, one of the buttons is disguised as a USB port cover which looks the same as the other (!) USB port cover that isn't a button.

Is it? Kids in India learn from black-and-white books in school all the same as colored ones.

I think we used to have this UX problem sorted in the pre-smartphone days. Remember the classic Kindle with tactile keys? It's just a matter of design.

Sure, but do they read them for fun? Would they choose them over a paper book in color? There's no point providing every kid with something they don't want. Making them available, perhaps.

There are people who are angry at Little Free Libraries because they have somehow convinced themselves that they are a plot to drive regular public libraries out of business. Absolute madness.

that's wild because public libraries aren't in business to begin with. they're a public good, they exist to give the public something, not to extract profit from them.

Public libraries are funded and supported by the public though. They need attention, and if you read the other comments on this post it's almost like most of these people don't even realise that public libraries exist.

Better wording might be "to replace public libraries as a provider of free reading material in the public consciousness, leading to the reduction of funding and the loss of all the services a real public library provides, including a much wider and better source of books"

This is very cool, they are a common sight in some cities in Germany and I always love checking through them. I have to admit I expected some OSS library when I clicked the link, I need to touch grass more.

Not wanting to too negative, but this is just a rich person affection. You don't see these in low income neighborhoods for a reason. It can only exist where there isn't a real need, because if this was meant to fulfill a need, it would be wholly inadequate. It's like all those ventilator projects people were making during COVID. Feel good busy work, most of it went straight into the trash.

1) People who don’t derive pleasure from reading do generally see it as an affection, because they can’t understand the appeal outside of apparent status-signaling. Reading, and discovering new material to read, is in fact an intensely selfish pleasure, but it is not a natural pleasure; if you didn’t get hooked in childhood, it’s probably not possible to convince you, and so you will forever see someone offering you a free book as some kind of hostile, elitist signal.

2) There are a lot of reasons why LFLs may not always thrive in low-income neighborhoods (although there are quite a few in mine, and it’s no Beverly Hills), but I would suggest that it is not because the residents exist in some higher state of authenticity.

Ha, nice try on throwing shade. I read voraciously, and have done so since I could pick up my first book. I don't think there's any more or less dignity in being poor, but neither am I impressed with these weird things wealthy people do to appear socially responsible. It's not solidarity, it's not really mutual aid, it's just performative. It's charity, but only a tiny amount, in only the places where it's not needed. I guarantee you, if someone from my neighborhood walked through a neighbourhood with these things and tried to pick up a book, you'd have Aurora PD with a boot on their neck before they made it back home.

Honestly, ultimately it's not that I think these are bad, but the attention to them is just gauche. It's weird to draw attention to this thing that I've literally only seen privileged people put up infront of their homes.

Ah, the lovely downvotes of the fragile people who can't stand someone not liking their thing

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