#FREE BOOKS NEAR ME FREE#
They enhance community spirit, they get people investigating their local area, and they’re providing 24/7 access to free reading material for whoever wants it.īut there’s also a frustration that the existence of little libraries dotted around neighbourhoods can divert attention from public libraries. The positive impact of micro-libraries is obvious. It feels like playing the literary lottery! That’s where they differ from a typical public library – the books on offer will constantly change and rotate, depending entirely on who visits the shelves and what their reading taste might be. These little free libraries may be part of a worldwide network, but they’re still unique: hand-painted, quirky and filled with a selection of books dictated by what the local neighbourhood decides to include. When people (librarians!) register their libraries to the site they receive a virtual pin on the global map, which means they can easily be found by fellow bookworms. When I looked into it further I discovered the existence of the Little Free Library, a huge international network with more than 90,000 book-sharing boxes registered in over 90 countries. You can borrow any book, hopefully following the etiquette of leaving another book in its place: there’s nobody keeping watch when you do so, which means these little libraries tend to act on an honour system.
In their simplest form, micro libraries are free book exchanges set up in the community. A micro-library might not be housed inside a typical bricks-and-mortar public library, but the principle still remains the same. ‘Take a book, leave a book’ at your local micro-library I’m talking about a whole new culture: the rise of the micro-library. So I did a bit of research about the book exchange opportunities in London, and I learned a lot more than I was anticipating. I always find myself quickly checking my surroundings before snatching a book and running away!Īnd the more I get into a solid reading routine – visiting my local library every few weeks, updating my Reading Challenge on Goodreads, trying to get a good hour of page-turning time in bed each night – the more I’m primed for other sources of reading material. Unfortunately, picking up stray books on the street feels a bit like you’re taking advantage of someone’s spring clean clear-out. (Although I wasn’t responsible for ‘hiding’ this book underneath an old towel…) I even rescue the saddest books from the danger of rain and prop them up somewhere a bit drier in the hope they’ll eventually find someone to read them. I always have a little leaf through the titles and end up with a couple of new reads weighing my bag down. It’s common to see boxes of free books outside people’s houses too, balanced precariously on walls and at the mercy of London’s temperamental weather. I’ve swapped books with friends occasionally taken part in those Facebook threads where you send a book to a stranger’s address and ‘get one in return’ (although it’s never worked for me!) – and I often see stray books riding the train, courtesy of campaigns like Books for London and Books on the Undergroundwhich aim to get London residents sharing books via the city’s transit network. The concept of book-sharing is not an unfamiliar one.
They can be as as obvious as a set of shelves or subtly hidden inside a wardrobe as small as a bird house or as big as an iconic red phone booth – but they all have one thing in common. They crop up at supermarket check-outs and on the platforms of train stations. You might have seen them outside residential houses or against the wall of a cafe.
Have you ever noticed the little free libraries in London?
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