Every week or so, Marty Shively walks from home into Bristol
Township's Silver Lake Nature Center. He nears the butterfly garden
and then stops in front of a little box.
It's a library.
He pulls open the
squat double doors that glide over the black-and-white piano keys he
painstakingly painted on this repurposed kitchen cabinet three years
ago. He studies the titles in the library, a four-by-two-foot box he
and a friend assembled and painted to resemble a piano.
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He recognizes some
books; others are new. Some days, the little box is stuffed. On other
days, amid empty space, hardbacks and paperbacks have fallen against
each other, like dominoes frozen in mid-topple.
Good, he says to
himself. People come here. People like this place.
Shively's Little
Free Library, at 1306 Bath Rd., is one of about 900 such libraries
registered in
Little Free Library,
a nonprofit founded in 2009, has been touted as a growing movement to
expand enthusiasm for literacy and community outreach. The
organization neatly sums up its mission in six words: "Take a
book, leave a book." Free.
"I can go
through periods where I can't even put a book in because it's so
stuffed," said Shively, a retired music therapist who started
the library, then in Levittown, with his longtime friend Renee
Flager, formerly a children's librarian.
Although each
library has its own distinctive features, all Little Free Libraries
take the form of a box, often not unlike a large birdhouse, filled
with books for people of all ages and propped atop a post stuck in
the ground. They appear in all colors, shapes, and materials —
weatherproofing is wise — and some also sport thoughtful bonuses,
like dog biscuits, and tricked-out features, like motion-sensor
lights. The libraries pop up wherever their creators, officially
referred to as stewards, choose to place them, often in their own
neighborhoods.
There are no library
cards, no late fees, and no opening or closing hours. They're the
furthest thing from a traditional library. And that's part of their
charm.
Little Free
Libraries don't try to compete with brick-and-mortar libraries,
replete with thousands of books, CDs, audio books and banks of
computers. The tiny kiosks are inviting in their own way.
Chris Swisher, a
part-time reference desk librarian at the Tredyffrin Public Library,
started a Little Free Library on Lenoir Avenue in Wayne two years
ago, after his wife gave him a Little Free Library kit for Christmas.
"It thrills me
when I see people stop and take a book or put in a book," he
said.
Megan Patterson
passes Swisher's library several times a day when she walks with her
dog and 1-year-old daughter, Edie.
"We'll peek in
there from time to time," she said. "I grabbed things for
the baby. I got an infant massage book out of there one day."
There are dozens of
Little Free Libraries in Philadelphia and its suburbs. Wayne alone
boasts seven, each with its own unique character and steward.
The myriad stewards
in the region include Laura Dixon Hartshorn, a captain with the
Chester Township Police Department; Cathy Pritchard, a mystery and
romance novelist in Narberth with a day job as a corporate legal
assistant; and Mike Vaughan, the owner of Riverbend Cycles, a bicycle
shop along the Schuylkill River Trail in Conshohocken.
They each have their
own reasons for starting their libraries.
Hartshorn saw it as
a way to build community relations for the police department.
Pritchard just had too many books and decided she needed to give some
away. And Vaughan, a voracious reader whose bicycle shop includes a
cafe and patio, thought he'd give customers some reading material
after they'd hopped off their bikes to take a break mid-ride."We
get a lot of excitement out of it," said Vaughan, who started
the library with one of his customers. His library, at 1 Station
Ave., caters mostly to adults and offers a selection of historical
fiction and biographies, although it once held a book about the
history of the pencil.
Pritchard tries to
switch up the contents of her library with themes. There was a
Halloween theme last month, she said, and in April, for Earth Day,
she placed some nature-themed titles to mark the occasion, as did
Shively, of Bristol Township.
"It starts to
take on a life of its own after a while," said Pritchard, who
painted her library sage green. "It's not just me putting the
books in."
Hartshorn, of the
Chester Township police, has had to refill the department's library
three times since it was staked into the ground outside police
headquarters, 1840 Harris St., this year. Among its offerings are an
array of children's books that officers bring in from home when their
kids outgrow them.
"The fact we've
had to refill it three times tells me people are taking advantage of
it," Hartshorn said. "Nobody's going to steal a book. If
they're taking a book, they want to read it to the kids."
The inspiration for
Little Free Libraries came from Todd Bol, a Minnesota native who
built the first one in Hudson, Wis., in 2009 as homage to his mother,
a fellow teacher and book-lover. The concept took off and spread
worldwide, with libraries in all 50 states and 88 other countries.
Bol died last month
of pancreatic cancer at age 62, bringing a measure of sadness even to
those who never met him but felt a connection through their Little
Free Libraries.
"It was a great
idea," said Hartshorn. "And that's even more of a reason to
continue his legacy."