little free library

[adrian_turtle]

Do any of you have experience with running a Little Free Library? There are lots of them around here, some of which seem to have regular circulation and others go empty or feral. I know a certain amount of curation is necessary to prevent them from getting packed solid with religious tracts or textbooks about Fortran. (ETA: I am peripherally involved with one now, and worry that we are taking too many books out of the box to keep in the house.)

It's not at all clear how much time and space the curation needs to maintain circulation. If the shelves are too empty, neighbors won't take any books, so the steward needs to have some books on hand to restock. And if the shelves are packed too full, neighbors won't donate, so the steward needs to remove a few books and either discard them or add them to the restocking pile. Obviously, people who don't like to throw books away tend to start LFLs. (Yes, it's a TOEFL prep book from 1970 when "he" was the generic 3rd person pronoun and nobody seems to want it, so maybe I should bring it into the house and put it out later. Maybe someone will want it someday!) Things could pile up.

It looks like it's not feasible to run a LFL without some stockpile to allow for overflow and refilling, but I worry that the stockpile will take over the building if we don't put some prior limits on it Unfortunately, I have no idea what limits are reasonable: the volume of the LFL itself? five times the volume? Any advice would be appreciated.

Comments

[evalerie]

I've been dreaming of making a Free Little Library for years!

What holds me back are worries about people trompling my garden or vandalizing the library, and also reading on NextDoor where people gripe about some local people who go around taking every single book from people's libraries and probably reselling them online. But I still am thinking about it, even despite those things. I also love the idea of making an alternative type of library -- I've heard of ones that have food, other basic supplies (warm socks, diapers, feminine hygiene items, etc.), and ones that have seeds or gardening supplies. I love all of these ideas! Though also I don't think there is enough foot traffic near my house of people who would use it, and that too holds me back.

There are Little Free Library discussion forums and websites, so if you don't get an answer here, maybe someone there would have some guidelines.

Until the pandemic, I used to give out used books at Halloween each year. Various thrift stores and the Friends Of The Library booksale have used books at good prices. I used to buy books for 10 to 25 cents each, but now the various places charge more like 50 cents to $1 to $2 per book. If you are buying books in bulk for a project like this, finding the lower price is worth it. Also sometimes book sales and thrift stores will give you a discount if they know you want to distribute books to kids. Finally, garage sales are sometimes a good source, especially if a friend is running one and you can request a carton of leftover kids' books that didn't sell, which might well be free.

Anyway, I think this is a neat project! If you do it, I hope you will post pictures!

[adrian_turtle]

My concern is not much with finding a supply of books, but rather with preventing the surplus books from taking over the building. We* have hundreds of books that have been donated to the LFL. Maybe thousands. Finding places to put them all is a real problem. We've had no trouble with vandalism or trampling the garden, though the location helps a lot with that. You can stand on the sidewalk and reach the library. If you want to browse, it can be a little inconvenient for people walking on the sidewalk who need to go around you.


*for some value of "we" I hesitate to specify on DW without locking the post

[evalerie]

Oh! I didn't realize that you already have one going! I thought you were thinking about it but hadn't started yet. Neat!!

[lydamorehouse]

I was directed here by Naomi Kritzer because my wife and I have had a decently successful little free library for some time now.

My wife does most of the curating, but it doesn't occupy a lot of her time. Every couple of weeks (or whenever she thinks to) she check through what's in the LFL and will pull out books that aren't moving, shove them into a paper bag, which then gets thrown in the back of the car. We always have that bag in the car so that when we pass empty LFLs, we stop and put those in.

We get religious tracts very rarely, but I always check when the Mormons have been to the door and whatnot. There are a couple of LFLs in our town that are run BY churches, so if we end up with a lot of Bibles, we just drop them off at those LFLs.

But, so a couple of things about us that might make our situation unique: We live in a poor neighborhood, so we have a big sign on our LFL that says, "You may keep these books! No need to return! They are our gift to you!" because we actually would rather have books in readers' hands rather than worry about getting any back. So, our stockpile disappeared almost immediately. We had about six bankers boxes full before we started? I think we're down to just the one under my wife's chair on the porch that gets added to via thrifting or cleaning out, etc.

I would say that you should probably plan to have enough extra books so that if you are suddenly wiped out by those random folks who think that they can make money reselling used books (ha, ha! joke's on them!) you can fully replace your stock. I bet that Shawn only puts out five or six new books every couple of weeks, otherwise? The only nice thing about having some extra stock on hand is that you can just rotate out to see what kinds of books people take. (As noted, we also rotate throughout the larger LFL network, too.)

Our little free library holds probably 30+ books (maybe 50, if it's jammed tight, and if you count some thin children's books). It's got two shelves, but even so, we don't need a LOT of books to keep it stocked.

Is this at all helpful?

[adrian_turtle]

Thank you so much! Our primary curator gets really upset whenever someone empties out the box, but I always think we put the books out in order for people to take them.

I love the idea of dumping books in neighboring LFLs. The closest ones rarely have much space, though. My main concern is about the books in the house that are piling up and becoming a fire hazard, but can't be discarded because we need them for the LFL. Thinking about the LFL ecosystem as a whole allows us to let go of the bags of tattered paper without letting go of the "someone might want them" idea.

[silveradept]

The aim for proper library shelves in my system is for them to look about 70-80% full, so if you hit that, you will probably have the correct number of books in the LFL. What that may require is some collection maintenance of the shelves and the boxes so that things that will go out and circulate, rather than stagnate with things that will not be if interest to the community. It sounds like you have a plan for that part.

I would keep maybe twice the current stock, depending on how big the library is, and then adjust what you keep based on what goes and what stays.

[adrian_turtle]

I think we get religious tracts more often than many LFLs, because there's a kind of evangelical Christian that's especially drawn to work near synagogues. It's analogous to those orthodox Jews who go around trying to get non-religious Jewish men to put on tefillin and say morning prayers...they especially love getting Santas.