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View Winners → Little Free Library thrives at Villa Gardens
Arcadia Weekly Jun 19, 2014
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“Take a book. Leave a book” collections are showing up in coffee shops and public spaces all around the globe. And now, at the Villa Gardens retirement community in Pasadena. They are called Little Free Libraries.
In 2009, Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin built a model of a one room schoolhouse as a tribute to his mother, a former school teacher who loved reading. He filled it with books and put it on a post in his front yard. His neighbors and friends loved it. He built several more and gave them away. Each one had a sign that said FREE BOOKS.
Then along came Rick Brooks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who saw Bol’s do-it-yourself project while they were discussing potential social enterprises. With the goal of matching Andrew Carnegie’s support of 2,509 free public libraries around the turn of the 19th to 20th century, they undertook an ambitious plan and – this being the 21st century – gave it and registered the name: “Little Free Libraries.” By January of 2014, the total number of registered Little Free Libraries in the world was conservatively estimated to be nearly 15,000, with thousands more being built.
In April 2014, Villa Gardens resident Pat Ganje was surfing the Web, happened upon the Little Free Libraries story and shared it immediately with executive director Dmitry Estrin who saw in this a way for Villa Gardens to share duplicates of books in their library. Luis SantaCruz from the Villa Gardens maintenance crew volunteered to design and build a “library”, maintenance coordinator Cindy Barajas and director of resident services Silvia Samuelson all joined Dmitry in getting the project off and running, and Pat Ganje agreed to manage it. The Villa Gardens Little Free Library (LFL) is now an official and registered member of this world-wide organization and its name and address show up on the Little Free Library website’s world-wide map. It is placed in an easily accessible and visible site in front of Villa Gardens at 842 E. Villa Street and awaits any and all visitors to take a book, which need not be returned, and to contribute one of their own.
You will find more details about the Little Free Library organization with pictures, maps and other fascinating information onhttp://littlefreelibrary.org/
