Photos courtesy of Kim Carter.
The Broken Bow neighborhood’s Little Free Library Kim Carter’s yard in the Broken Bow subdivision.
Last summer, when Kim Carter was an aide at Inverness Elementary School, she got inspired with a new dream.
A teacher read a story to the kids about someone who collected discarded books and made them available for people to read. The teacher also told them about the concept of the Little Free Library, an organization that encourages people to build small boxes in their yard to hold books that their neighbors can take, borrow or swap.
“It really inspired me,” Carter said. “I came home, and my husband and I built ours. It’s not pretty at all, and a year later it’s kind of falling apart. But the neighbors love it, and they bring books as well as take them.”
Little Free Libraries have been popping up all over in recent years. The first one was built in 2009, when Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin, got the idea to use an old wooden door to make a tiny, schoolhouse-shaped library in his yard as a tribute to his mom, who was a teacher.
Since then, more than 150,000 people across all 50 states and 120 countries have built their own and registered them with the Little Free Library organization.
And according to the Little Free Library app, dozens of those are in the Birmingham area, including Carter’s, which is in the Broken Bow neighborhood off Alabama 119.
I’ve watched as my neighborhood has used and loved it. It’s a great little program everyone should be a part of.
Kim Carter
“I’ve watched as my neighborhood has used and loved it,” she said. “It’s a great little program everyone should be a part of.”
To start a Little Free Library, there are a range of different options. An easy way to get started is to buy a kit or prebuilt library from the organization’s website, where a number of size, shape and color options are available. Many Little Free Libraries are built on posts, but a kit is also available for a bench that combines with the library and doesn’t require any digging.
If you’re feeling ambitious, you can design and build it yourself in whatever shape you want. You can also build from blueprints available online. The Little Free Library website has links to blueprints and tutorial videos on library shapes ranging from a covered bridge to a full-size TARDIS from “Doctor Who.” The site also has ideas for how to build a library on a budget.
There are no stipulations for how your library has to be displayed — the organization just requests that it be accessible to the public all the time.
“Books being available all the time is just the best,” Carter said.
She said after seeing how her neighborhood has responded to her library, she wants to pass it on to other neighborhoods that might not have one.
According to the Little Free Library organization, it’s possible for someone to steward a library that’s not in his or her own yard as long as the steward has the permission of the property owner or the city, if it’s on public property, such as in a park.
For more information, go to their website at littlefreelibrary.org.
