If you’re in pursuit of free books, there are probably some within walking distance of you, nestled inside of a Little Free Library. Little Free Libraries are small wooden boxes, painted or otherwise decorated, and filled with free reading material. Anyone can take books out of the library, at any time of day, and either return them at their leisure or hold on to them indefinitely.
Despite what you may think, these little libraries don’t grow out of the earth, spawned by Wellesley citizens’ love for literature and accessible reading. Little Free Library is a non-profit organization who’s goal is to spread accessibility to reading for people all over the world. The accessibility to their Libraries is part of their effort to remove barriers, such as the difficulty in finding transportation to a library, or financial barriers to owning books.
Beyond concerns about accessibility, Little Free Libraries aim to make reading easy and exciting. If you go around to the various LFLs in town you might notice that they tend to cluster around elementary schools.
You might be wondering just how Little Free Libraries come into existence; luckily, The Swellesley Report has had first-hand experience in setting one up. By contacting the LFL organization we were able to have one of their libraries delivered to us, unpainted and in separate pieces. From there it was a simple matter of hiring an artistically inclined friend to add some art to the sides, putting the pieces together, and getting permission from the town to install it. The Swellesely Little Free Library now resides on Barton Road, stocked with books for the taking. Ours is certainly not the only one in town, and we have done our best to hunt down and take pictures of as many as we could find, which you can check out on our Little Free Library page.
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