On Instagram, I find that Yamini Vijayan, editor of children’s books, has been chronicling community libraries from her travels. How many have you visited, and what are they like, I ask. “Oh so many,” she replies, “…libraries on islands, and libraries on top of hills. Libraries that are squeezed into biology labs. Libraries filled with bizarre religious and political texts. Sprawling libraries with not a soul in it. Tiny libraries that are exploding with readers. Grand libraries with grand bookshelves. Libraries in which books hang from strings tied to windows…”
Her desire to visit libraries on her travels began with mild curiosity but has become second nature now. “Often, when I find myself in libraries located in relatively conservative cultures, I’m shocked by the number of very, very radical and progressive reading material. It makes me wonder how those books got there and also comforts me greatly.”
At the Iqbal Reading Room in Kochi, she met Younis, then a 19-year-old college student holding a Malayalam translation of Oliver Twist – which he had borrowed for his aunt who also loves to read – and Tagore’s Gitanjali. “Have you read Gitanjali?” he asked Yamini, eagerly. She hadn’t. “It’s super! You must read it. I read it over and over again. I never get enough of it.” Younis is interested in books on science and travel. “I particularly like reading books by Stephen Hawking and Oliver Sacks. The levels are very high and I don’t understand everything in these books, but I try to grasp as much as possible,” he told us. The library is his doorway to possibilities, to a-Younis-of-the-future who will share Hawking and Sacks’ ideas with others.
Visiting the Buguri community library in Bangalore, Yamini writes, “Although it was newly set up, it felt vibrant. I could tell that it’s a library that welcomes everyone, not just readers. Children would peer now and then even before the library’s working hours, waiting to burst in. I remember distinctly how they had kept the library open for this one girl who could come only after her evening prayer. I’ll never forget that, watching her sit by herself in the library and read with this amazing intensity.”
So begins our exploration about the community libraries in all its shapes and sizes and forms. And to see what keeps them going.
On a cold and rainy morning, walking on a narrow path in Dharamsala, passing the small chai stop, I nearly missed it. It was letterboxish but white and without a lock on it. The sign read “The Little Free Library”. Inside it were a few books. “Take a book. Return a book.” said the sign. It was not the best stocked library but it was pretty incredible to come across a library at all, outside a shop in a Tibetan settlement.
The Little Free Library was started by Todd Bol in his hometown in Wisconsin, in 2009. It was a tribute to his mother, who’d been a school teacher. Todd created the first of the little free libraries on his front yard, in a schoolhouse shaped little box that he put together. Soon, he and a friend began making more of these little libraries, for neighborhoods and communities across the country – with Todd setting himself a goal of 2510 libraries, a goal he met in less than three years. The Little Free Library became a formal non-profit organization. Their website is quite extensive, offering pre-registered little libraries, offering libraries in a variety of designs, and several ideas that one can borrow and implement – a sign of all the learnings they have accumulated over the years. Todd passed away in 2018 but his little library movement is going strong; there are a reported 75,000 little free libraries in 85 countries, as of 2018!
“Won’t people steal the books?”
“No, you can’t steal a free book.”
The Little Free Library’s stated purpose is “to inspire a love of reading, build community, and spark creativity by fostering neighborhood exchanges around the world.” It’s based on a fundamental code of honor: If you take, you give back. There’s a karmic law of what goes around comes back, a feel good factor that keeps the wheel turning. And it’s largely worked, although not all Little Free Libraries are owned and used by its communities; there are several Little Free Libraries that languish unused. But still, in the oddest of places, there’s a little library that’s free and with people able to borrow books from it! Initiatives like the Little Free Library turn pages into possibilities in the hands and minds of people because they recognize that ideas are like the wind and need the freedom to circulate. People need books, and books need people.
Closer home, in Goa, Bookworm’s BookStops offer an example of this. BookStops were designed as a small collection of books that were available for readers who would borrow and return at will – and “hopefully, add to”. The inspiration for the BookStops was a newspaper article on a box of books that was kept, on Brigade Road, one of Bangalore’s busiest streets, for people to help themselves to. Bookworm’s Sujata Noronha who read the article was immediately taken up by it. It seemed like a ridiculously simple idea for bridging the book and the reader. “All it takes is a box,” she remembers thinking.
Public spaces require permissions and so Sujata wrote to the Corporation who replied with many questions. “This was good,” says Sujata, “as it gave me an opportunity to articulate the idea.” With a more detailed plan to create these libraries, Sujata and the Bookworm team set out to fabricate the boxes, select books to go in them, choose locations and set them up. They began with 10 BookStops with two volunteers who came forward to take care of them for a season. And then the monsoons arrived, and all the BookStops had to be taken down to protect them from the rains.
In Aldona village, where many friends of Bookworm live – a BookStop was set up when the proprietor of a store offered a free wall. He promised to protect the little collection of books from the vagaries of the weather. The books themselves come from donations but go through a weeding process by the Bookworm team. Also, once a month, the Bookwormers stop by to check the BookStops, removing torn or damaged books, and replenishing the stock if the shelves look empty.
Two years on, Aldona’s BookStop is still going strong and is a part of the community. Sujata reflects that the learnings from the BookStops have been interesting: “We’ve learnt to surrender the idea of good books. With BookStops, reading choices is not key but access is.”
That a book can be read for free is not one that finds happy acceptance everywhere. Perhaps it’s because books are seen as something valuable or maybe we are not used to working outside of a system where we are held liable. But when it works, when the community has come forward to use it as intended, it can make a world of difference.
Flavia, Bookworm’s Aldona local, writes, “I have seen people using it as well as rearranging the shelves so the books are neatly placed. I know of at least two people who borrowed books from there before their hospitalization for surgery. These books were returned later.”
Keeping the community library alive and kicking
No matter where they’ve started from or how they’ve been shaped, community libraries share some fundamental similarities in purpose – to put a book in people’s hands.
In Koramangala, a residential neighbourhood in Bangalore, there’s a free library in the 3rd block public park. Every Bangalore neighbourhood park comes with a walking track, a garden with a gazebo, some exercise equipment, and a children’s play area. A library, however, is not usually part of the plan. In 2000, while setting up this park, the Residents Welfare Association (RWA) chose to keep the little ramshackle building that was part of it. It was cleaned up and converted into a library by the members. The collection came from donations and the RWA bought some shelves to keep the books. Three years ago, the RWA were able to convince the local authorities to replace the dilapidated building with a new one. And they got lucky! The building is perfectly located, facing the children’s play area. On a Sunday morning, it’s outer verandah is occupied by residents reading newspapers. The library is small but neat, sorted, ventilated, and inviting. It charges nothing from its members. Its minimal overhead expenses for stationery and newspaper subscriptions are met from funds allotted in the RWA’s budget.
Keeping the library going are a small group of dedicated volunteers, all local residents and senior citizens. Parthasarathy, who was manning the desk on the day I was there, adds that the RWA can’t pay salaries so the volunteers keep the library open when the park is in use – early mornings and late afternoons. The number of members are recorded – 540 – but there is no inventory of books. No fines are charged for late returns, and should a book not make its way back, the volunteers do call and follow up. The truth is, sometimes books don’t return and that too is okay. Because eight years on, they have not run out of books. Or readers.
There’s a happy lack of limiting rules about the library.
These Keepers of Books
When donations come – and these community libraries make for great dumping grounds – there are a few members who must take on the onus of weeding out the ones that are inappropriate or irrelevant. Mira Pinto of the Koramangala library says she accepts all donations but she is careful about what she keeps and what she passes on. Tellingly, there are many donations of religious books, which some undevout resident has inherited and hesitates to discard too blithely.
A newspaper article on the Koramangala library narrates an anecdote of a visitor coming in but hesitating at the door because his shoes are muddy. And the writer goes on to say that Mira beckons him in with, “That’s fine. We will have the place cleaned. I would rather see you read a book than walk away.”
For a library – no matter what kind of library – to be used as intended, clearly it needs people who love books. And if you strip the stories back for a message, then it is this – all of these libraries have had a beginning in individuals whose love of books has led to the forging of a community that in some happy cases, propelled a reading movement, sustained across borders, across years, and across all kinds of readers.
When a love of books is so strong that it can set off a domino effect
A recent newspaper article by writer Anita Roy introduced yet another reading movement, the Book Fairies. Anita wrote about walking in London and finding a gift-wrapped book with a message to pick it up, read and pass it on. As instructed, Anita picked up the book, The Book Keeper of Baghdad, but also set out to unravel the movement. It led her to Cordelia – Book Fairies, she writes, are known by first names only – whose love of books set her on this path. Now, a worldwide movement, it has been picked up by other bookish folks with current numbers at 100 countries and 9,000 book fairies!
Is that all it takes? Apparently, yes.
To continue Anita’s story, she’d read The Bookseller of Baghdad and so passed it on to her mum, who read and loved it. Writes Anita, “Many of her books end up either with other members of the family, or with friends, and then friends of friends – she seems to act as an unofficial and mostly benign circulating library. Sometimes she resolves sternly to write her name in the front of the books on her shelves, in the hope that they might one day come winging back. That sometimes happens, other times not, and just as often other people’s books end up finding a home on her shelves.”
The desire to press a loved book into the hands of another reader is an irresistible one. There is an inevitability to our need to find another reader for a good book, and another, and another. And no matter how reluctant we may be to part with a book, it’s the story every book lover is familiar with.
I return to Yamini to ask about her own experience of reading, borrowing, and lending. She talks about growing up with a modest collection, but in a home of readers. Her combined experiences of books, of community libraries, and of readers have made her a compulsive lender of books. “I lend freely and happily. My collection derives meaning from being borrowed. I often catch myself at my bookshelves, contemplating what a friend may like. I take pride in being able to guess what someone may like, or dislike. I like my collection to be relevant, and for this I like for it to pass through as many hands as possible…”, she says.
There’s something incredibly generous about giving books away, setting them free to find more readers, isn’t it? And that, I deduce, is the key to taking so personal a love and sharing it far and wide. Or as Yamini puts it, “At the heart of it, is my own relationship with books and all that it has given me. It has shaped me, lifted me from terrible lows, helped me heal and given me hours and hours of pure joy and adventure. So naturally, I want others to experience that as well. Lending my books and curating has given me a sense of purpose and identity. I still remember the excitement I felt when I finished reading Hanan al-Shaykh’s Beirut Blues. I was dying to share it with someone and could hardly wait. And look, it’s still missing from my bookshelf!”